Music Director
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Symphony No. 2 in c minor, (Resurrection)
Gustav Mahler was one of the greatest orchestra and opera conductors of his era. He directed the Vienna Opera from 1897-1907. In New York he was conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and of the New York Philharmonic Society from 1909 until 1911. Mahler spent most of his time conducting and used his summer vacations to compose his own works.
His ten symphonies and his songs seem to provide a link between the Austro-German symphonic tradition and the more modern musical ideas of the 20th century. As a conductor, Mahler was dedicated to the works of Beethoven, Brahms, and Wagner. As a composer, he is often compared to Strauss, the German master of symphonic tone poems, who wrote programmatic works similar to Mahler's. But Mahler was also a champion of the more progressive impulses in musical compositions, for example the atonal approach of Arnold Schoenberg.
Mahler's position in music history is complicated because of his music's suppression by the Nazis, and because there were so many different strands of stylistic evolution in music as composers sought solutions to the problem or a tonal system that had been pushed to its limits. The centennial of his birth in i960 saw renewed interest in Mahler's music, spearheaded by American conductor and composer Leonard Bernstein. The originality of Mahler's music also appealed to a generation involved in political and social protest and reform.
Gustav Mahler was a tormented soul in an age which included the birth of psychoanalysis by his compatriot Sigmund Freud. Mahler was subjected to ethnic and religious prejudice from the beginning of his life. He was the son of an Austrian-Jewish tavern keeper in the Bohemian town of Kaliste, an outsider in a Czech population. Because of anti-Semitism, Mahler had to renounce his religion and convert to Catholicism to get a post in Vienna. Eventually he emigrated to the United States.
In addition, Mahler faced family problems as a child. His father was a strong self-made man married to a fragile woman from a more cultured background. He expressed his feelings of inferiority by beating her to the point where she walked with a limp. Mahler inherited his mother's weak heart, which eventually led to his death at fifty. Mahler also endured illness and death among his eleven brothers and sisters, one of whom committed suicide.
Mahler's compositions may be seen as emanating from three distinct style periods, each of which produced a symphonic trilogy. His first three symphonies came out of the first period and are all programmatic, although the actual written programs were eventually discarded. They all dealt with issues of coping with pain, death, and despair. Mahler continued in the tradition of Beethoven's Symphony No. 6 in F Major (Pastoral) and Hector Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. which expanded symphonic form to five movements. The influence of Wagner is expressed in the increased time span of the symphonies. And, as in Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 in d minor (Choral), Mahler adds texts sung by soloists and chorus in his own Symphony No 2 in c minor (Resurrection), using his own song settings of poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, or a setting of his own poetry.
In a letter to his publisher in 1891, Mahler writes of a "Symphonic Poem" called Totenfeier (Funeral Rites), which he may also have been considering for use in a Second Symphony He finished that work in 1888, while completing his First Symphony. He became principal conductor of Hamburg's Municipal Theater in 1891. He played Totenfeier for the famous German conductor Hans von Bülow, whose reaction was disastrous. Von Bülow covered his ears, saying, If that's still music, then I do not understand anything about music! Mahler did not continue work on the Second Symphony for two years after that.
Mahler composed the second, third, and fourth movements of his Symphony No. 2 during the summer of 1893. In the winter of 1894, Mahler attended von Bülow's funeral in Hamburg and also heard Klopstock's poem, Resurrection. He completed the final movement of the symphony at his new summer home on the Attersee during the summer of 1894.
The first complete performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in c minor took place in Berlin on December 13, 1895, conducted by the composer. About this work, Mahler wrote:
I entitled the first movement "Totenfeier,"And if you like to know, It's the hero of my symphony in D Major (the first one) whom I bury here and whose life I catch from a higher point of view in a pure mirror. At the same time there is the big question: Why did you live? Why did you suffer? Is all this only a big terrible fun? We will have to find any answer to these questions if we should continue to live, yet even if we should continue to die. If ever somebody has heard this call in his life, he will have to give answer, and I give that answer in the last movement.
The long first movement of the Resurrection Symphony contains the funeral march theme in c minor and a contrasting, uplifting, major key theme. The movement uses a classic sonata form. The second movement Andante uses the rhythm of an Austrian landler, a folk dance. The third movement is a symphonic adaptation of one of the songs from Mahler's own song cycle Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn). The Fourth Movement is a new setting for solo alto of another Wunderhorn song.
The lengthy fifth movement depicts the day of Resurrection. Ending the work is a setting of 18th century German poet Klopstock's text, which starts with the chorus singing a capella. Mahler's characteristic sound with its heavy use of solo and ensemble woodwinds and brass, soaring harp arpeggios and melodies which so often rise a step higher than expected only to resolve downward, is some of the most unique and emotionally powerful music ever created. It is no wonder that Mahler's works have been performed so frequently in the world's concert halls. Mahler wrote music that expressed inner conflict in an inspiring, universally appealing way.
Beth Bergman Fisher