Symphony No. 4
Gustav Mahler
1. Bedächtig, nicht eilen
2. In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast
-break-
3. Ruhevoll, poco adagio
4. Sehr behaglich
About the Composer
Arguably one of the most important figures of European music in the 20th century, Austrian composer and conductor Gustav Mahler left behind a legacy of lush large-scale symphonic works and songs. Mahler was born in Kalischt, Bohemia (modern day Kaliště, Czech Republic). His parents were members of the Habsburg empire’s Jewish petit-bourgeoisie. Mahler spent his early years in Iglau, a small trade town with a flourishing German-speaking Jewish community and a busy musical life built on local Czach folk music, German choral music, and amateur orchestra, a small professional theater, and an opera house. Therefore, Mahler was exposed to music at a young age and began early informal lessons with his school friends and various musicians from the local theater orchestra. Mahler’s father has a small musical library and a piano, on which the young boy rapidly acquired enough expertise to be considered a local Wunderkind by the age of ten.
Mahler’s formal musical training took place in Vienna, where he was a student at the Conservatory beginning in 1875. There he became a prominent member of the student generation–along with his peers Hugo Wolf, Hans Rott, and Anton Krisper–that was inspired by Richard Wagner and Anton Bruckner. Mahler graduated from the Conservatory in 1878 and spent the next year at the University of Vienna where he developed a strong interest in literature and philosophy, both of which would significantly influence his musical works. He developed a particular interest in German philosophy, specifically the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustav Fechner, and Hermann Lotze. Immediately following his time at university, he worked primarily as a piano teacher, while he continued to compose. In 1880 he finished his first substantial composition, the cantata Das klagende Lied, which despite showing clear influences from both Wagner and Bruckner, includes stylistic elements that set his own personal style apart.
During his lifetime, Mahler attained an elite status as a conductor. His conducting career was both powerful and innovative and included positions with many orchestras and opera houses, including the Royal Opera in Budapest and the Stadttheater in Hamburg. From 1897 to 1907 Mahler was the director of the Vienna Hofoper where he set the model of post-Wagnerian idealism for the German musical theater.
As a composer, Mahler bridged the space between the 19th-century Austro-German romantic tradition and early 20th-century modernism, much like Beethoven did between the classical and romantic periods. Much of his music was not well-regarded during his lifetime and often referred to as “eccentric.” It was only during the last decade of his life that his music began to acquire some critical support and popular success, which helped ensure the posthumous survival of his compositional reputation. Like many other composers of Jewish origin, Mahler’s music was banned during the Nazi era in Germany and Austria. However, the centenary of his birth in 1960 inspired a popular rediscovery of his symphonies, particularly in the USA. His music is filled with passion, tension, and a palpable cathartic power that transcends philosophical ideologies beyond words. His output primarily includes song cycles and large-scale symphonic works.
Similarly to Beethoven, Mahler’s compositional life has been divided into three distinct periods by musicologists, including Deryck Cooke. The long first period extends from Das klagende Lied (1880) to about 1901, and includes the first four symphonies, his song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, and various other Wunderhorn songs. The second period was a time of more concentrated composition for Mahler and its end in 1907 is marked by the composer’s departure for New York. It includes the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth symphonies, the Rückert-lieder, the Kindertotenlieder, and the final two Wunderhorn song settings. The late period includes his final elegiac works–Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth Symphony and the incomplete Tenth Symphony–and concludes with his death in 1911. During this final period, Mahler infuses his music with the highly personal experience of facing death, and in each of these last three works bids a loving and somewhat bitter farewell to life. On May 18, 1911 Mahler succumbed to bacterial endocarditis, a few months shy of his 51st birthday.
About the Music
Mahler wrote his first four symphonies, in what has commonly been known as his Wunderhorn period. These early symphonies incorporate themes from songs in which he set texts from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn). The collection of over 700 anonymous German folk texts was collected and published by poets Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano in the first decade of the 1800s. The collection epitomizes 19th-century German romanticism and was dedicated to Goethe. During his lifetime Mahler set over 20 of the Des Knaben Wunderhorn selections to music. According to Bruno Walter, “Everything that moved [Mahler] was there–nature, piety, longing, love, parting, night, the world of spirits, the tale of the mercenaries, the joy of youth, childhood, jokes, quirks of humor all pour out as in his songs.” And in 1905 Mahler himself wrote, “I have devoted myself heart and south to the [Wunderhorn] poetry (which is essentially different from any other kind of literary poetry and might almost be called something more like Nature and Life–the sources of all poetry–than art) in full awareness of its character and tone.”
Mahler completed his Fourth Symphony in 1900, although he did incorporate material from his 1892 setting of the poem “Das Himmlische Leben” (“The Heavenly Life”) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. In contrast to the three symphonies that precedes it, the Fourth is more modestly proportioned and in a way harkens back to the classical symphonic idioms of Beethoven. The Fourth Symphony comprises four movements, the last of which includes text, like many of Mahler’s symphonies. In it Mahler captures pure innocence with sincerity that defines the symphony as a whole.
The first movement opens with a nostalgic character, as Mahler sets an enchanting scene, almost out of a storybook. Despite Mahler’s lush textures, harmonies, and melodic development, he does generally adhere to a Mozartian classical scaffolding. The initial main theme exudes a Viennese grace and echoes the lilt of a waltz. The second theme, introduced by the cellos, is beautifully expressive. The lush development section explores completely new melodic material, as well as fragments of the two already established thematic moments. The movement ends with a joyous return to the galant style of the opening, seemingly out of nowhere.
The second movement is a traditional Mahler scherzo. It features an intricate solo violin part, which Mahler instructs the concertmaster to play, “like a fiddle.” Mahler instructs the concertmaster to tune each of the violin struts up a whole step, which is why you will see many use two instruments to play this symphony. In juxtaposition to the first movement, the tonal world that Mahler evokes is much more macabre, filled with biting staccato markings and eerie chromaticism that lend the movement its sinister personality. The movement is broken up by hypnotic trio sections that evoke a dreamland, and which are quickly overtaken by a return to the devilish scherzo music.
The third movement is perhaps one of the most stunningly breathtaking of Mahler’s early symphonies. It opens with an extended meditation that immediately calms the tensions built up by the second movement. The third movement slowly unfolds and builds upon a first theme played by the low strings. As more instruments in the orchestra begin to layer into the texture, the harmonic language blooms until the entrance of a new, and darker, theme in the oboe. This second theme casts an expressive shadow over the movement. The two expressive poles continue to vacillate throughout a series of variations where Mahler presents a variety of styles, including dances and chorales. Suddenly the orchestra erupts with a brilliant E major chord that Mahler said signifies the opening of Heaven.
In the final movement, a soprano joins the orchestra to sing the Wunderhorn text, “Das Himmlische Leben.” The text speaks of a child’s vision of heaven and Mahler has originally envisioned it to appear as part of his Third Symphony; however, he ultimately decided to save it for the Fourth. At Mahler’s instruction, the soprano is to sing “with child-like, bright expression, and without the slightest suggestion of parody.” The movement is comparatively shorter than the previous three; however, despite its length Mahler is able to create a microcosm of the psychological world that he developed throughout the first three movements.
Mahler wrote the Fourth Symphony for soprano, 4 flutes (2 doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (2nd doubling E-flat clarinet and 3rd doubling bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon), 4 horn, 3 trumpets, timpani, 4 percussion, harp, and a full string section; however, tonight you will hear Iain Farrington’s arrangement for chamber orchestra, which features soprano, 1 flute, 1 oboe, 1 clarinet, 1 bassoon, 1 horn, 1 trumpet, 1 trombone, timpani, 1 percussion, harp and 9 string players.
Note by Christina Dioguardi