Kenneth Woods- a view from the podium

I’ve been putting a lot of work in on Paul Mefano’s Intererences in the run up to this weekends sessions. Because of the open form techniques Gordon described in Part II of our interview, the notation is about as thorny as it gets. The challenge for the conductor is in managing the intersection of events that float in time and those that need to intersect at particularly moments.

The piece is in 3 “Fragments” (numbered IV, V and VI because the piece was originally much longer). It is the middle fragment which poses the most challenges for the conductor…

  (more…)

What a frustration it must be for those composers who live to see their music go out of fashion. Mahler famously said just before his death that “my time will come,” but for his contemporary Strauss, it was not easy being something of an anachronism in his later years. Even had Mahler lived another forty years, he might not yet have seen his music become fashionable. Saint-Saens had been one of the most famous and successful composers in the world at the height of his career, but by the time of his death in 1921 had come to be seen as an irrelevant relic of a bygone era.

His Cello Concerto no. 1 had been written at the height of his celebrity, and was instantly taken into the repertoire, and has remained a favourite with cellists and audiences ever since. By the time his Concerto no. 2 was premiered in 1902 his fame was beginning to change to infamy. With the rise of Debussy and Ravel and the emergence of a new harmonic vocabulary, Saint-Saens was quickly becoming known as a reactionary, desperately out of touch with the zeitgeist of the turn of the century. He was even one of the original rioters at the premiere of the Rite of Spring. This public perception was only furthered by an intense personal dislike between Saint-Saens and Debussy. Possibly as a result, the critical reaction was rather vicious, with one review saying of the concerto that it contained “de la mauvaise musique bien écrite,” or the worst music well written. Born into a hostile environment, the piece never really gained a foothold in the repertoire, even as the first concerto has remained popular.

Also contributing to the piece’s obscurity is a solo part that has scared off many cellists. The cello writing is so acrobatic that Saint-Saens wrote it on two staves throughout- he himself later described it simply as “too difficult.” The first movement is written in a Spanish style, full of bravura and vigorous dance rhythms. The second follows without pause and is a languid and songful movement, with some luxurious, even Wagnerian, harmonies. The Finale is a brisk virtuoso perpetual motion study which climaxes in a long cadenza and a return of the Spanish theme of the first movement. Finally, as in the First Concerto, Saint-Saens ends the concerto with a brand new, very lyrical theme.  

Next week, the Surrey Mozart Players kick off their season (more on that soon). As the Strauss Romanze is something of an oddity, the orchestra asked if I would write some notes for the program.

Richard Strauss- (1864-1949)

Romanze for Cello and Orchestra in F major, op 13 (1883)

Cellists are often reminded by our violinist and pianist colleagues of just how small our solo repertoire is in comparison to theirs. In our defence, we are often quick to mention that our Dvorak concerto is better than either of theirs, and that we also have the best Schumann concerto.

However, cellists have only themselves to blame for not recognizing the many wonderful pieces that haven’t made it into the repertoire. Such a work is the Strauss Romanze in F major heard this evening. Few composers ever wrote so much and so well in their old age as Strauss- one has only to think of Metamorphosen, the Four Last Songs and the Oboe Concerto (to be heard on the next SMP concert). However, equally few wrote so much and so well in their teens– when the nineteen year-old Richard Strauss set to work on this piece he, already had several masterpieces under his belt, including the Cello and Violin Sonatas and the Horn Concerto no. 1. While the Horn Concerto has become a staple of the repertoire and the two sonatas are at least well known, the Romanze nearly disappeared from the repertoire for over 100 years.

Its earliest champion was the cellist Hans Wihan, who was also the dedicatee of the Dvorak Cello Concerto.  Wihan, to whom Strauss dedicated the piece, seemed to understand the key to musical immortality- he championed new music. The piece shows the young Strauss as an inventive melodist and a master-orchestrator.  After over 100 years of neglect, this gem of the Romantic era is finally becoming known again

-KW 

Dmitri Shostakovich- Concerto for Piano, Trumpet and Strings, op 35

In many ways, Shostakovich was a quintessentially Russian composer. As a symphonist one can certainly hear the influence of Mussorgsky, Tchaikovsky and even, to an extent, Rachmaninoff in their powerful orchestration and epic forms. On the other hand, in the concerto medium, and particularly in the piano concerto, he moves about as far away from the great Russian models as one can. Compare the Shostakovich concerto heard tonight with those of Rachmaninoff or Tchaikovsky and it’s hard to accept they’re in the same genre. It’s even harder to reconcile the fact that Rachmaninoff was still active when this piece was written in 1933.

Where Rachmaninoff, Tchaikovsky and even Brahms had expanded the piano concerto into something like a symphony for piano and orchestra, huge, dramatic works over 40 minutes for vast orchestras, with piano writing that made the instrument itself sound like an orchestra, Shostakovich turned the genre into something completely new. His work is brimming with wit and sarcasm, clean and transparent where his predecessor’s were lush and voluptuous.

Shostakovich composed the work for his own use. He had been a very accomplished pianist as a student, even playing the Hammerklavier Sonata, perhaps the ultimate test for any pianist, on his graduation recital. Once he’d made the choice to dedicate himself to composition, piano playing became an essentially private activity for him. Throughout most of his life, until motor neuron disease left him unable to play, he continued to read chamber music with friends and to play and study at home. However, in his early career, as his reputation was expanding rapidly, he began to get requests to appear as a performer, so in 1933, he set to work on his first piano concerto, which he later premiered with the Leningrad Philharmonic and Yevgeny Mravinksy.

In the 1920’s Shostakovich’s piano skills had enabled him to feed his family by playing for silent movies. The experience obviously shaped this piece, which is full of music that sounds like it was ripped from a Charlie Chaplin film.

Throughout the work, the piano writing is extremely sparse- much closer to Mozart than Rachmaninoff, rarely going beyond two parts at once. It intentionally never even approaches the orchestral fullness of earlier Russian composers. The orchestration is also minimal- only strings and solo trumpet, who helps highlight the comedic content of the work. Shostakovich wrote the trumpet part with the principal trumpet player of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Alexander Schmidt, in mind.

Even in this early work, one can detect the unlikely influence of Mahler in the way Shostakovich constantly juxtaposes humor and grotesquerie on the one hand with the deepest tragedy and vulnerability on the other. The second movement, a Lento, is one of his saddest and most heart-wrenching creations, and yet the piece ends with a musical joke that surely would have drawn a smile from the ultimate musical humorist, Haydn.

Kenneth Woods

The Lancashire Chamber Orchestra performs Shostakovich’s First Piano Concerto on Saturday, June 16 at Altrincham Grammar School for Girls with pianist Ivan Hovoroun and trumpet soloist John Bush.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

The Lancashire Chamber Orchestra will perform Mahler’s arrangement of Beethoven’s Quartet in F minor “Serioso” this Saturday, March 17 at Christ Church in Lancaster. More concert information here. 

 Beethoven (arr. Mahler)- String Quartet in F minor, op. 95 “Serioso”

We are taught to think of Beethoven as having three basic styles that he went through in his career- the early style of the op. 18 quartets, the early piano sonatas and the 1^st and 2^nd symphonies, then the great middle style typified by the 3^rd and 5^th symphonies as well as the op 59 quartets, the Violin Concerto and the 4^th and 5^th piano concerti, and finally that late style as heard in the op 110 and 111 piano sonatas, the 9^th Symphony and the late quartets.

In doing so, listeners might easily overlook a small, but vitally important and fascinating, period of Beethoven’s career that took place during the difficult years of transition between the middle and late periods of his life. It is fascinating to look through the catalogue of Beethoven’s middle period and to see where the most astonishing masterpieces must have been sitting on his desk at the same time. The Fourth, Fifth and Sixth symphonies and the Violin Concerto, for instance, were all written at virtually the same time.

However, after this flowering, Beethoven faced an extended personal and professional crisis, and during this nearly-decade-long struggle, he wrote very little. What he did write, however, remains fascinating. Perhaps the greatest typical feature of the middle period, particularly works like the Violin Concerto, was Beethoven’s tendency to stretch forms to their absolute limit. The first movement of the Violin Concerto is 30 minutes long, nearly twice the length of the F minor String Quartet performed this evening.

In the works of this transitional period, Beethoven not only abandons extended structures, he abandons long musical gestures. Phrase lengths tend to be shortened, transitions, when there are any, are abrupt. It is as if he has removed all the padding and ornamentation from the music and left only what he felt was most essential. This “Serioso” quartet and the last two cello sonatas, which are typical of this period, are among his most direct and intense works- intense even by Beethovenian standards. It is music from a genius in the midst of an intense personal and artistic crisis.

The first movement is a brusque Allegro which contrasts a violent first theme which lasts only a few seconds with a gently lamenting chorale theme, which likewise only lasts a few bars. The movement is dramatic and explosive in a character reminiscent of the first movement of the 5^th Symphony, but all the drama is over in only four minutes- less than the length of the introductions to the 4^th or 5^th piano concerti or the Violin Concerto.

The second movement, marked Allegretto, takes the place of a slow movement, and is one of Beethoven’s most perfect creations. A simple march theme in the cellos sets up a soulful melody in the first violins, followed by a haunting fugue. These three ideas are developed with exquisite completeness in just a few short minutes.

The third movement functions like a scherzo, but Beethoven is not joking around- his tempo marking is “Allegro assai vivace ma serioso.” The theme of the main section is one of his most rhythmically complex creations, the trio is a wondrous chorale accompanied by a gentle perpetual motion in the first violin.

The finale begins with the only really slow music in the piece- seven bars of the most chromatic and despairing music imaginable. The main part of the finale that follows is in a rather sad and lyrical character- the darkness of this quartet seems boundless at times. However, the coda is one of Beethoven’s most startling turns. For the first time in the work, he turns to F major, and music that is almost frivolous in nature. The contrast is so great and the change so sudden and incomprehensible that one cannot help but feel there is a sort of bitterness in the laughter of this ending, as though Beethoven is telling us that life is a bit of a joke.

This piece was one of three string quartets that Mahler arranged for string orchestra during his early years at the Vienna Philharmonic (the others were Beethoven’s op 131, which is lost, and Schubert’s Death and the Maiden). Of the three, this is the only one to have been performed by Mahler, although the premiere was a near fiasco, with hecklers booing loudly throughout and condemning Mahler for tampering with the music of Beethoven. In fact, Mahler made the arrangement with great restraint, adding a bass part only in a few sections (the author has actually expanded the bass part considerably for this performance) and he changed none of Beethoven’s music.

Notes by Kenneth Woods

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods

It’s probably no coincidence that the two most popular composers of the 20^th Century, Shostakovich and Mahler, are also the two whose autobiographies are most intimately associated with their work. However, although their musical work may have been shaped in part by the external circumstances of their lives, it is also important to remember that both of them wrote a great deal of music for reasons that transcended the events and influences of their day-to-day existence.

The biographical story of Das Lied von der Erde, or The Song of the Earth is well known. We are told that Mahler wrote the piece in response to the news that he had a fatal heart condition, and that the final song in the cycle “Der Abschied,” or “The Farewell,”was, in effect, his farewell to life itself.At the beginning of 1907, Mahler was probably the most famous and successful musician in the world. He had been the music director of the Vienna Court Opera for 10 years, a record which still stands 100 years later, and he finally become well-known as one of the great composers of his time. However, the never-ending anti-Semitic attacks in the press and within the opera house that he had always dealt with drove him from the job in May of that year. In June he and his family went to their summer retreat Maiernigg, but within days of their arrival his oldest daughter, Maria, had contracted scarlet fever. Mahler was devastated by her death. During the last stages of her illness a doctor examined Mahler himself and found that he had a heart-valve problem that, in those days, was invariably fatal. Throughout most of his adult life, Mahler had used the summers to walk in the mountains and compose, and for him the two activities were inextricably intertwined. He often said that he did all of his composing while hiking, and that the time at his desk was the purely clerical and technical work of writing down what he’d heard in nature. Under doctor’s orders to avoid exertion of any kind, and in shock at the loss of his daughter, his creative output was completely stalled.In October of 1907, the poet Hans Bethge published The Chinese Flute, the collection of free translations of ancient Chinese poems that Mahler used as the basis for Das Lied von der Erde. The working year of 1907-8 saw Mahler going to New York to start a new professional life. When he returned to Europe for the summer of 1908, he was faced with a mixture of familiarity and strangeness. The long walks, which had been so central to his life for so long, were now strictly forbidden, and so he feared he would be unable to compose, but as the summer went on, he found his muse returning. By late July, the individual songs had begun to come to him, starting with the second “The Lonely One in Autumn.” Within the amazing period of six weeks, he’d completed all six songs, gradually moving from the idea of a song cycle into the new world of a song symphony.

c. 2007 Kenneth Woods. 

As promised, I would like to try to backtrack to the time this film was shot and just throw in a bit of a performers perspective on the first song of the cycle.

It’s quite common for non-musicians to say things along the lines of “you must feel so lucky to get to do something you love… to get to perform music you love.” Of course, they’re right, but as I get older I find that the best thing about being a performer is not getting to perform, but getting to experience music in so many different ways. I suppose I would have to say that the conductor is extremely lucky in this respect- we can here the music in our head, work on it one line at a time, rehearse just this bit or that bit.

I wrote several months back something to the effect that Mahler, being a great conductor, had all but conductor-proofed his scores. I’ve also written about score marking, but Mahler basically marks your scores for your- he’s always calling things to your attention and giving very specific guidance about how things should be played.
The flip side of this is that he has conceived his music as conducted works, something Mozart and even Beethoven didn’t do. Mozart never expected his symphonies to be conducted in the sense we understand the word today, and Beethoven would have seen the roll of a conductor as purely a facilitator. Mahler, conductor that he was, write music where conducting is really a part of the music. This is maybe most obvious in things like the offstage music from Mahler 2, where alternating and overlapping meters, keys and sound stages can only be managed with a very specific conducting technique.

However, when we first read through this first song with the orchestra alone, I was amazed just how conductor-y it felt. Mitch rightly pointed out that this song in particular is largely an exercise in binary opposition- major versus minor, oboe versus horn, string versus wind. Considering this cycle was composed during the period of his career when he was writing some of his most contrapuntally intricate music, the starkness of this movement’s texture is striking.

The spare quality of the music means that every note, every color, every inflection is heard, and, interestingly, can be controlled and shaped in the moment. Mahler’s purely musical achievement in this movement is that it creates such a sense of empowerment for each musician involved. Right away in those first few bars everyone can here how the tension in the two overlapping lines and the intense separation of color between the solo horn and solo oboe mean that everything one of them does instantly effects how the other must respond. It’s true chamber music, except that somehow the conductor gets to participate in the collaboration instead of dictating from on high.

Finally, Mitch also pointed out how the text and the music are often in conflict- hopeful text set in despairing music an despairing text set more hopefully. Of course, part of what Mahler is getting at is the inner conflict of the poet who is constantly shifting back and forth between speaking to the lost child and speaking to himself. Throughout the whole song cycle, Mahler maintains this tension, as if the parent can only console himself through consoling the child. These songs are not about loss- the loss is already a fact when the first note is played. They are about coming to terms with lost, even about healing from loss, and by the end of the cycle we’ll see where Mahler feels that consolation can be found.

Again, you can see the song in WMV format here and in QuickTime here. For those of you who’ve been caught up in some of the annoying technical difficulties here over the last 36 hours, I apologize. Hopefully this will work more smoothly from now on.

This series continues with the second song, “Nun seh’ ich wohl…” here.

If you’re enjoying this series, you may want to visit my series on the Second Symphony, which begins here.

<

I’d like to start this voyage into Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder first with an extended excerpt from Mitch Friedfeld’s essay, followed by the video of the first song. Then, in the next post, I’ll share some of my reactions to the piece as a performer. The three main sources Mitch is referring to throughout his writing on the piece are Henry-Louis de la Grange’s extensive biography of Mahler, Peter Russell’s Light in Battle with Darkness: Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, and Donald Mitchell’s essay from volume three of his study of Mahler
.
The poem (by Friedrich Ruckert) “Now will the sun rise as brightly as if no misfortune had befallen in the night! The misfortune fell on me alone The sun, it shines on everythingYou must not enfold the night inside you You must flood it in eternal light A little lamp light went out in my tent Hail to the joyous light of the world”

“These five songs form a complete and indivisible whole, and for this reason their continuity must be preserved (by preventing interruptions, such as for applause at the end of each song).” Mahler, on the first page of the score.

From Mitch- This “indivisible whole” starts with “Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n”: “Now the sun is about to rise as brightly [as if no misfortune had happened in the night].”

Something that’s hard to avoid is the fact that this poem, very simply structured as four rhyming couplets, conveys the contradictory feelings of grief and consolation in every verse: 1. Sun rising, tragedy at night. 2. Misfortune happened to me alone, the sun shines for all alike. 3. Don’t enfold the night within you, drown it in eternal light. 4. A lamp went out in my tent, hail to the gladdening light of the world.

This is the perfect poem with which to start the Kindertotenlieder. It captures the grief-stricken parent bludgeoned back and forth between two emotions. To convey this, GM uses what Mitchell calls “alternate orchestras” to generate opposite sonorities. But Mahler does not woodenly use one sonority for one feeling; he varies the association so as to impart the maximum variation in a poem that conveys a psychological listlessness. From the first passage, solo horn and solo oboe in counterpoint, you know you have entered a somber sound world. The singer enters and the other instruments drop out, leaving the anguished parent in mournful duet with a horn, his voice descending in diminished fifths. He’s singing about a sunrise, but in a descending line. But when he sings about last night’s tragedy, his voice takes an upward line – “rising in semitones, as if with great effort,” in Russell’s memorable phrase – and is joined by consoling strings and harp.

That’s the story of this song: back and forth between grief and consolation, the numb parent propelled by Mahler’s mastery. On the last words of this phrase, Mahler uses a rhythmic figure that is repeated at the end of two more strophes and which also features in Mahler 5th, first movement (a funeral march, I hardly need add). This is followed by a plaintive horn phrase, after which the music collapses back onto the tonic with the singer, and the death knell is heard – played by a glockenspiel. Who else but Mahler could portray a death knell with a glockenspiel?

In fact, the glockenspiel was in Mahler’s mind all the time. An early draft of Nun will had only one instrument noted here: the glockenspiel. And while I can’t immediately put my hands on a source for this, I am almost sure that Mahler marked the same passage as “death knell.” But it gets even worse. While Constantin Floros notes that GM used the glockenspiel as a symbol of eternity, Mitchell suggests that Mahler used it to signify the little bell often found above an infant’s crib. I can’t listen to Nun will without thinking of that. The glockenspiel is perhaps the most symbolic instrument in the Kindertotenlieder, as in Kindertotenlieder 5 it signals unequivocally the triumph of light over darkness (Russell).

Other significant, not to be missed points: “Everything else in this lied is acutely felt but contained grief, with a deliberately monochromatic sound, and the voice always in the middle register, as if the afflicted father lacked the strength to raise his voice” (Henry-Louis de La Grange). The third of the four strophes is marked to be taken slightly faster than the first two, but strophe four is back to “tempo primo.”

The feeling Mahler is conveying here is of a parent who is trying to rouse himself, but can’t. Henry-Louis de La Grange approvingly backs Russell on the nonspecific nature of the song’s light: It is not a Christian light, nor is it an oriental light. Russell says that because Rückert had ample opportunity to make this light a Christian one, the fact that he didn’t means that he deliberately did not want to be so construed. I’m sure that is why Mahler was attracted to this song in the first place. Still more to ponder about Mahler’s spiritual beliefs.

Where is the climax in this piece? Mitchell believes it is in the long instrumental passage between strophes 3 and 4. It is hard to argue against that; I always picture the parent descending into madness here, and the next strophe is very consoling despite the concluding glockenspiel strokes. And most crucially: Look at the very last line: “Hail to the gladdening light of the world!” Optimistic, right? On paper, maybe, but Mahler has the parent sing a minor third, and the harp fails to resolve to the tonic. And there’s that glockenspiel again. So there is an ambiguity, one that will drive the whole work.”

Now, the first song from Kindertotenlieder, Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n, with baritone Jesus Suaste and the State of Mexico Symphony, conducted by, well, me. You can see it in WindowsMediavideo here or in QuickTime here. You can also download as podcast using your RSS syndication.

You can continue on to the next installement of the series here.

If you’re enjoying this series, you may want to visit my series on the Second Symphony, which begins here.

c. 2006 Kenneth Woods

My colleagues at the Kelvin Ensemble of Glasgow asked me if I would be willing to write program notes for our performance of Dvorak’s Symphony No. 8 next weekend (Saturday, December 2^nd, 7:30 PM, Bute Hall, University of Glasgow). I always like reading notes by the performers, so I was happy to do so.The results follow.

On a personal note, Dvorak 8 was the first score I ever went out and bought and subsequently tried to analyze. We had played the work in my youth orchestra under the guidance of James Smith, a truly great musician and orchestral trainer. I’d always been interested in conducting, but the transformation James had made in the orchestra working on this piece for his first concert was too compelling for me- I had seriously caught the bug.

Only a little more than a year later, it was Dvorak 8 which almost turned me off to conducting and orchestra playing for good, when I played it on my first concert with the Indiana University orchestra program. In spite of the fact that the IU band was the most talented group of musicians I’d ever sat in, the concert was dreadful, the rehearsals awful and the whole experience completely depressing. One got the feeling that the whole school thought of orchestra playing, orchestral music and conducting as a complete joke, an impression that only got stronger during my four years there, although that mindset that has now changed there for the better.

I’m still using my old score of the 8^th, and it is interesting to look at my faded markings, especially in light of my recent essay on score marking. Although I really didn’t know what I was doing and had never had anyone explain it to me, I think I did okay- maybe we take this whole stick waving business too seriously. Seriously, I think the real lesson is in how much about study I was able to learn from having rehearsed the piece under a truly great conductor.

Dvorak’s Eighth Symphony, written over just less than a month in 1889, is a classic example of a piece of music in which a simple and direct exterior hides a very sophisticated and multi-layered interior.

It is a work that is often described as “sunny” as well as “songful,” “warm,” and “optimistic,” and, in many important ways, it is all of those things. However, it is also his most harmonically and structurally ambitious symphonic work, his most modern, and beneath its sunny exterior are moments of great pathos and even grotesquerie.

Dvorak himself said that in this piece he wanted “to write a work different from my other symphonies, with individual ideas worked out in a new manner.” Dvorak’s intentions would have been clear to his contemporaries just from the title alone- Symphony no. 8 in G Major. No major composer since Haydn had published a symphony in G Major- perhaps because it was considered a key more appropriate for folk music and song. Of course, Dvorak’s intent was to write a symphony of folk music and song, so for him G Major was the perfect choice.

The symphony begins with a hint of darkness to come, with a long, lyrical and melancholy melody played by the cellos. His later Cello Concerto was final proof that no composer ever understood the cello better than Dvorak, but in this symphony the cellos carry so much of the melodic weight that they take on the role of something like a narrator or a Greek chorus. At each key moment in the symphony, it is the cellos who tell us where we are. Interestingly, this is a role the cellos would reprise in the next G Major symphony by a major composer- Mahler’s Fourth.

These early bars are full of the ambiguity that will haunt the symphony- the title page tells us that it is a symphony in G Major, but this is music in G minor. The tempo marking says “Allegro con brio,” but, written in cut time, this opening tune could be in Andante. Is it a slow introduction? Is the entire symphony to be a voyage from dark to light?
The flute quickly provides some answers, with a simple, triadic melody that is very squarely in G major- the first of many tunes in the symphony that will be notable for their childlike directness. It could be a folk song, especially a children’s song. 

The first movement of this symphony is the most elaborate and complex symphonic movement Dvorak ever wrote, a huge span of musical architecture anchored to the three occurrences of the cello theme from the beginning- a melody that he never significantly develops or modulates. It ends in raucous good spirits and blazing sunshine.

The Adagio is very much a piece of Nachtmusik- the G major sunshine gives way to C minor austerity. Musicologist Michael Steinberg sees in the key and structure of the movement a clear homage to the slow movement of Beethoven’s Eroica, only in this work Dvorak actually begins in the wrong key- E flat Major- before moving to the “real” key of C minor a few bars in. Beethoven does the opposite. At the heart of the movement is a Maggiore episode built around another of the children’s songs that make up so much of the symphony’s soul. Dvorak’s orchestration in this movement is particularly vivid and evocative, and, much more sparse than Dvorak’s earlier slow movements.

The scherzo is in G minor, and begins with a long soulful melody which is built entirely of descending scales set in descending sequences- hardly the stuff of a naïve, upbeat symphony. The second theme is also made entirely of descending lines, only now Dvorak uses a chromatic scale, which only intensifies the sense of darkness in the music- it is a melodic gesture used since Bach to symbolize falling tears. The Trio couldn’t be a more dramatic contrast- this is the most childlike of all the children’s tunes in the symphony. What does it mean that Dvorak brackets it with the tears of the trio?

The finale, which begins with a bracing fanfare in the trumpets, is made up of a series of wild variations on another children’s tune initially stated, you guessed it, by the cellos. The theme’s first eight bars are a summing up of everything in the symphony so far- an ascending triad (the same notes as the flute theme in the first movement) and a descending sequence. After another raucous climax, the original version of the theme returns one last time for another series of variations, again led by the cellos. Now the music has turned deeply inward and profoundly bittersweet. Though staying firmly in major, this is Dvorak at his most heartbreaking- one gets the feeling that Dvorak is facing the prospect of letting go of something very dear to him in this music.

Perhaps there is a more personal reason for the use of all these melodies which so powerfully evoke childhood and naivety. Dvorak himself, only twelve years earlier, had been forced to bury three of his own children within in months of each other. Like Mahler (who’s own G Major symphony was itself a meditation on the passing of a child- surely Dvorak’s symphony was a model for him), Dvorak’s associations with the music of childhood could only be conflicted. However, unlike Mahler, Dvorak was always determined to face the most painful loss with hope, whether in the Stabat Mater, the work in which he most directly faced the death of his children,  the Cello Concerto, in which he faced the death of the love of his life, Josefina,  or here, in the Eight Symphony. Having said goodbye for the last time, the music storms back to life, and ends in the highest possible spirits.

 c. 2006 Kenneth Woods

Mahler’s Second Symphony is in five movements and was completed in 1894, but the first of those was composed and published several years earlier in 1888 (at the same time as the First Symphony) as a tone poem called “Totenfeier” or “Funeral Rites.” It wasn’t until 1893, after he had finished the First Symphony, that he “realized” that “Totenfeier” wasn’t a tone poem, but the first movement of a symphony.

Looked at as a whole the entire symphony represents a journey from tragedy, despair and desolation to rebirth, transfiguration and hope- a journey familiar to Romantic listeners from the works of Beethoven. The 9th Symphony of Beethoven served as a very obvious model for this work, not just in its use of the human voice, but in its emotional arc. The symphony opens with one of the most dramatic gestures in the repertoire: a sort of primal scream in the violins followed by three strong, declamatory statements by the cellos and basses. This highly unstable opening (Mahler actually tells the cellos and basses to play the two elements of their phrase in different tempos) quickly evolves into the first statement of the funeral march theme. Within just a few seconds he has created an atmosphere of high tragedy. You can hear the opening here.

After a massive climax we hear music of mourning in the woodwinds, but soon after, we are transported to a new, more hopeful sound world with a theme that will reappear throughout the symphony. Have a listen. The exposition of the movement ends with a haunting, lyrical theme in the english horn and oboes, which dissolves into a new, rather sinister marching figure in the cellos and basses. Over this rhythmic figure, he layers yet another mournful melody in the woodwinds. Thus he begins the development section.

From this point, the music builds and develops towards what should be a tremendous climax, but turns out to be more of a crisis. Having built to a very intense fff, the music gradually becomes softer and faster, at first one feels that the mood is getting more stable, when, in fact, it is becoming ever more desperate. Finally the music disintegrates to near silence in the fastest tempo of the movement, and, as if in desperation, the entire string section finally interrupts with the cello and bass theme from the beginning. Things are so desperate that instead of alternating between fast and slow tempi, here he tells the players to play everything “schnell” or fast, and in accelerando, or speeding up each gesture.

After such a cataclysm, what next? In a stroke of genius, Mahler has the cellos start almost the same marching figure with which he began the development, only this time a half-step lower in e-flat minor instead of e minor, and this time he tells them to double-dot the rhythm, that is to exaggerate even more the difference between the fast and slow notes. The effect is devastating- if the development began in darkness, we’re now in the abyss. From this ultimate low-point, we build ever more inexorably towards the true climax of the movement. As in the previous build up, Mahler gradually layers one idea on another, creating more and more complex textures, but at the actual climax we have only one, purely rhythmic, idea, played fff in unison by the whole orchestra, which then seems to shatter into pieces as the strings, tuba and bassoons move away from the rhythmic unison in a descending scale. There is a moment of complete suspense as we wonder what could possibly come next, and just as the sound clears, our ears are drawn to the violas, who are playing the same tremolo g natural with which the violins began the piece. Just as we notice this, the cellos, basses now joined by the violins explode yet again with their opening gesture.

So much struggle, so much loss and all for nothing- we’re exactly where we started. So, this first movement is about negation, about defeat. The recapitulation is greatly contracted, and never really sews up the loose ends as it should. Whereas a Beethoven symphony would usually use the recap to clarify and resolve the tensions of the movement, Mahler’s only really allows time for us to absorb the full horror of what has happened. The funeral cortege seems to disappear in the distance, before the movement ends in one last gesture of anguish, another descending scale, like that at the recap.

You can continue on to the 2nd movement here.

c 2006 Kenneth Woods

After the highly-charged, dramatic and ultimately tragic arc of the first movement, it is natural that one would need some time to recover. After all, Mahler waited five years after completing Totenfeier before continuing on to the second movement. As it turns out, Mahler anticipated the audience’s exhaustion and specified that the conductor should wait at least five minutes before continuing on to the second movement. The second movement of the symphony could not be more different from the first. If Beethoven, specifically the Beethoven of the first movement of the 9th Symphony and the slow movement of the 3rd Symphony, was the model for Totenfeier, it is surely Schubert who is the inspiration here.

The second movement begins simply, as an elegant, folksy dance known as a Landler, a dance form Mahler would return to often in his symphonies. How can we accept such a bucolic episode as credible after the high tragedy of the first movement?

As it turns out, Mahler’s vision of the symphony was that after the funeral march, everything that follows is, in the words of Donald Mitchell, seen and heard “through the prism of death.” This second movement is no lazy idle, but a bittersweet look back on a happy moment of a life now lost. This becomes increasingly clear in the episode that follows, in which the music becomes both more elusive and more sarcastic. Beethoven was fond of a form that might be called “double theme and variation” form, that is he presents two quite different themes, and then writes a series of variations alternating one theme followed by the other, each variation in essence heightening the character of its respective theme. The slow movement of his 9th Symphony is clearly his most famous example, and my favorite example is the slow movement from the String Quartet in A Minor, op 132, the “Heiliger Dankgesang” or Hymn of Thanksgiving. This is clearly Mahler’s model, as the movement is built around repetitions of these two themes, each appearance of the first theme becoming sweeter, more charming and more elegant, each repetition of the second theme more menacing.

Listen how in the next variation of the first theme, Mahler adds this extraordinary, heart-melting counter-melody. Now hear how instead of sneaking in gently, this variation of the second theme explodes with menace. Finally, just as the second theme has become ever more threatening, in the final statement of the first theme Mahler begins pizzicato and ppp, to create an atmosphere of utmost elegance and delicacy. The movement ends as serenely and delicately as it possibly could. So, a moment of peace, preserved and idealized through the window of the beyond, what could be next…

You can continue onto the 3rd movement here…

c 2006 Kenneth Woods

There is a strong relationship in Mahler’s 2nd between the first and last movement: in essence the finale resolves the questions posed in the first movement, both musically and spiritually. Likewise the 2nd and 3rd movements of the symphony form a pair. Both are dances, in three, and both are essentially intermezzi or diversions from the larger drama of the symphony. As the last movement answers the negation of the first movement with hope and transformation, the 3rd movement presents something of a mirror image to the 2nd. Where the 2nd began and ended serenely, but traveled in between to progressively darker territories, the 3rd begins and ends in a more macabre sound-world, one that is interrupted by humor and mystery throughout.

This movement is actually based on a song that Mahler wrote only months earlier, “St Anthony’s Sermon to the Fish.” After the serene and quiet ending of the second movement, Mahler begins with a somewhat rude awakening in the timpani. These two notes form a perfect fourth, g-c, an interval which permeates the whole symphony. It is in fact the same two notes which begin the cello funeral march theme at the beginning of the symphony.

The first section ends rather abruptly as the timpani interrupt again rather rudely, again on the perfect fourth of g-c, and this leads us into a new section where the cellos and basses seem to be noodling away on a melody that actually just outlines a c major chord, the perfect fourth from g-c and the major third from c-e. This music doesn’t seem to go much of anywhere, after a few cycles Mahler, almost half-heartedly, moves to F major, still repeating the same theme.

Finally, as if he’s lost patience altogether, the brass interrupt loudly and abruptly, shifting the key all at once to D major. How do they do it? With a perfect fourth, of course, this time from a-d. Other episodes follow, including a very beautiful melody in the trumpet. Of all these scenes, surely the most dramatic is when the brass fanfare theme is interrupted by what must be the shocking harmony in the piece, b-flat minor over a c natural, a crisis that is only diffused when the timpani again interrupts with its opening perfect fourth. What can this music mean? As it turns out, we’ll learn the answer in the last movement.

In fact this movement is full of these questions. I’ve largely avoided talking about things like keys and intervals before this movement since I know they can be a stumbling block for people who are uncomfortable with musical terminology. Just remember, these are only tools for naming and describing musical ideas. At this point in the piece, some of these musical ideas have become some common and important that it’s helpful to have names for them. The perfect fourth, for instance, has been everywhere throughout the piece. By now, we’re starting to notice it- what does it mean? Why is he bringing it back over and over? We’ve seen a lot of certain keys, especially C minor, the home key of the symphony, and C major, its parallel major, but other keys we’d expect to see, like its relative major, E-flat, have hardly appeared. Why? You’d be right to feel a little disoriented and confused by the end of this movement.

In fact, disorientation was exactly what Mahler was after here. He explained the episodic and surreal nature of this movement to his friend Natalie Bauer-Lechner thus- “You must imagine that to one who has lost his identity and true happiness, the world looks like this- distorted and crazy, as if reflected in a concave mirror. The Scherzo ends with the appalling shriek of this tortured soul.”

You can continue on to the fourth movement, Urlicht, here.

c 2006 Kenneth Woods

The third movement of this symphony ended with nothing less than “the appalling shriek of this tortured soul.” How magical then is the moment that follows. Mahler instructs us that the third, fourth and fifth movements should be played without any break, and so from the grotesque low c in the horns and contra-bassoon that ends the third movement we are instantly transported to a new world. A single female voice sings the simplest of gestures, the first three notes of a D-flat major scale*, saying- “Oh little red rose!” Forty-five minutes into this great work we are now hearing the human voice for the first time, and what an astonishing moment. So different from the way Beethoven introduced the voice into his Ninth. After the opening chorale arrives in the most serene D-flat major cadence, the music shifts abruptly to the parallel minor (remember all those shifts from C minor to its parallel major? is there some meaning to the fact that he now reverses the process a semi-tone higher?). The text here is breathtaking in its directness “Humanity lies in greatest need! Humanity lies in greatest pain!” Note that it is not merely our hero, or merely sinners or any other subgroup who suffer- suffering is universal. The suffering our protagonist endured in the first movement is universal. The second and final stanza of the poem reads:

“I came upon a broad pathway

“An angel came upon me and wanted to send me away. But no, I would not be sent away!

“I am from God and will return to God. The loving good will give me a little light,

“will light me to the eternal, blissful life!”

This poem comes from a collection of German folk poetry called “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” or “The Boy’s Magic Horn.” Author Michael Steinberg makes the point that Mahler creates a mood of “hymn-like simplicity” achieved by “a metrical flexibility so vigilant of prosody and so complex that the opening section of thirty-five bars has twenty-one changes of meter.” It may seem unlikely that a composer would turn to folk poems for statements of philosophy and belief, but this poem is particularly Mahlerian. This contrast of the universal (”Humanity lies in greatest need!”) and the personal (”I am from God and will return to God!”) is one of Mahler’s central philosophical ideas. There is never a “they” in Mahler’s music in the sense of an enemy, and one never belongs to a club any smaller than humanity.**

* Much like the perfect fourth we talked about, this three note scale motive has actually permeated the symphony. The second theme of the first movement actually starts with the perfect fourth, followed by the three note motive, and the brass theme in the scherzo has exactly the same melodic content!
You can continue onward to the finale of M2 here.

**Except, of course, the family, who are his subject in Kindertotenlieder

c 2006 Kenneth Woods

As the fourth movement resolves into a vision of heavenly rest one could easily believe that our journey is at its end, but of course this short movement (only four minutes) could hardly balance out and resolve all the issues and challenges the symphony had posed up to this point. No, we must see the fourth movement for what it is, the promise and the vision of salvation, but not the manifestation of it.

The fourth movement ends serenely and sublimely in D-flat major (remember that key!), and fades into silence. Once again, though, Mahler tells the conductor to go immediately ahead to the finale, and the silence is shattered in the utmost violence. Of course, we’ve heard this music before, the agonized dissonance of B-flat minor over c natural, in the crisis point of the third movement. This opening gesture quickly elides into a more lyrical section in C major- yes we’re back in a major key again, but we’ve somehow lost that heavenly vision embodied in D-flat, we’ve fallen back to earth. Though c is the tonic note of the symphony, this turns out not to be a return to stability but the beginning of a new voyage, and this C major turns out to have been a preparation for the F minor section that follows (note that the key is a perfect fourth away, that same interval turns out to be important in the structure of the piece as it is in the melodic make up of it).

The fourth movement introduced one new sound, that of the human voice. It seems likely that after the introduction, as we arrive in this new key, that the voice would return. Instead, Mahler gives us something even more novel, an effect that Beethoven never used in the 9th. We hear, far in the distance, the sound of several horns playing in unison. It’s a sort of foreboding, desolate call. This first appearance of the offstage band lasts only four bars, then the orchestra takes over with music that seems to be searching for a direction, there is a quality of anticipation and uncertainty in this passage. Gradually, one by one, are introduced to a number of themes, a chorale theme first heard in the woodwinds, a more hopeful melody in the horns, and a very anguished one in the english horn. As it turns out, Mahler is doing exactly the opposite of what Beethoven did at the beginning of the finale of his 9th Symphony. Beethoven used the opening of his ninth to sum up all that had happened before in the piece, Mahler uses the opening of his second to show us all that is to come. Throughout, there is a sense of suspense, which of these themes will ultimately launch us on the journey to come? Once each theme has been introduced, we are confident that the central journey is ready to begin. The trombones restate the chorale theme, now it could really be Bach we’re hearing, but then again, the hopeful horn theme returns, even more grandly, and finally in C major, there is a great breakthrough. Where before the horn theme had dissolved from hope to despair, the trombones return with the chorale theme, but now in C major and with the melody transformed. Instead of falling back to the main not after one step, the melody rises onward. It is the second theme of the first movement, the great brass theme of the third and the opening of fourth movement. It is the first transformative moment in the symphony- we now know that we will never return to the world of Totenfeier.

Mahler himself, in a letter to his friend (the soprano Natalie Bauer-Lechner again) provided what is surely the definitive description of the next section. The great C major arrival finally subsides into the despairing horn theme from before, the trombones once again fall back after only one note up the scale, as C major turns out only to have been a dominant of F minor yet again. Mahler tells us- “It is the day of the Last Judgment… The earth trembles. Just listen to the drum-roll, and your hair will stand on end! The Last Trump sounds; the graves spring open, and all creation comes writhing out of the bowels of the earth, with wailing and gnashing of teeth. Now they all come marching along in a mighty procession: beggars and rich men, common folk and kings, the Church Militant, the Popes. All give vent to the same terror, the same lamentations and paroxysms; for none is just in the sight of God. Breaking again and again- as if from another world- the Last Trump sounds from the Beyond. “At last, after everyone has shouted and screamed in indescribable confusion, nothing is heard but the long drawn-out call of the Bird of Death above the last grave- finally that, too, fades away. There now follows what nothing of what has been expected: no Last Judgment, no souls saved and none damned; no just man, no evil-doer, no judge! Everything has ceased to be. And softly, simply there begins: “Aufersteh’n, ja aufersteh’n…” (”Rise again, yes, you will rise again”) “the words themselves are sufficient commentary.”

You’re almost there- click here to reach the end of the symphony.

c 2006 Kenneth Woods

The great scene of the end of the world plays out as a march, mostly in F minor. Four flats in the key signature, how far from the purity of the C major peroration that preceded it. The final scream Mahler describes is a masterstroke- we’ve been expecting him to return to C major throughout the Last Judgment, but instead we land with the bass instruments all playing the note c-sharp fff, while the upper instruments all unleash the “scream of indescribable confusion” in B minor. It’s the same shattering, dissonant harmony from the beginning of the movement, the one we first heard in the scherzo, now transposed up a semi-tone. Its meaning is now clear, its very ambiguity now shows its purpose- it is a depiction  of the confusion and chaos at the end of the world.

In an instant, just as in the beginning the bass note becomes the tonic, except that instead of c becoming C major, c-sharp now becomes D-flat major, the key of the fourth movement, the key of our earlier vision of heaven. We’ve suddenly moved from the four flats of F minor to the five of D-flat major. As in the exposition, this arrival proves ephemeral. Just as before, the offstage horns return, changing our point of arrival into a further point of departure. Their purpose is now shown to us- they are the Last Trump.  As the bird of death fades into silence, our promise of heaven is destroyed.

The choral entry that follows could not be more magical. The D-flat/C-sharp tonality finally reveals its purpose- it is not our destination, it is the dominant of G-flat major, six flats, the furthest possible key from C, a tri-tone away. The choir enters with us having traveled as far from where we began as we possibly could.

“Rise again, you will rise again,”

Mahler has already told us that it is “beggars and rich men, common folk and kings, the Church Militant, the Popes” these words are spoken to, our lost protagonist of Totenfeier has become one with the millions.

From here on, the magical moments come at an astonishing rate. Out of the opening chorale floats the sound of a new soloist, not the contralto of Urlicht, but a soprano who joins the choir for the words

“Eternal life will be granted to you
by him who calls you to him.”

There is another instrumental interlude, based on the same trombone peroration we heard in C major so long ago, but now in G flat, and pp instead of ff. Where before the horns ended the celebratory mood with a cry of anguish, Mahler uses the same music, now staying in major, to launch us into the even more hopeful next stanza.

“You are sown to bloom again.”

The contralto finally returns, singing the anguished music first heard in the woodwinds so long ago. We’re now being reunited with each of those themes from the beginning, as we meet each one, its meaning becomes clear. This section is in B flat minor, five flats, so closer to home yet darker. She sings

“O believe, my heart, only believe:
Nothing is lost to you!
All that you yearned for is yours, yes yours;
Yours, all that you loved and fought for.
O Believe: you were not born in vain
You did not live or suffer in vain.”

The choir, now only the men, now return, still in five flats, singing the chorale theme. 

“All that is created must die
All that has died must rise again.
Fear no more.
Prepare yourself! Prepare yourself to live!”

Now the two soloists sing together, in passionate, overlapping exclamations, now in the four flats of A-flat major, the key of the second movement. Again, just one flat closer to home. The basses join in gently with a sort of variation of theme the women just sang. The key signature has changed once more, but we’re not aware of it yet as the harmony is moving quite rapidly. They s