On its most basic level, what most musicians, musicologists and listeners call “interpretation” is, when done right, basically a 3 step process.

1-       Observation. What is there in the score?

2-       Examination. Why is it there?

3-       Application. What do we do with knowledge we’ve gained in the first two steps?

What do you see in the score, why is it there, and what do you do with it?

That’s the life of an honest conductor (or any other performer) right there. At each step of the process, there are observations of a straightforward nature- for instance “these notes have dots and those don’t. ” However, even the simplest observations quickly lead to more complicated questions, and very quickly, you are into tricky questions about notation, performance practice, instrumental styles of different countries and so on.

If simple things lead to big questions,  imagine what happens when one opens a score and observes something really, really big.

Mahler’s 3^rd Symphony opens with something really, really, really big. The very opening of the symphony is one of the great examples ever of what I call a “shout-out.”

A  musical shout-out is a cousin of the quotation,  with subtle but important differences. A quote, or even a reference, works by keeping a musical idea from another, earlier work intact, but often depends on encoding that material into the musical material of the new work in a way that is often not obvious. When Beethoven quotes the St Matthew Passion at the end of the Storm movement of his 6^th Symphony, it doesn’t sound like Bach- it is so integrated into the fabric of the work that it lurks there like a secret message from the composer to be discovered at some later date. Beethoven was not a particularly prolific quoter, but he used quotation with grate panache, ranging from hilarious quotes of folksongs to sombre references to Bach, but you never sense him calling attention to his predecessors.  Shostakovich is the great quoter of the 20^th c.- it’s taken decades for some of those quotes to be detected, they are so cleverly hidden.

On the other hand, a shout-out (I suppose you could call it a reference or an allusion, but it’s less fun to do so) usually changes the original material in some relatively significant way, but tries to make the newly derived material sound as obviously like the original as possible. Where a quote is often something you don’t notice for ages then discover to be identical to something in an earlier work, a shout-out makes you immediately think of the earlier work (assuming you’ve heard it), but the more you look at it, the more you realize that it is different.

Mahler is the king of the shout-out.

In fact, Mahler began his entire symphonic voyage with a shout-out. The opening of his First Symphony is so obviously similar to the opening of Beethoven 4, that you can’t help but think Mahler is somehow directing our attention towards something in the earlier piece. However, Mahler’s beginning is based on a descending sequence of fourths, where Beethoven’s is built in 3rds. Beethoven’s opening is built around a tonic pedal of B flat. Mahler’s is built around a dominant pedal of A (the key of the movement is D major). Both symphonies begin in minor, but are otherwise supremely major-key movements. So, rather than quoting from Beethoven, Mahler points us to him, then seems to leave all sorts of clues and questions for us to ponder- why are the things that are the same, the same, why are the things that are different, different? Why not keep Beethoven’s key- does the difference imply a difference in mood between Beethoven’s B flat major and Mahler’s D?  Why trade a sequence of 3rds for 4ths- if the 3^rd was Beethoven’s favourite interval (go look at your score of the Hammerklavier if you doubt me) what does this tell you about Mahler and the 4^th (some of you already know- the fourth was Mahler’s favourite interval)? Why replace a tonic pedal with a dominant? These are some of the questions you’ve got to deal with when you’re getting ready to conduct the piece.

On the one hand, the differences tell us a lot about how Mahler saw himself, and what he wanted us to know about him. The similarities also tell us both about the mood of the piece but recalling an earlier model (both movements begin mysteriously, but become very joyous, full of sunshine and the sounds of nature), but, perhaps more importantly, about how Mahler saw himself historically- connected to Beethoven through craft and history, but still his own man.

The opening of the 3^rd Symphony is also a shout-out. Have a listen, then go back and check out this famous bit of the Finale of Brahms 1. The similarity is so obvious that virtually everyone who knows the Brahms spots it and many find it quite baffling, even off-putting. I’ve never found a totally convincing explanation in print of why it is there or what it means.

But, I’ve observed it. We’ve all observed it.

Perhaps before I can answer the “why” question, I need to do some more observing. We’ve spotted a shout-out.  Both themes begin with a rising fourth (remember those fourths in the 1^st symphony?). They share the exact same rhythm for the first four bars. On the other hand, Mahler’s theme is in D minor, Brahms’s is in C major. Mahler’s theme first appears at the beginning of his  symphony, Brahms’ is the main theme of the Finale of his, and follows a long introduction, in which the tune is intimated in a fragmentary way in minor long before we hear it in its perfected form. Brahms builds a question/answer phrase by answering this four bar unit with something with the same shape, while Mahler goes in a completely different direction- his question goes unanswered and instead, collapses into crisis.

And what of this Brahms theme? What do we know about it? Well, it’s also a shout out- a shout out to the Ode to Joy from Beethoven 9, something that almost every early critic mentioned when the work was unveiled (Brahms famously said that any idiot could spot the similarity). Hmm—Is Mahler is making a shout out to a shout out?

Is there a hidden but important connection to Beethoven 9?

Perhaps there is- the two works are in the same key, beginning in D minor and ending in D major. They’re both on a massive scale- the largest symphonic works of their creators. They both incorporate the human voice.

When Brahms First was premiered, people called it “Beethoven’s 10^th,” and why not- Brahms had long been anointed as Beethoven’s successor, and his epic struggle to finish his 1^st was largely caused by his apprehension at the giant staring over his shoulder. His shout-out to Beethoven 9 seemed to be his way of saying- “okay, I’m ready to take this legacy on. Here’s where I am going from Beethoven.” Brahms 1st Symphony is his most Beethovenian work, but it is very different to Beethoven 9 in important and obvious ways- there is no use of the voice, it uses a more classical orchestra (no extra percussion allowed), there is no real vernacular music like Beethoven’s crazy janizary march in his Finale (although there is the famous alphorn theme). While Brahms’ way of working with musical ideas was progressive and even radical, his approach to the genre of the symphony was much more conservative than Beethoven’s.  In this sense, he’s both paying homage to Beethoven and continuing in that line, while at the same time, reacting against Beethoven in a creative and interesting, even somewhat critical, way.

What is fascinating, bold and wonderful about Mahler’s shout-out to Brahms, is that it is so obvious, even audacious and yet comes at the opening of the most  un-Brahmsian movement he ever wrote. Where Brahms is concise, Mahler is gargantuan- this movement is, by itself, about as long as Brahms’ Third or Fourth Symphonies. While Brahms seems to be obsessed with limiting his material, Mahler is working with his richest and most bizarre assortment of themes and motives. While Brahms’ language is relatively pure (only once in a blue moon would he treat himself to a Hungarian finale), Mahler’s includes all manner of marches, dirges, animal noises, sound effects and more.

I think the connection back to Beethoven is really key here- Mahler almost seems to be saying that he is looking at the same question Brahms had to answer, namely, where does the symphony go after Beethoven? and deciding to go in a different direction. Brahms kept Beethoven’s sense of rigor and drama, but ditched the more theatrical and radical elements of Beethoven’s final symphonic thoughts. That was his response to and his critique of Beethoven. Mahler seemed to be saying that he’s ready to follow some of those paths Beethoven started down and Brahms ignored or rejected.

He is responding to Beethoven, and critiquing Brahms. In doing so, he is almost prepared to destroy the Brahmsian symphony. How can one go back to the structural logic of a Brahms symphony after experiencing something as wild as the first movement of Mahler 3?

Mahler starts with this obvious shout-out, but immediately starts to demolish and undermine the material, as if to say “much as I love Brahms, here’s where we should have gone after Beethoven……and by the way, I’m going to write in the same key as LvB’s 9^th just to underline my point.”

And, on a programmatic level, this opening takes Brahms’ noble theme, which we associate with the learned, rational and classical world of enlightened society, and throws it to the wolves. We are soon far from the safety of civilized society, and, instead, at the mercy of mother nature, Pan and other wild and unpredictable forces.

……..

This is just my take, evolved over a few years of trying to make sense of this opening and feeling like I must have an answer to the “why” question that makes sense of this detail and its place in the work. I may well be wrong, but I feel more surefooted starting the piece with this reasoning in my mind.

What is wonderful about this epic symphony is that it also ends with another shout out. Listen to the opening of Mahler’s Finale , then listen to the slow movement of Beethoven’s very last complete work, his String Quartet in F Major , op 135. The similarity is as obvious as the similarity of the opening of the work to the Brahms. The differences are just as telling- Mahler’s is in D major, the destination key of the symphony, while Beethoven’s is in D flat as part of a quartet in F major, a more transcendent and fertile setting than Mahler’s, but Mahler must have known that.

As with the shout-out to Brahms, this shout-out runs parallel to the original for the first half of the phrase, but just as Mahler departs from Brahms at the mid-point or “question mark” of the phrase, where Brahms repeats the idea as an answer, he goes on his own way here, while Beethoven again offer’s us an answer.

But perhaps this shout-out is also telling us more about Mahler’s engagement with earlier music. In the 1^st movement he is declaring his intention to take up Beethoven’s radical paths of scale and genre-busting experimentation. Beethoven 9 gives us a choir, Mahler 3 gives us a children’s choir. Beethoven 9 gives us a Turkish march, Mahler 3 gives us a wild march of all of Pan’s minions. Yet, in the Finale, Mahler is nodding towards another side of late Beethoven.

Perhaps, Mahler might be saying, as Beethoven did earlier, that  grandiosity may have its place, but it also has its limits. In his late quartets, Beethoven seems to be reaching ever farther towards a place of spirituality that balances acceptance of and disengagement from worldly pain. If the 9^th Symphony was Beethoven’s most gargantuan and theatrical work, the quartets gradually become more and more inward looking, finding more powerful truths on a smaller scale. By the time of the last quartet, he seems to be saying that true solace is to be found in humour and in a re-embrace of childlike wonder and simplicity. Op. 135 begins with breezy innocence and dry wit and ends with a wonderful joke- “Must it be?” wrote Beethoven over the sombre introduction of his last Finale.

“It must be!” He answers over the Allegro. The answer, for Beethoven, is lightness.

Remember then that Mahler conceived his 3^rd and 4^th symphonies as essentially one piece- the 3^rd was originally going to end with the simple, sweet and gentle lied that ends the 4^th (and is full of references to it). The answer Mahler is heading towards is also lightness, but we’ve still got a long way to go to reach it.

Post script-

Friends, teachers and colleagues are featured in today’s audio excerpts. The Beethoven 9 excerpt comes, appropriately enough, from my dear friend and teacher Gerhard Samuel’s recording of Mahler’s re-touching of Beethoven 9. The recording of the Beethoven op135 String Quartet is me (cello) and my friends in the Masala String Quartet- Kio Seiler and Eva Richey, violins, Sheridan Kamberger , viola. Beethoven 4 is the recording of my former teacher, David Zinman, whose Beethoven parts “look like a ——- Mahler Symphony.” Mahler 1 is from my good friend, James Judd and the Florida Philharmonic- that wonderful orchestra deserved better. The Mahler 3 finale is Ben Zander, who helped me get the Rose City International Conductor’s Workshop started. The Brahms 1 excerpt  is my friend, Jonathan Pasternak, from his debut disc with the LSO, coming from Naxos in a few months. Together, these form another kind of shout-out.