Initially, Mahler had intended this work to provide a respite from the intense emotional demands of his first two symphonies. This would be a joyous, comic work. As he jokingly remarked to Natalie Bauer-Lechner, "With it I hope to win applause and money."4So it was that Mahler peered out at the meadow on his first afternoon at Steinbach, and wrote what is now the second movement of the Third Symphony (the lovely, carefree "Blumenstück")"planned and completed without a break."5
It is fearful the way this movement has caused me to grow beyond everything that I have ever composed. I am literally gripped with terror when I see where the path ordained for music leads and that it has become my terrifying office to become the bearer of this work.9Mahler found it appropriate to compare himself to Christ, drinking the cup of sorrow on the Mount of Olivesand as such also realized Wagner's prophecy of the "Poet-Priest who would convey the religious lesson of the transcendence of the will in his art."10
The whole thing is, of course, tainted with my deplorable sense of humor and "often takes the opportunity to submit to my dreary taste for dreary noise." The players frequently "do not pay the least attention to one another, and my entire gloomy and brutal nature is nakedly exposed." It is well known that I cannot do without trivialities. This time, however, all permissible bounds have been passed. "One often feels one got into a pub, or a sty!"11
Walter came down from Berlin to hear what Mahler had so far completed, but "nothing would induce [Mahler] to show . . . or to play a single note of a work that was not completely finished. This was his inevitable rule."12
Walter was not held in suspense for long: Mahler completed the first movement on July 28, 1896, having spent less than six weeks composing it.13
The Third Symphony shows, to a degree exhibited in virtually no other work, even of Mahler's, an extremely varied set of influences. One familiar with such Mahler works as Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, the First Symphony, andespeciallyDes Knaben Wunderhorn, knows of his affinity for folk music and military music. Mahler's rural Bohemian upbringing brought him in contact with these influences early:
That Mahler was able thus to converse really "in the folk idiom" lay in that he spoke the lower-class language himself; it was to him something like a mother tongue. Thus unlike Strauss and most of his contemporary colleagues, he experienced the lower musical culture.14As for the military influence, it, too, pervaded his environment from an early age, but he may have gotten even a little extra exposure: when he was two, his nurse used to leave him in a barracks yard while she "enjoyed the company of a soldier friend."15
What distinguished his music from that of his contemporaries is the multiplicity of languages: that it moved not only in one sphere of language but in several. . . . Inclusion of several and chiefly lower forms of language made Mahler's music inhomogeneous, restlessand seem vulgar.17
The reason for this entire discussion of musical influences on Mahler should become clear with the introduction of what is the Third Symphony's most characteristic and widely discussed aspect: the program. Mahler developed, rearranged, and rejected an astounding number of subtitles for the symphony, for movements, and for sections; Mahler's philosophy and religion as exhibited in various programs for the symphony is the subject of pages and pages of commentary.
As Mahler was first conceiving plans for the symphony, various programs were taking shape. Here is one of the earliest (showing already that the composer would need to call upon diverse sorts of musical expression):
THE HAPPY LIFE
A SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
(Not after Shakespeare. Critics and Shakespeare scholars please note.)
1. What the forest tells me.
2. What the twilight tells me.
3. What love tells me.
4. What the twilight tells me.
5. What the cuckoo tells me.
6. What the child tells me.18
A slightly later one reads:
A SUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM
1. Summer marches in (Fanfare and lively march) (Introduction) (Wind only with concerted double-basses).
2. What the forest tells me (1. Movement).
3. What love tells me (Adagio).
4. What the twilight tells me (Scherzo) (Strings only).
5. What the flowers in the meadow tell me (Minuet).
6. What the cuckoo tells me (Scherzo).
7. What the child tells me.
As Mahler proceeded with the composition of the work, many things changed. He added another subtitle: "My Joyful Science." Berges points out that this is an obvious allusion to Nietzsche's "The Joyful Science." But "Mahler stresses that this is not Nietzsche's but his own 'science.'"19 The Summer Night's Dream subtitle was changed to Summer Morning's Dream, then to Summer Noontime's Dream.20 In July, 1896, Mahler used the title Pan, Symphonic Poems.21 The final set of subtitles for the movements is:
1. Pan awakes; summer marches in
2. What the flowers in the meadow tell me
3. What the animals in the woods tell me
4. What night tells me
5. What the morning bells tell me
6. What love tells me22
Other titles used at various times include "Pan's Procession"23 and "What the rocks and mountains tell me"24 for the first movement; "What the angels tell me" for the fifth; "What God tells me" for the sixth.
Within the first movement section titles include "Reveille," "The Herald,"25 "The Mob," and "Southern Storm."26
These many titles do clearly have certain associations and "motifs" in common. Perhaps the most important is nature. "In his Third Symphony," says Walter of Mahler, "nature itself seems to be transformed into sound."27 Mahler found it necessary to qualify the term. He wrote, "It seems to me that most people, when speaking of 'nature,' have in mind only flowers, birds, the scent of the forest, etc. No one seems to know the great Dionysus, the God Pan."28
Mahler's intentions regarding the nature program are clear. Mahler divided the symphony into two partsthe first movement alone constitutes the First Part; the remaining five movements make up the Second Part. The First Part (the first movement) depicts the awakening of naturethe "emergence of mysterious natural forces into the abounding, even commonplace activity of life."29 Then, in the Second Part, he calls upon nature in search of truth; he begins with the lowest forms and proceeds upwards: the flowers, the animals, man, the angels, and finally love. Walter sees this as part of a larger pattern:
Beginning with the Second [Symphony] metaphysical questions demand answers and solutions. The reply is threefold. . . . [In the Second, the] meaning of the tragedy of human life: the clear reply is its justification by immortality. . . . He turns, in the Third, to nature, and after traversing its cycle, reaches the happy conviction that the answer is in "omnipotent love, all-forming, all-embracing." In the Fourth he assures himself and us through a lofty and cheerful dream of the joys of eternal life, that we are safe.30It is worth noting that if Mahler had included "Das himmlische Leben" in the Third (as originally planned) instead of the Fourth, the ascent through nature's forms would have reached heavenyet ultimately he felt content in regarding love as the loftiest expression of nature.
What he took from Nietzsche's text was determined by the preconceived aims of his symphony. Certainly, man is central to this musical poembut not Superman. For Mahler, everything human is imbedded in nature.By way of example, Blaukopf cites a line from Zarathustra: "Never yet have I found the woman whose children I should want." Yet Mahler's sixth movement of the Third is dedicated to "all-embracing fulfillment." "The Third Symphony," he concludes, "affirms faith in the nature of man. In doing this, the symphony presents a critique of Nietzsche."35
My books were still waiting to be installed. . . . My taste appeared to please him, except for a complete edition of Nietzsche, at which his eyebrows went up in horror. He demanded abruptly that it should be cast then and there into the fire.36McGrath puts Mahler's profession of faith into perspective: "It was in the Third Symphony that Mahler first achieved and fully expressed a clear vision of higher spiritual reality. . . . The central point of the work is more Mahlerian than Nietzschean or Schopenhauerian."37
Returning now to July 28, 1896Mahler had completed the composition of the symphony, but it had yet to become known to the world. The first (besides Mahler) to hear it was Bruno Walter, for whom Mahler played through it on the piano. He recounts the experience:
It was a musical experience of an undreamed-of and shattering kind to hear him play it on the piano. I was literally dumfounded by the power and novelty of the music, and bowled over by the creative ardor and loftiness of the work as he played it to me.40
That this little piece (more of an intermezzo in the whole thing) must create misunderstandings when detached from its connection with the whole work, my most significant and vastest creation, cannot keep me from letting it be performed alone. I have no choice; if I ever want to be heard, I can't be too fussy, and so this season this modest little piece will present me to the public as the "sensuous, perfumed singer of nature." But that this nature hides within itself everything that is frightful, great, and lovely (which is exactly what I wanted to express in the entire work in a sort of evolutionary development)naturally no one understands that.45
A tremendous ovation broke out at the end of the first movement. . . . The enthusiasm rose higher with each movement and at the end the whole audience got up from their seats in a frenzy and surged to the front in a body.Alma's own response:
I was sitting among the audience by myself, as I did not wish to be with my relations. I was in an indescribable state of excitement; I cried and laughed softly to myself and suddenly felt the stirrings of my first child. The hearing of this work finally convinced me of Mahler's greatness, and that night I dedicated to him my love and devotion with tears of joy. I saw what hitherto I had only surmised.54But all was not well. Alma tells that Richard Strauss, who at the end of the first movement came to the stage to applaud emphatically, became "more and more subdued" as the symphony continued and was not to be seen at the end. That evening, at an inn, he passed Mahler's table with little more acknowledgement than a nod. This hurt Mahler very much: it put him in bad spirits "and the public acclamation now seemed of no account."55
The first four symphonies are subject to an outstanding amount for printing costs of 48,134.77 crowns. These works therefore represent liabilities and are thus valueless.60
I. 1. aggressive march
2. dissonant climax
II. 1. panicky cries and paralyzing lamentations
2. retreat to calm
III. 1. lamenting and consoling speeches
2. merry, all-embracing march ending in jubilation72
The half-note motive is associated with the "bimm-bamms."
The musical representation of heaven at the end is noteworthy in its orchestration. The sonorities used in the final measures are the boychoir in unison, four piccolos (four-part chords), two oboes in the high register, two E-flat clarinets in the high register, an F trumpet, two glockenspiels (each with two notes), two harps in the high register (one with harmonics), women's chorus (three- and four-part chords), and viola and cello harmonicsa scoring that produces a sound of utmost lightness and delicacy.
Schnebel and Gartenberg both find notable contrasts within the movement, even given the overall "children's-song" framework. Schnebel says, "There is . . . solemn recitation, . . . merry rhyme, . . . whining declamation. . . . The music is not exclusively bright, but occasionally sharp and threatening. . . . The childish sensitivity is often thrilled through with black tremors."85 Gartenberg notes "an astounding contrast and paradox, as a delightful, almost naive melody, is accompanied by a sophisticated orchestral body."86
Newlin notes the use of parallel fifths and octaves at cadences, which she characterizes as "carefully calculated naïveté of harmony."87
McGrath alludes to a kind of sonata form: "'Oh come and have mercy' introduces the crucial development of the movement."88 Actually, an ABA' (the d-minor section being the B) seems more accurate.
Whatever the form, Cardus says that Mahler found the length, 120 measures, to be "heavenly."89
The fifth movement proceeds to the sixth without a break. When Mahler made the decision to omit "Das himmlische Leben," he was left with this movement, an adagio, to end the work. He defends this action:
In the adagio, . . . everything is resolved in the calm of existence . . . without at the moment knowing why, and contrary to custom, I have ended my Second and my Third with Adagios, the superior rather than inferior forms of music.90The movement is scored for four flutes (one doubling piccolo), four oboes, three B-flat and two E-flat clarinets, three bassoons, eight horns, two F and two B-flat trumpets, four trombones, tuba, percussion, and strings.
The large slow movement is a single, multi-dimensional melody or, otherwise expressed: a single expanding, pulsing stream of sound, which constantly changes, always forms new patterns, and yet always stays the same. . . . The theme of the movement, or better: the structure with which he begins is an Abwandlung [essentially, "inflection": begins the same, then goes its own way] of the motto at the beginning of the symphony.91The melody, incidentally, is a quotation from Beethoven: a)
Cardus finds the harmonies and voice-leading (which lend to the overall key mobility) especially advanced, claiming that the likes of it are not found again until the Adagio of the Tenth Symphony.92
Notwithstanding internal key mobility, the movement begins and ends in D major, a key of "special significance for Mahler."93 More importantly, the symphony begins and ends in D (with a modal change). So unlike most of Mahler's symphonies (even the Second and Fourth), the Third does not exhibit progressive tonality. However, Barford points out that it would have, had Mahler used "Das himmlische Leben" (which ends in E major) as the concluding movement, as originally planned.94
Whatever the form of the movement, there is a sense of tension building to a climax, then relaxation, that is clear-cut to a degree not commonly found in Mahler. It begins with the strings only, playing quietly, diatonically, and homophonically. Tension is increased by the addition of instruments, upward pitch gestures, increasing volume, and addition of some chromaticism. At the climax, Mahler recalls a horn call from a climactic section of the first movement:
(eight horns)
The subtitle "What love tells me" has apparently caused some controversy, for Cardus says, "Though this Adagio tells of 'love,' no flush of eroticism enters; there is no erotic music in Mahler."95 However, the great building and release of tension, in conjunction with the subtitle, must mean something more than the love of mankind. Schnebel agrees: "It includes in its increasing dimension also those sounds of eroticism, as they are found in Wagner's Tristan."96
With a simply noble extended D-major cadence, the movement and one of the longest and most complex symphonies in existence comes to a close.
TEXTS FOR MAHLER'S THIRD SYMPHONY
4th movement
(from Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra)
O mensch! Gib acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
"Ich schlief, ich schlief
Aus tiefen Traum bin ich erwacht:
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.
Tief ist der Weh
Lusttiefer noch als Herzeleid:
Weh spricht: Vergeh!
Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit
will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit!"
O Man! Take heed!
What does deep midnight speak?
"I was asleep
I waken from a secret dream:
The world is deep,
And deeper than the day has known.
Deep is her woe
Desiredeeper still than heart's pain:
Woe speaks: Perish!
But all desire wants eternity
wants deep, deep eternity!"
(Translation by William J. McGrath)
5th movement
(from Des Knaben Wunderhorn)
Es sungen drei Engel einen süssen Gesang;
Mit Freuden es selig in dem Himmel klang,
Sie jauchzten fröhlich auch dabei,
Dass Petrus sei von Sünden frei.
Und als der Herr Jesus zu Tische sass,
Mit seine zwölf Jungern das Abendmahl ass;
Da sprach der Herr Jesus: Was stehst du denn hier?
Wenn ich dich anseh, so weinest du mir!
Und sollt' ich nicht weinen, du gütiger Gott,
Ich hab' übertreten die zehn Gebot.
Ich gehe und weine ja bitterlich.
Du sollst ja nicht weinen! Ach komm und erbarme dich über mich.
Hast du denn übertreten die zehn Gebot,
So fall auf die Kniee und bete zu Gott!
Liebe nur Gott in alle Zeit!
So wirst du erlangen die himmlische Freud.
Die himmlische Freud' ist eine selige Stadt,
Die himmlische Freud', die kein Ende mehr hat!
Die himmlische Freude war Petro bereit't,
Durch Jesum und Allen zur Seligkeit.
Three angels sang so sweet a song,
That heaven rang with joy.
Their message merrily proclaimed
That Peter was free from sin.
And when the Lord Jesus sat at the table,
To dine with his twelve disciples:
Then Jesus asked: Why are you here?
When I see you I must weep!
And should I not weep, you gracious God.
I have broken the ten commandments.
I will go and weep most bitterly.
You should not weep! Oh, come and have mercy on me.
If you have broken the ten commandments,
Then fall on your knees and pray to God!
Love only God at all times!
Then you will reach heavenly joy.
Heavenly joy is a blessed city,
The heavenly joy that has no more end!
Heavenly joy was prepared by Peter
Through Jesus and everyone for bliss.
(Translation by William J. McGrath and Eric Brahinsky)
FOOTNOTES
1Bruno Walter, Gustav Mahler, trans. Lotte Walter Lindt (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958), p. 29.
2Philip Barford, Mahler Symphonies and Songs (1970; reprint ed., Seattle: University of Washington, 1971), p. 32.
3Henry Louis de La Grange, Mahler, vol. 1 (London: Victor Gollancz, 1974), p. 101.
4William J. McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1974), p. 127.
5Ibid., p. 141.
6de La Grange, p. 329.
7P. R. Franklin, "The Gestation of Mahler's Third Symphony," Music and Letters 58 (1977): 441.
8Ibid., p. 440.
9McGrath, p. 129.
10Ibid., pp. 12930.
11Walter, pp. 2627.
12Ibid., p. 28.
13de La Grange, p. 376.
14Dieter Schnebel, "Über Mahlers Dritte," trans. Eric Brahinsky, Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 135 (1974): 283.
15Walter, p. 115.
16Schnebel, p. 283.
17Ibid., pp. 28384.
18Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters, trans. Basil Creighton (1946; reprint ed., Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1968), p. 36.
19Ruth Berges, "Mahler and the Great God Pan," Musical Courier 161 (January 1960): 11.
20McGrath, p. 136.
21Ibid., p. 132.
22Walter, p. 128.
23McGrath, p. 131.
24Walter, p. 28.
25McGrath, pp. 133, 135.
26Walter, p. 129.
27Ibid., p. 128.
28Ibid., p. 168.
29Neville Cardus, Gustav Mahler: His Mind and His Music, vol. 1, ed. Rudolf Schwarz (London: V. Gollancz, 1965), p. 85. He says this is "prophetic of Le Sacre."
30Walter, p. 134.
31The First contains music from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen; the Second and Fourth include complete songs (music and text) from Des Knaben Wunderhorn.
33Barford, p. 30.
34McGrath, p. 121. Italics his.
35Kurt Blaukopf, Gustav Mahler, trans. Inge Goodwin (New York: Praeger, 1973), pp. 12224.
36A. Mahler, p. 17.
37McGrath, pp. 126, 147.
38Kurt Blaukopf, ed., Mahler: A Documentary Study (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 225.
39de La Grange, p. 582.
40Walter, p. 34.
41Ibid.
42de La Grange, pp. 35960.
43Ibid., p. 386.
44Ibid., pp. 38687, 396.
45Berges, p. 11.
46de La Grange, p. 397.
47Ibid., p. 399.
48Ibid., p. 465.
49Ibid., pp. 511, 525.
50Blaukopf, Documentary, p. 227.
51de La Grange, pp. 63435.
52A. Mahler, p. 37.
53Ibid., p. 36.
54Ibid., p. 38.
55Ibid., pp. 3839.
56Walter, pp. 54, viii.
57Cardus, p. 96.
58Donald Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years (Boulder CO: Westview, 1975), pp. 31819.
59Blaukopf, Documentary, p. 259.
60Ibid., p. 273.
61Mitchell, pp. 33031.
62Cardus, p. 106; McGrath, p. 146.
63Schnebel, p. 284.
64Walter, p. 128.
65de La Grange, p. 376.
66Mitchell, p. 194.
67de La Grange, pp. 32930.
68Cardus, p. 105.
65de La Grange, p. 376.
69Dika Newlin, Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg, revised ed. (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1978), p. 4.
70Cardus, p. 95.
71Walter, p. 129.
72Schnebel, p. 286.
73de La Grange, p. 560.
74McGrath, p. 141.
75Newlin, pp. 166, 168.
76Schnebel, p. 287.
77Warren Storey Smith, "Song Is the Basic Element of the Vast Symphonic Structures Mahler Created," Musical America 80 (February 1960): 174.
78Mitchell, p. 280.
79Smith, p. 10.
80Schnebel, p. 287.
81Newlin, p. 169.
82Cardus.
83Barford, pp. 3031.
84McGrath, p. 142.
85Schnebel, p. 287.
86Egon Gartenberg, Mahler: The Man and His Music (New York: Schirmer Books, 1978), p. 285.
87Newlin, p. 169.
88McGrath, pp. 14950.
89Cardus, p. 108.
90de La Grange, p. 377.
91Schnebel, p. 288.
92Cardus, p. 110.
93Newlin, p. 179. She continues, "It is the key of energy, of optimism, of high seriousness or of superhuman triumph, or of the utmost love," and cites, in addition to this movement, critical movements from the First, Third and Ninth Symphonies.
94Barford, p. 32.
95Cardus, p. 110.
96Schnebel, p. 288.
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Berges, Ruth. "Mahler and the Great God Pan." Musical Courier. 161 (January 1960): 1011+.
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