Nature in Mahler's Music

Symphony No. 3 in D Minor

by Gustav Mahler

“But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.”  ― Gustav Mahler

Mahler is in the world and the world is in Mahler.  This is evidenced by his great symphonies and the Third Symphony was the first and perhaps the best example, with regard to the world of Nature.  It is Mahler’s hymn to the natural world and his longest work largely composed in the summer of 1895 after an exhausting and troubling period that pitched him into feverish creative activity. Bruno Walter visited him at that time and as Mahler met him off the ferry Walter looked up at the spectacular alpine vistas around him only to be told: "No use looking up there, that’s all been composed by me." 
Mahler is quoted by Jonathan Carr, in his 1997 biography of the composer, as saying -- that "one does not compose, one is composed."  This came after Mahler claimed he had composed away the mountains in the grand first movement of his Third Symphony.  At a time when symphonies were often thirty to forty minutes in length and seldom more than four movements, Mahler composed a ninety minute symphony in six movements.  Perhaps it is what inspired Mahler to say, “A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”
The Third Symphony in D Minor is Mahler's own pastoral as he was inspired by the grandeur around him at the very deepest level of feeling and also by visions of Pan and Dionysus. In fact he was moved by a sense of every natural creative force in the universe infusing him into "one great hymn to the glory of every aspect of creation", or, as Deryck Cooke put it: "a concept of existence in its totality." With references to Brahms First Symphony and, above all, Mahler's own songs from the Wunder Horn cycle the massive work also incorporates a setting of the "Midnight Song" from Friedrich Nietzsche's Also Sprach Zarathustra, a Soprano soloist, a children's chorus and another with female voices.  The result is a gargantuan symphony that can easily be said to represent the world as seen through Nature--at least the Nature that speaks to Mahler.  To ensure his inspiration was at hand Mahler had a hut built in the countryside on the shore of a lake where the sounds of Nature abounded. His Third was the first symphony he wrote in that hut but he would return for several summers to renew his inspiration and compose many more. 


This afternoon I attended a performance of Mahler's Third by The Chicago Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Semyon Bychkov.  Joining the Orchestra was Bernarda Fink, Mezzo-Soprano, Women of the Chicago Symphony Chorus, and Anima, Young Singers of Greater Chicago.  This work is well-suited to the strengths of the CSO and they performed admirably with stamina and strength in all sections.  While the Brass stood out, this difficult work found the strings and woodwinds not lacking.  The result pierced directly to my soul during both the first and final movements.  It was exceptional music for an Autumn afternoon.

Sunday Morning Run

Running, Detritus, and Music
"the Running Path and the Path of Life"

Socks and shirts and sandals or running shoes.  All of these and more comprise just some of the detritus that litters the side of the running path I follow on my Sunday morning run.  My own shoes safely attached to my feet make my running a breeze but what of the detritus?  What does it mean?  What of these things that litter the path - my way - singly, not in pairs?  Who were their owners and why were they orphaned and forgotten by the side of the path?  My thoughts seem torn between music and speculation on what's left in the park early in the morning between light and dark.  I've meditated before on the lake and the stars.  The moon is my favorite when it still appears on the horizon before disappearing only to return in the evening when I'm seldom there to cheer it on.

There are few who join me in the early morn and many who do venture out whisk by on their bikes leaving me the airy entrails of their passing.  Some, the runners passing in the opposite direction sometimes even say hello, but that is rare, and before long I am going in their direction - it is no longer my opposite.  All the while I am ensconced in my personal musical world.  In this I enjoy what Gustav Mahler thought was a world where thoughts are fresher, deeper, and more accurate for having been embodied in music.  In that he meant that music can cut though to the inner personality in a way more familiar and, perhaps, worn out words may not.  To the extent that music embodies emotions, and that is to a great extent, it can be an internal motivator or perhaps just a companion on the trail.  Along with the moon music may allow the runner to engage his body in a spiritual quest along the path - the running path and the path of life.

From Beethoven to Schoenberg

Chicago Symphony Orchestra Concert

"I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words." - Arnold Schoenberg

Saturday evening I attended a concert by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  The concert was led by Michael Tilson Thomas as guest conductor and featured Jeremy Denk performing Beethoven's Piano Concerto in c, Op. 37.  The concert also included "Blumine" an andante for orchestra that was briefly included as the second movement of Mahler's First Symphony.  The piece was a perfect light romantic opening for the evening, providing ten minutes of "innocent, uncomplicated lyricism" according to the concert notes by Phillip Huscher.
The evening continued with a concerto from the first decade of the nineteenth century, Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, performed by Jeremy Denk in his Orchestra Hall debut.  This is considered Mozartean in spirit and sounds somewhat classical with occasional rebellious touches by Beethoven, who would go on to break most of the rules of formal classical music in his late works.  The concerto was ably performed by both soloist and orchestra.  It was a delight to hear one of my favorites in Orchestra Hall.
After the interval the final work of the evening, unusual if only that Arnold Schoenberg orchestrated the Piano Quartet No. 1 in g, Op. 25 of Johannes Brahms, a chamber composition that was more than seventy years old.  The orchestration goes to extremes that hint at a Mahlerian tinge to Brahms that could only be added by his musical descendant, Arnold Schoenberg.  At least Schoenberg considered himself the heir to Brahms legacy and this work from the 1930s is anachronistic enough to demonstrate the point.  Schoenberg composed this work as a "gesture of honor, homage and love" according to the program notes.  It is a perfect piece to highlight the talents of the CSO with a lush orchestration utilizing all of the strengths they bring to the concert hall, and they ripped and roared through the melodies and the harmonies that Schoenberg drew out of the original quartet.  

Passion for Meaning in Music

Gustav Mahler

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

- Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers. There was a particular resurgence of performance of his music in the 1960s which his when I was introduced to his symphonies. His passion for music, his personal focus both on death and the meaning of life resonated with audiences then and to this day.

Born in humble circumstances in rural Bohemia, Mahler showed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism from Judaism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.

Mahler's œuvre is relatively small—for much of his life composing was a part-time activity, secondary to conducting—and is confined to the genres of symphony and song, except for one piano quartet. He would regularly spend summers in the country outside Vienna composing and the sounds of nature along with fold songs often shine through his work. Most of his ten symphonies are very large-scale works, several of which employ soloists and choirs in addition to augmented orchestral forces. These works were often controversial when first performed, and were slow to receive critical and popular approval; an exception was the triumphant premiere of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Mahler's immediate musical successors were the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955, to honour the composer's life and work.