I wrote the following yesterday to help my Singers' Club friends make their way through a symphony many have not heard in its entirety. Several said it was helpful to them, and I decided to fix a couple of things in it and post it. Following it are three pictures I took just before rehearsal last night. Listen to us at 8:00 tonight (4/18) on WCLV or wclv.com.
While outside cleaning out flower beds this afternoon I got a notion to write something to share with you about Mahler #2 and me...how we were introduced and (very briefly) how I understand it. Many among us know far more about music than do I, and what follows hardly had time to researched, so corrections of fact, if not my experience, will be gratefully accepted.
From 1965-1968 I was a seminary student in the San Francisco Bay Area, and several of us attended concerts by the San Francisco Orchestra quite regularly. They were held in the old War Memorial Opera House, and Joseph Krips was the Conductor and Music Director. If I’d ever heard any Mahler before, it may have been his First Symphony, but I was not familiar with it. I believe Krips conducted. I was probably overwhelmed and awed and a bit mystified by the first 4 and a half movements, but when the chorus intoned “Aufersteh’n” mid-way through the 5th movement, I knew I had never heard anything like it in my life.
As soon as I could find a few extra dollars, I bought Leonard Bernstein’s 1963 stereo LP of it. I have treasured it ever since, and several years ago bought it on CD, Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic, same recording. People argue about Bernstein’s way with music, but he is often credited with the rediscovery of Mahler. (He was aided by the invention of LP records; how many 78’s would it have taken to record Mahler #2?)
Here is a brief summary of what I hear in the five movements, since I don’t know what kind of program notes will be available to us and when, and they may be your scholarly check on my personal perceptions:
The first movement is a 20-minute-plus funeral march (Mahler called it a “Funeral Celebration), some say representing the funeral of the hero of Mahler’s First (known as the “Titan” Symphony). But this is not the quiet, meditative kind of funeral music you’d hear in churches and funeral homes nowadays; in fact, the music might be the cause of death, so poundingly anguished it is. Interspersed with the terror are more mellow passages that promise some kind of relief or hope from death’s power, but they do not last.
The second movement is a Länder. It is so different from the first movement that Mahler wanted a five-minute silence after movement one. A Länder is a waltz-like folk dance, a style often heard in Mahler’s works. It has a gentle, pastoral feel to it, but it, in turn, is interrupted by dramatic and almost violent outbursts. I love this movement.
Movement three is a based upon a melody from Mahler’s setting of a poem from his collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”). He omits the words, and transforms the melody into an ironic expression of doubt and despair. The particular song is called “St. Anthony of Padua Preaches to the Fishes,” and here it goes:
They listened to the sermon...
They liked the sermon
And they remain like everyone else:
The crabs still go backward,
The cod stay stupid,
The carp gorge themselves,
They forgot the sermon,
They liked the sermon,
And they remain like everyone else.
The words won’t be sung, so don’t listen for them. But meditate, if you will, on the text behind them. I do.
You will hear words sung in the fourth movement. It is called Urlicht (“Primal Light”), and features the alto singing another song from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The poem is addressed to a rose, and confesses humanity’s great need to go to heaven. Though an angel may try to bar the way, the poet will not be turned back because he/she is of God and to God shall return. God will lend light and send the poet to “eternal blessed life.” The music is tranquil, its melody speaking of a passionate quest for God and faith.
The final movement begins in a long struggle between death and hope. It alternates between high promise and deep despair, until finally powerful trumpet (and other instrumental) calls summon all to the last judgment (think Sistine Chapel). Finally, we come in with the words that promise humanity shall rise again. The first words are by an 18th-century German poet named Klopstock; Mahler wrote the words beginning with “O glaube...” You can find the words online in Wikipedia.
The only other time I sang this was also in Severance Hall, at the celebration of the 200th Anniversary of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese. I was in the University Circle Chorale, and I think we were joined by choirs from Catholic Churches all over Cleveland. The CIM orchestra also played that one, but I don’t remember who conducted.
Strangely, it’s hard to see Mahler #2 as expressing a Christian view of resurrection. Not only does it not mention Jesus, but it also seems to argue that resurrection depends upon us, and our ability to conquer death and pain on our own. I’m not in any way saying this as a criticism of the work itself; to me if offers great encouragement to soldier on when things get tough. Mahler himself was a Jew, and the poem may be more faithful to that tradition than to Christianity. That’s fine with me. I love the work.
I still have two texts from a class in Music History I took in college, published in the late 1950’s and 1963. Both hardly mention Mahler and Bruckner, and what they do say is not complimentary. We now know (or it seems to me) that if Brahms summed up the late-Romantic symphonic tradition, Mahler and Bruckner pushed it to its breaking point, and composers who followed them in some senses were starting over. There was nothing else to say.
Since that evening in San Francisco I’ve come to appreciate many of Mahler’s other works, especially his symphonies, and I may even “like” some better than the Second. But it has a very special place in my life, and if I seem a bit absorbed as we hear it tomorrow night, you will know why.
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