This symphony, known to some as “The Giant” symphony, was performed for the first time at a Gürzenich concert at Cologne, October 18, 1904. The composer conducted. There was a difference of opinion concerning the merits of the work. A visiting critic from Munich wrote that there was breathless silence after the first movement, “which proved more effectively than tremendous applause that the public was conscious of the presence of genius.” It is stated that after the finale there was much applause; there was also hissing.
When the symphony was performed in certain German cities, as at Dresden, January 27, 1905, at a symphony concert of the Royal Orchestra, and at Berlin, February 20, 1905, at a Philharmonic concert, the programme books contained no analytical notes and no argument of any sort. The compilers thus obeyed the wish of the composer. Mr. Ludwig Schiedermair tells us, in his Gustav Mahler: eine biographisch-kritische Würdigung, of Mahler’s abhorrence of all programme books for concert use, and he relates this anecdote. Mahler conducted a performance of his Symphony in C minor at a concert of the Munich Hugo Wolf Society. After the concert there was a supper, and in the course of the conversation someone mentioned programme books. “Then was it as though lightning flashed in a joyous, sunny landscape. Mahler’s eyes were more brilliant than ever, his forehead wrinkled, he sprang in excitement from the table and exclaimed in passionate tones: ‘Away with programme books, which breed false ideas! The audience should be left to its own thoughts over the work that is performing: it should not be forced to read during the performance; it should not be prejudiced in any manner. If a composer by his music forces on his hearers the sensations which streamed through his mind, then he reaches his goal. The speech of tones has then approached the language of words, but it is far more capable of expression and declaration.’ And Mahler raised his glass and emptied it with ‘Pereat den Programmen!’”
Yet Mr. Mahler’s enthusiastic admirer and partisan, Ernst Otto Nodnagel, of Darmstadt, contributed to “Die Musik” (second November number and first December number of 1904) a technical analysis of the Fifth symphony, an analysis of twenty-three large octavo pages, with a beautiful motto from Schiller. This analysis, published by Peters, and sold for the sum of thirty pfennig, is within reach of the humblest.
The symphony was completed in the spring of 1903. It was written in 1901-02 at his little country house near Maiernigg on Lake Wörther. Other works of this date are the Kindertotenlieder and other songs with Rückert’s verses. The symphony is scored for four flutes (and piccolo), three oboes, three clarinets (and bass clarinet), two bassoons, one double bassoon, six horns (in third movement a horn obbligato), four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, kettledrums, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, Glockenspiel, gong, harp, and strings.
Let us respect the wishes of the composer who looked on analytical or explanatory programmes as the abomination of desolation. Yet it may be said that in the rondo finale, after the second chief motive enters as the subject of a fugal section, one of the lesser themes used in the development is derived from Mahler’s song, “Lob des hohen Verstands” (relating to the trial of skill between the nightingale and the cuckoo with the ass as judge).
FELIX
MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
(Born at Hamburg, February 3, 1809; died at Leipsic, November 4, 1847)
Mendelssohn in his maturity wrote his music as he looks in his picture, smiling and with a stickpin in his ruffled shirt. When at seventeen he wrote his overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he was a romanticist. What might he not have accomplished if he had been poor and less respectable! He wrote this overture before he had been spoiled by flattery; before he became a composer of priggish formulas. Aubrey Beardsley pictured the later Mendelssohn in that forgotten magazine, the Savoy. There you see the man that was shocked by the resurrection of the nuns in Robert the Devil, by Terlina undressing in Fra Diavolo, by Hugo’s Ruy Blas, although he condescended to write an overture for it. The spotless Mendelssohn who delighted Queen Victoria and her spouse by playing the organ to them. But the overture to Shakespeare’s comedy is from another Mendelssohn, the composer of The Hebrides, portions of the Walpurgis Night, not the man of the oratorios and the sentimental Songs without Words.
SYMPHONY IN A MAJOR, “ITALIAN,” OP. 90
I. Allegro vivace II. Andante con moto III. Con moto moderato IV. Saltarello: presto