Conductor's Notes - Dr. Eric Hanson
We are pleased to open this 16th annual Northwest Mahler Festival performance with a short birthday tribute, Lebe hoch, Gustav! Gustav Mahler at 150, by John David Lamb. Mahlerites will delight in the typical Mahler gestures. The tempo indication, Comodo. Scherzando, Ohne hast, is taken from the third movement of Mahler’s Third Symphony. This piece had its world premiere in May at the Colorado Mahler Festival.
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) was a dear friend of Mahler, though they were opposite in temperament. He took the genre known as the symphonic poem from Liszt’s hand and culminated it. With Liszt and Wagner he advocated for the “music of the future,” seeking new forms of artistic expression. Though not a religious man, Strauss knew that there had to be some kind of transcendent reality and this notion was required of him as a member of the “Bayreuth Circle.” He composed the tone poem, Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) in 1888-9 at the tender age of 25. The work begins with the faltering heartbeat of our artist-hero as he lay dying. His pain is lessened a bit by reminiscences of youth and love (heard in the woodwinds, solo violin and harp) but death intrudes. Waves of agony are stilled by tender remembrance. A brief but jaunty march expresses mock heroism but once again, death intrudes. His heart pounds (in the trombones and timpani) and waves of agony lead to three visions of eternal life. The final one exhausts him. His heartbeat falters as in the beginning, and the music tenses in anticipation of the final death throe. Finally he expires in a rising chromatic line. His spirit passes through, as it were, a mist, as gradually, proto-thematic elements coalesce into the Transfiguration theme – leading to some of the most sublime music ever written! In 1894 Strauss rejected any notion of transcendent reality or the moral responsibility of the artist. It wasn’t until the destruction of Germany and his beloved musical culture that he reconsidered. In his final work, the Four Last Songs, he quotes the Transfiguration theme after the soprano sings, “Could this perhaps be death?” Among his very last words, Strauss said, “Death is just like I wrote it in my Tod und Verklärung!”
After the Fourth Symphony, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) felt confident in composing music without the props of an explicit program. His next three symphonies are often called the “Rückert” Symphonies because they breathe the air of his Rückertlieder and Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), settings of the poetry of Friedrich Rückert that he composed around the same time. The Fifth, informed by the implicit program of Death to Life with the progressive tonality of c# minor to D major, was very successful but when he started the Sixth it took Mahler down a very dark path. It was his “Tragic” Symphony – no expressions of the Life-Will are present in the score. Though a masterpiece and Mahler’s most tautly composed symphony, its nihilism caused the composer an emotional crisis. To get his legs under him again, when he fashioned the Seventh during the summers of 1904-5, he returned to the successful formula of the Fifth, but instead of “Death to Life”, the implied program is “Night to Day,” b minor to C major (with a side trip through e minor). Some have nicknamed this symphony “Song of the Night” or “Nocturnes” as the first four movements evoke sundry visions of night.
The symmetrical arrangement of the movements in the Seventh is very similar to the plan of the Fifth.
Sonata-allegro Nocturne Scherzo Nocturne Rondo-Finale
Both the Fifth and Seventh end with life-affirming rondo finales.
The first movement opens with a thick and dark introduction featuring the roar of the tenorhorn in b minor, accelerating to the stentorian first theme in the horns in e minor. Visions of day in C major seek to assert themselves in the second theme and throughout the development but they are turned away by the stentorian theme. The orchestral energy is spent and the viscous material of the introduction returns as recapitulation. The movement ends with the conflict unresolved.
The second movement, the first of two nocturnes, presents several elements. Spanish rhythms, tinkling cow bells, lonely horn calls, night sounds, and a constant interplay of major and minor modes brought together in a twilit march. The third movement scherzo, nicknamed Schattenhaft, or shadowy, presents the Hoffmannesque phantasms of a child’s nightmare. Its trio expresses the innocence of childhood but the scary things are always lurking under the bed. The fourth movement provides a final view of night, that of romance. The chalumeau clarinets with guitar, mandolin, and harp give this nocturne the quality of a serenade.
Day breaks forth in the flourish of timpani and horns in e minor, harkening back to the first movement, but by measure seven we are in the majestic sunlight of C major. The narrative arc of the finale involves trying the wrest the dark stentorian e minor theme of the first movement into the major mode. Several attempts are made but are turned back. Finally, almost at the end, we hear two statements of the transformed theme. In a way, it is Mahler’s “message in a bottle,” telling us he’s okay. As in the finale of the Fifth, there is an attempt by the music to go in an oblique direction but with one mighty blow, the composer wrestles it back to C. The Seventh does not sufficiently exorcise the nihilism of the Sixth, but that for me is one of reasons why the Seventh is such a masterpiece. It is the mock heroism of this all-too-human composer, facing the hard questions of existence.
Listening to a Mahler symphony is not mere entertainment, it is a journey of self-discovery. Join us in this journey. Lebe hoch, Gustav!