I. 1. Dead March—with measured step—like a funeral train.
Suddenly faster, passionately, wildly. À tempo
2. With stormy emotion. With utmost vehemence
II. 3. Scherzo. With force, but not too fast
III. 4. Adagietto, very slow
5. Rondo finale: allegro
The symphony is like unto the great image that stood before
Nebuchadnezzar in a vision. “And the form thereof was terrible. The
image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his
belly and his thighs of brass; his legs of iron, his feet part of iron
and part of clay.”
There are musical thoughts that are lovely and noble. By their side are
themes of a vulgarity that is masked only by adroit contrapuntal
treatment or by the blare of instrumentation which gives a plausible and
momentary importance. There is excessive reiteration of subjects and
devices, and the skill displayed in embellishment and variation of
orchestral color, color rather than nuance, does not relieve the
monotony. The opening is imposing, but the chief theme of the Dead March
disappoints. The first pages of the second section, “stormily restless,”
are a stroke of genius, the free expression of wild imagination. There
are charming ideas in the _scherzo_, and there is also much that is only
whimsical, as though Mahler had then written solely for his own
amusement, and said to himself, “Let us try it this way. I wonder how it
will sound.” The _adagietto_ is the most emotional portion of the work,
and here Mahler employed simple means. Here the thought and the
expression are happily wedded, nor does the ghost of Wagner, seen for a
moment smiling, forbid this union. It may be that in the _finale_ the
composer could not help remembering the wondrous theme, D major, in the
_adagio_ of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony; but the resemblance is after all
only a suggestion, and this _finale_ in _rondo_ form, with the majestic
peroration, is worked so that there is a steady _crescendo_ of interest.
As a whole Mahler’s symphony, with its mixture of the grand and the
common, with its spontaneity and its laborious artifice, is like unto
the great image referred to above.
* * *
This symphony, known to some as “_The Giant_” symphony, was performed
for the first time at a Gürzenich concert at Cologne, October 18, 1904.
The composer conducted. There was a difference of opinion concerning the
merits of the work. A visiting critic from Munich wrote that there was
breathless silence after the first movement, “which proved more
effectively than tremendous applause that the public was conscious of
the presence of genius.” It is stated that after the _finale_ there was
much applause; there was also hissing.
When the symphony was performed in certain German cities, as at Dresden,
January 27, 1905, at a symphony concert of the Royal Orchestra, and at
Berlin, February 20, 1905, at a Philharmonic concert, the programme
books contained no analytical notes and no argument of any sort. The
compilers thus obeyed the wish of the composer. Mr. Ludwig Schiedermair
tells us, in his _Gustav Mahler: eine biographisch-kritische Würdigung_,
of Mahler’s abhorrence of all programme books for concert use, and he
relates this anecdote. Mahler conducted a performance of his Symphony in
C minor at a concert of the Munich Hugo Wolf Society. After the concert
there was a supper, and in the course of the conversation someone
mentioned programme books. “Then was it as though lightning flashed in a
joyous, sunny landscape. Mahler’s eyes were more brilliant than ever,
his forehead wrinkled, he sprang in excitement from the table and
exclaimed in passionate tones: ‘Away with programme books, which breed
false ideas! The audience should be left to its own thoughts over the
work that is performing: it should not be forced to read during the
performance; it should not be prejudiced in any manner. If a composer by
his music forces on his hearers the sensations which streamed through
his mind, then he reaches his goal. The speech of tones has then
approached the language of words, but it is far more capable of
expression and declaration.’ And Mahler raised his glass and emptied it
with ‘_Pereat den Programmen!_’”
Yet Mr. Mahler’s enthusiastic admirer and partisan, Ernst Otto Nodnagel,
of Darmstadt, contributed to “Die Musik” (second November number and
first December number of 1904) a technical analysis of the Fifth
symphony, an analysis of twenty-three large octavo pages, with a
beautiful motto from Schiller. This analysis, published by Peters, and
sold for the sum of thirty pfennig, is within reach of the humblest.
The symphony was completed in the spring of 1903. It was written in
1901-02 at his little country house near Maiernigg on Lake Wörther.
Other works of this date are the _Kindertotenlieder_ and other songs
with Rückert’s verses. The symphony is scored for four flutes (and
piccolo), three oboes, three clarinets (and bass clarinet), two
bassoons, one double bassoon, six horns (in third movement a horn
obbligato), four trumpets, three trombones, tuba, kettledrums, snare
drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, Glockenspiel, gong, harp, and
strings.
Let us respect the wishes of the composer who looked on analytical or
explanatory programmes as the abomination of desolation. Yet it may be
said that in the _rondo finale_, after the second chief motive enters as
the subject of a fugal section, one of the lesser themes used in the
development is derived from Mahler’s song, “Lob des hohen Verstands”
(relating to the trial of skill between the nightingale and the cuckoo
with the ass as judge).
FELIX
MENDELSSOHN-BARTHOLDY
(Born at Hamburg, February 3, 1809; died at Leipsic, November 4, 1847)
Mendelssohn in his maturity wrote his music as he looks in his picture,
smiling and with a stickpin in his ruffled shirt. When at seventeen he
wrote his overture to _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_, he was a romanticist.
What might he not have accomplished if he had been poor and less
respectable! He wrote this overture before he had been spoiled by
flattery; before he became a composer of priggish formulas. Aubrey
Beardsley pictured the later Mendelssohn in that forgotten magazine, the
_Savoy_. There you see the man that was shocked by the resurrection of
the nuns in _Robert the Devil_, by Terlina undressing in _Fra Diavolo_,
by Hugo’s _Ruy Blas_, although he condescended to write an overture for
it. The spotless Mendelssohn who delighted Queen Victoria and her spouse
by playing the organ to them. But the overture to Shakespeare’s comedy
is from another Mendelssohn, the composer of _The Hebrides_, portions of
the _Walpurgis Night_, not the man of the oratorios and the sentimental
_Songs without Words_.