Born on July 7, 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia; Died on May 18, 1911, in Vienna, Austria
Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp minor
Part I:
Trauermarsch
Stürmisch bewegt, mit grösster Vehemeng
Part II:
Scherzo: Kräftig, night zu schnell
Part III:
Adagietto, sehr langsam
Rondo - Finale: Allegro
Composed: 1901-02
Estimated length: 72 minutes
First performance: October 18, 1904, in with the composer conducting the Gürzenich Orchestra.
First Nashville Symphony performance: December 14, 1970, with Thor Johnson conducting at War Memorial Auditorium.
Early in 1901, in the months before beginning composition of his Fifth Symphony, Gustav Mahler suffered a nearly fatal hemorrhage. This close brush with death left its stamp on the music. So, too, did the sense of a new lease on life that the composer experienced when he married Alma Schindler, a ravishing and brilliant young Viennese beauty from a prominent artistic family who was nearly half his age. These contrasting experiences shape the outlook of the Fifth Symphony. Mahler completed the draft in the summer of 1902, just a few months after their marriage.
Unlike his previous four symphonies, the Fifth has no explicit program and, in contrast to Symphonies Two, Three, and Four, calls for no singing. Mahler had been refining his musical language and technique to create a more abstract musical universe—a universe that develops the possibilities inherent within the material itself instead of suggesting a narrative. Even so, there are hints of a narrative: the first movement conveys associations of mourning (Mahler labels it “Funeral March”), while the fourth movement (“Adagietto”) has been interpreted as a love song for Alma.
Mahler divides the Fifth Symphony’s five movements into three distinct parts: Part I comprises the first two movements, which share musical ideas; the Scherzo by itself forms Part II and is the longest single movement but the shortest of the three parts; and Part III consists of the Adagietto and Finale (both of which have motivic links, just like the first two movements) and is similar in total duration to Part I. This arch-like structure has been compared to an hourglass and shows Mahler’s growing mastery of large-scale architecture. Cross-references to ideas between movements serve as a unifying device.
WHAT TO LISTEN FOR
The opening Funeral March presents two main ideas in alternation. First is the solo trumpet’s fanfare heard at the very start. The second idea is the grief-stricken march itself, but a new episode intervenes suddenly. The trumpet’s call is transformed into cries of torment. After this passionate storm of protest and denial, the pattern of the first two elements returns. A variant of the mourning music conveys a new strain of anxiety, from which Mahler builds to a climax. In the final moments, however, the musical fabric is heard to decompose.
All of these events provide an enormous introduction to the “real” first movement. Turbulent and even violent in its depiction of extremes of despair, this section includes flashbacks to the Funeral March. Hope emerges in a brass chorale that is later expanded into a shout of triumph from the orchestra, but Mahler deflates this outburst of optimism and brings Part I to a close with a fragmentation of musical ideas that parallels the descent into silence with which the Funeral March had ended.
Like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, which also begins in a dark minor key, Mahler’s Fifth has been described as a journey “from darkness to light.” There is indeed a turn from the despair of Part I to a sense of joyful liberation by the end of the Fifth. The image of a “victory symphony” simplifies the richness and detail of Mahler’s musical concept—as we can see from the importance he gives to the Scherzo at the midpoint of the Fifth Symphony. Already in this movement, Mahler swerves into the major key and dramatizes a radical change of mood towards cheerful acceptance of life.
In contrast to the funeral march set in motion by a solo trumpet at the start of the Fifth, the Scherzo pulses with vibrant dance following the proclamation of a quartet of horns at the outset. Their three-note motif offers an anchor amid the Scherzo’s kaleidoscopic swirl of colorful detail. Two trios function as excursions into highly varied territory—the sophisticated Viennese waltz in the first and the sounds of nature in the second (with a solo horn as the protagonist). The vividly active coda gives a foretaste of what is to come in the Finale.
The Adagietto has gained a reputation as sombre, death-obsessed music because of its use in public occasions of mourning. But the conductor Willem Mengelberg, a champion of Mahler’s music, claimed that the Adagietto was in fact intended to be a musical love letter to Alma. In any case, Mahler here evokes a blissful state beyond time—a kind of transcendent serenade—that contrasts with the anguish of Part I and the turbulent activity we heard at the end of the Scherzo. For this, he reduces the full palette of his very large orchestra to strings alone, along with a solo harp that accompanies with an impressionistic delicacy.
Mahler uses the sustained note of a solo horn to bridge the Adagietto with the extroverted music of the fifth movement. Inspired by his recent study of J.S. Bach, Mahler employs a dazzling art of counterpoint, weaving multiple ideas together into a complex texture. He also introduces a giddy sense of humor and inventiveness. Even the sublime Adagietto comes into play, now appearing in accelerated fragments in this new context. Mahler also recalls the hope-filled but frustrated chorale from the second movement. This time, it comes fully to life in a blazing affirmation. But he adds a brief, boisterous coda that concludes the Fifth on a note of unbuttoned exhilaration.
Scored for 4 flutes (2 doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn), 3 clarinets (3rd doubling E-flat clarinet and bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon), 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, triangle, tam-tam, whip, glockenspiel, harp, and strings
− Thomas May is the Nashville Symphony's program annotator.
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