Symphony No. 9 (Mahler)

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The Symphony No. 9 in D major by the composer Gustav Mahler was written in 1909 and 1910, and was the last symphony that he completed. Having recently learned of the infidelity of his wife Alma, Mahler was suffering a deep personal crisis when he wrote his ninth symphony, considered by many musicologists and critics to be the most intense of his symphonic works.

It should also be noted that Mahler was at this time a champion of the emerging avant-garde movement, most notably Arnold Schoenberg, and that this placed him in a difficult situation as the standard-bearer of the past whilst being acutely aware of the future of music (and in particular, atonality) opening up before him. The first movement of the Ninth in particular depicts this struggle between tonal stability / instability.

A typical performance takes about 80-85 minutes.

Contents

[edit] Movements

The piece is in four movements:

  1. Andante comodo (D major)
  2. Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb (C major)
  3. Rondo-Burleske: Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig (A minor)
  4. Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend (D flat major)

Although the symphony has the traditional number of movements (four) it is unusual in that the first and last are slow rather than fast. As is often the case in Mahler, one of the middle movements is a ländler.

The first movement, whilst embracing a loose sonata form, consists of an extended conflict between the elements of life and death, here corresponding to major / minor, thus providing a continuation of the tonal juxtaposition displayed in earlier works (notably the 6th and 7th symphonies). The work opens with a hesitant, syncopated motif (which some have suggested is a depiction of Mahler's irregular heartbeat,) which is to return at the height of the movement's development as a sudden intrusion of "death in the midst of life", announced by trombones and marked within the score "with the greatest force". Moreover, the main theme also quotes the opening motif of Beethoven's "Les Adieux" (meaning farewell) piano sonata number 26 (opus 81a), which coincidentally marked a turning point in Mahler's early musical career as he performed Les Adieux during his graduation recital in college. This is the descending F-E second which is resolved only at the end of the movement.

The second movement is a dance, a ländler, but it has been distorted to the point that it no longer resembles a dance. It is reminiscent of the second movement of Mahler's Fourth Symphony in the distortion of a traditional dance into a dance of death. For example, Mahler alters traditional chord sequences into near-unrecognizable variations.

The third movement, in the form of a Rondo, displays the final maturation of Mahler's contrapuntal skills. It opens with a dissonant theme in the trumpet which is treated in the form of a double fugue. The addition of Burlesque (a parody with imitations) to the title of the movement refers to the mixture of dissonance with Baroque counterpoint. The autobiographical score is marked "to my brothers in Apollo" and the movement is no doubt intended as a sarcastic and withering response to the critics of his music at the time.

The final movement, marked "very slowly and held back" (zurückhaltend, literally meaning reservedly), opens for strings only. Commentators [1] have noted the similarity of the opening theme in particular to the hymn Abide With Me. But most importantly it is a direct quote from the Rondo-Burleske's middle section, where it was mocked and derided. Here it becomes an elegy. After several impassioned climaxes the movement becomes increasingly fragmented and the coda ends quietly, albeit affirmatively. On the closing pages, Mahler quotes in the first violins from his own Kindertotenlieder: The day is fine on yonder heights; in other words the ultimate destination, beyond life.

Because Mahler died not long after its completion (he did not live to witness its premiere), this ending is sometimes interpreted as being a self-conscious farewell to the world. However, as Mahler was already working on his Symphony No. 10 before his ninth was completed, this is perhaps unlikely. Although he never completed the tenth, Mahler scribbled a farewell to Music and his wife Almschi in its manuscript.

[edit] Instrumentation

It is scored for an orchestra made up of four flutes, piccolo, three oboes, cor anglais, an E flat clarinet, three A/B flat clarinets, a bass clarinet in B flat, three bassoons, contrabassoon doubling as fourth bassoon, four french horns, three trumpets, three trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, side drum, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, three bells, glockenspiel, two harps and strings (violins divided into two groups, violas, cellos and double basses).

[edit] Premiere

The work was premiered on June 26, 1912, at the Vienna Festival by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Bruno Walter. It was first published in the same year by Universal Edition.

[edit] Views on and quotes about the Symphony

The enjoyment of Mahler's Ninth Symphony, prompted the essayist Lewis Thomas to write the title essay in his Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony. Many Mahler interpreters have been drawn to express similar prophetic views about the work:

  • It expresses an extraordinary love of the earth, for Nature — Alban Berg[2]
  • It is music coming from another world, it is coming from eternity. — Herbert von Karajan[3]
  • It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate ... in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything. — Leonard Bernstein[4]
  • I believe it to be not only his last but also his greatest achievement. — Otto Klemperer

Less favourable views include:

  • [The Ninth] contains what may be termed objective, almost dispassionate statements of a beauty which will be perceived only by those who can dispense with visceral warmth and who feel comfortable in a climate of intellectual coldness. — Arnold Schoenberg[5]
  • Someday, some real friends of Mahler's will...take a pruning knife and reduce his works to the length that they would have been if the composer had not stretched them out of shape; and then the great Mahler war will be over...The Ninth Symphony would last about twenty minutes. — Deems Taylor[6]

[edit] References and External links

  1. ^ Mitchell, Donald (2002) The Mahler Companion OUP
  2. ^ Quoted in the liner notes to Mahler: Symphony No. 9, Berliner Philharmoniker/Herbert von Karajan
  3. ^ Quoted in Herbert von Karajan: A life in music by Richard Osborne
  4. ^ The Unanswered Question by Leonard Bernstein
  5. ^ Peter Quantrill, Gramophone, March 2008, Haymarket Magazines
  6. ^ Chord and Discord, February 1932, P.23

[edit] See also

v • d • e
Symphonies by Gustav Mahler