No. 9. Begun in 1906. Produced at Vienna late in June, 1912, Bruno Walter, conductor. The last movement is an adagio.
No. 10. Composed in 1909-10; left unfinished by Mahler. First performance at Prague on June 6, 1924, Alex von Zemlinsky, conductor.
“Das Lied von der Erde” (Song of the Earth), a symphony in six parts for tenor and contralto soli with orchestra, the text taken from The Chinese Flute, a collection of Chinese lyrics by Hans Bethge. Composed in 1908, first produced at Munich November 10, 1911, Bruno Walter, conductor.
Some of Mahler’s symphonies are described as programme music, but he was no friend of realism as it is understood by Richard Strauss. Mahler was reported as saying: “When I conceive a great musical picture, I always arrive at the point where I must employ the ‘word’ as the bearer of my musical idea.... My experience with the last movement of my second symphony was such that I ransacked the literature of the world, up to the Bible, to find the expository word.” Though he differed with Strauss in the matter of realistic music, he valued him highly: “No one should think I hold myself to be his rival. Aside from the fact that, if his success had not opened a path for me, I should now be looked on as a sort of monster on account of my works, I consider it one of my greatest joys that my colleagues and I have found such a comrade in fighting and creating.”
One reason why Mahler’s symphonies were looked at askance by conductors was the enormous orchestra demanded. No. 2 called for as many strings as possible, two harps, four flutes (interchangeable with four piccolos), four oboes (two interchangeable with two English horns), five clarinets (one interchangeable with bass clarinet—and when it is possible the two in E flat should be doubled in fortissimo passages), four bassoons (one interchangeable with double bassoon), six horns (and four in the distance to be added in certain passages to the six), six trumpets (four in the distance, which may be taken from the six), four trombones, tuba, two sets of kettledrums, bass drum, snare drum (when possible several of them), cymbals, tam-tam of high pitch and one of low pitch, triangle, glockenspiel, three bells, a Ruthe (a bundle of rods to switch a drumhead), organ, two harps. In the distance a pair of kettledrums, bass drum, cymbals, triangle. Soprano solo, contralto solo, mixed chorus.
SYMPHONY NO. 5, IN C SHARP MINOR IN THREE PARTS
I. 1. Dead March—with measured step—like a funeral train. Suddenly faster, passionately, wildly. À tempo 2. With stormy emotion. With utmost vehemence II. 3. Scherzo. With force, but not too fast III. 4. Adagietto, very slow 5. Rondo finale: allegro
The symphony is like unto the great image that stood before Nebuchadnezzar in a vision. “And the form thereof was terrible. The image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass; his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.”
There are musical thoughts that are lovely and noble. By their side are themes of a vulgarity that is masked only by adroit contrapuntal treatment or by the blare of instrumentation which gives a plausible and momentary importance. There is excessive reiteration of subjects and devices, and the skill displayed in embellishment and variation of orchestral color, color rather than nuance, does not relieve the monotony. The opening is imposing, but the chief theme of the Dead March disappoints. The first pages of the second section, “stormily restless,” are a stroke of genius, the free expression of wild imagination. There are charming ideas in the scherzo, and there is also much that is only whimsical, as though Mahler had then written solely for his own amusement, and said to himself, “Let us try it this way. I wonder how it will sound.” The adagietto is the most emotional portion of the work, and here Mahler employed simple means. Here the thought and the expression are happily wedded, nor does the ghost of Wagner, seen for a moment smiling, forbid this union. It may be that in the finale the composer could not help remembering the wondrous theme, D major, in the adagio of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony; but the resemblance is after all only a suggestion, and this finale in rondo form, with the majestic peroration, is worked so that there is a steady crescendo of interest. As a whole Mahler’s symphony, with its mixture of the grand and the common, with its spontaneity and its laborious artifice, is like unto the great image referred to above.
