classical music - andante

Introduction | Chronology | Filmography

SYMPHONY NO. 7

Of the three instrumental symphonies that constitute a trilogy between the vocal Fourth and the choral Eighth, the Seventh represents a special or extreme case, inasmuch as it marks the furthest point to which Mahler advanced on the road to musical modernism. At first sight, it is hard to discover a single common feature or unity of intent that could justify his bringing together five such disparate movements. But Mahler was never the man to shy away from excess, and in the case of the Seventh Symphony we find him reaching the furthest point in his development with an opening movement that is, harmonically at least, the most 'modern' of any he wrote; a second movement (the first Nachtmusik) that mixes together all manner of reminiscences and symbols in its evocation of a Romantic past; the most demonic and terrifying of all his Scherzos; the most faux naïf of all his symphonic idylls (the second Nachtmusik) and, finally, the most insane, most 'deviant' and most provocative of all his final movements.

Composition

If the Seventh Symphony is less unified than the others, it is perhaps because the secondary movements—the two Nachtmusiken—were written before the other three. In 1904 Mahler set himself the task of completing the Sixth Symphony during his summer vacation, but, as so often happened when he left Vienna and his life as a performing musician, he spent several days in utter torment searching for the inspiration he needed. Despairing of himself and his destiny as a creative artist, he abandoned his desk and, as he usually did on such occasions, set off on a tour of the Southern Tyrol, taking in Toblach, from which he took the road leading up to the Lake of Misurina. It may have been here, while he was searching in vain for the inspiration for his final movement, that he wrote down the themes for his two nocturnes among the countless other 'parasitical' ideas that he made a habit of jotting down in a small notebook if they were not to be used in the work currently in hand. We know very little about the work that he did during the summer of 1904, except that by the end of August he had not only completed the Sixth Symphony but also sketched out the whole of the two Nachtmusiken. It may be mentioned in passing that Mahler never again worked simultaneously on two different pieces.

In 1905 Mahler returned to Maiernigg after another exhausting season at the Vienna Court Opera, and once again there followed ten days of torment, from 15 to 25 June, during which he failed to find the necessary inspiration for the symphony's remaining movements. The first proved particularly intractable. Another excursion to the Southern Tyrol seemed to be called for, and Mahler spent two and a half hours walking round the shores of one of the region's lakes. He was in a foul temper, not only because of an incessant migraine but also because it was Corpus Christi and the inn where he was staying was full to overflowing with noisy guests. For once, the overwhelming beauty of the surrounding countryside failed to lift his depression: 'I plagued myself for two weeks until I sank into gloom, as you well remember', he wrote to Alma several years later, 'then I tore off to the Dolomites. There I was led the same dance, and at last gave it up and returned home, convinced that the whole summer was lost. You were not at Krumpendorf to meet me, because I had not let you know the time of my arrival. I got into the boat to be rowed across. At the first stroke of the oars the theme (or rather the rhythm and character) of the introduction to the first movement came into my head—and in four weeks the first, third and fifth movements were done'.

In this invaluable letter of 8 June 1910, Mahler was anxious to remind his wife that he was incapable of writing music to order. In 1905 it had been the boatsman's magic oarstroke that had exorcised his annual curse and allowed him to return to the Seventh Symphony. By 15 August he was able to announce (in Latin) to his friend Guido Adler the completion of the work. Four days later Richard Strauss received a card to the same effect. As for the publication and first performance, he declared that he would wait as long as was necessary, but in the end the wait was dictated not so much by Mahler's own resolve as by outside circumstances. The first performance of the Sixth Symphony was even less well received than that of the Fifth, with the result that, with only weeks to go before the planned première of the Seventh in September 1908, Mahler was still without a publisher. As a result, he had to resign himself to having the orchestral parts copied at his own expense and to make appeals to publishers that were deeply humiliating for a composer of his age and reputation. It was the small Leipzig firm of Lauterbach & Kuhn (which was soon to be bought up by the Berlin publisher Bote & Bock) that finally accepted his proposal, with the result that the full score was published during the course of 1909.

First performance

The choice of Prague and the turbulent setting of an exhibition celebrating the emperor's diamond jubilee might have seemed somewhat risky for the first performance of his new symphony, but Mahler had no reason to regret it, such was the zeal of the members of the orchestra and the inexhaustible enthusiasm of the Czech and German musicians who had gathered in Prague for the occasion. Moreover, he was granted almost two weeks of rehearsals, a privilege he would almost certainly never have enjoyed elsewhere. Of his numerous friends and disciples who were present—suffice to mention only Bruno Walter, Artur Bodanzky, Otto Klemperer, Ossip Gabrilovich, Alexander von Zemlinsky, Alban Berg, Oskar Fried and Klaus Pringsheim—none would ever forget these days of collaborative effort. Most agreed that the rehearsals passed off in a harmonious atmosphere but that the applause at the actual performance was respectful rather than warm. With few exceptions, the Czech press (like their Austrian counterparts some time later) expressed themselves in polite generalities that ill-concealed their lack of appreciation. Of course, Mahler was no longer accused of creative impotence, but there was still a sense of astonishment that so serious a work could contain so much that was 'banal' and obviously popular in origin. Only the second Nachtmusik elicited a more enthusiastic response. Many years would pass before the Seventh Symphony was properly accepted, and even today it remains the composer's least popular symphony.

A programme?

We have very little evidence at our disposal to help us hazard a guess at the Seventh's 'inner programme'. First and foremost, of course, there is the title Nachtmusik that Mahler used for the second and fourth movements, a title that, at first sight, seems to suggest a period remote from our own, when music was often performed in the open air. Their common title notwithstanding, the two movements are in fact utterly dissimilar. The first on its own is something of a paradox since, although its military character is very pronounced, it is difficult to imagine a battalion driving back night's dusky cohorts with a military band at its head. Two of Mahler's Dutch friends, Willem Mengelberg and Alfons Diepenbrock, confirmed that it was Rembrandt's celebrated Night Watch (a work that Mahler had admired when he saw it in the Rijksmuseum) that inspired this nocturne, but he later insisted that he had merely imagined a 'patrol' advancing through a 'fantastical chiaroscuro'. References to the military world of Mahler's childhood and to Des Knaben Wunderhorn are especially striking here, so that one might well consider this movement a Wunderhorn song without words.

In the case of the second Nachtmusik, Alma reveals that, while he was writing it, Mahler was haunted by the 'murmuring springs' of Eichendorff's poems and by the poet's 'German Romanticism'. As for the opening movement, Mengelberg claims to have heard Mahler expounding on the subject at the time of the rehearsals in Amsterdam: it expressed 'violent, self-opinionated, brutal and tyrannical force', 'a tragic night without stars or moonlight' and ruled by 'the power of darkness'. According to Mengelberg, the tenor horn in the introduction proclaims: 'I'm master here! I'll impose my will!'

Structure and musical language

However disparate the individual movements may seem, the symphony's overall structure is nonetheless striking in its symmetry, a symmetry that was to be repeated, with minor modifications, in both Das Lied von der Erde and the Tenth Symphony. In broad outline, it consists of two fast movements (a sonata and a rondo) framing three movements that are freer in form. As noted at the outset, Mahler uses a more modern musical language in the Seventh Symphony than in any of his earlier works, with implacable dissonances, sudden modulations, chord progressions exploring remote tonalities and a surfeit of notes which, at odds with harmonic theory, can nonetheless be justified in terms of the individual voice-leading.

Analysis

1. Langsam [Slow]. Allegro risoluto, ma non troppo, 4/4, B minor / E minor. With the introduction we are immediately drawn into an atmosphere of darkness and mystery. Three sections follow: an initial march of almost funerary grandeur (I); a second march (I1), quicker and lighter, on winds supported by pizzicato strings, that will play an essential role in the Allegro and, third, a much-modified repeat of the opening section introduced by a new version of the initial theme on the trombones. The instrumental solo that launches the work is entrusted to a tenor horn (a baritone in English), a member of the saxhorn family with a penetrating timbre. A sense of malaise and instability is engendered from the outset by the use of the unusual interval of a diminished fifth and by the fact that the theme is accented in such a way that the strong beat twice falls on a sustained note. As already mentioned, the ominous accompanying rhythm was suggested to Mahler by the oars of a boat on the Wörthersee, but it also recalls one of the most famous episodes in any of Verdi's operas, the 'Miserere' from Il trovatore. According to Mengelberg, this introduction describes night, death and the shadowy forces with which the swaggering first subject will shortly have to contend. The least that can be said is that this swagger is short-lived: the lyrical episodes, and the second subject in particular, are so numerous and extensive that one ultimately has the impression of being confronted not by a symphonic Allegro but by a slow movement with parenthetical interpolations at a faster tempo.

Closely related to the theme of the introduction, the Allegro's initial subject (A) owes its headstrong and somewhat misshapen character to its successions of melodic fourths, which anticipate those of Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony and the future collapse of the tonal system. The second subject (B) is in C major, a long, ecstatic melody still reminiscent of the world of the Kindertotenlieder and the Andante from the Sixth Symphony while also related to the extended family of ascending themes that throughout Mahler's works symbolise his metaphysical optimism. The little march from the introduction (I1) now serves as a transition to the development section. Following a varied recapitulation of the introduction's swaggering theme, the latter gradually allows itself to be suborned by the expansive lyricism of the second subject (B). The tempo quickens, only to give way once more to a long and dreamily motionless episode, the chorale motif of which, heard on the strings and lower woodwind, is none other than a new version of I1. Birdsong and distant fanfares reply. The second subject, B, now ushers in a new sense of ecstasy, bringing with it a return of the introduction's tempo and rhythm and itself reappearing before long. In view of the crucial role played by this second subject within the development section, one could perhaps expect to find it banished from the reexposition, but this is not the case. It now attains to new heights of lyricism, rising to dizzying altitudes at the very top of the instruments' registers.

2. Nachtmusik. Allegro moderato. Molto moderato (Andante), 4/4, C minor / major. Following a slightly quicker introduction, the movement itself maintains a stability of tempo rare in Mahler's music. A spatial effect is created by having the second of two horns playing with a mute and recalls the dialogue of the cor anglais and off-stage oboe at the beginning of the 'Scène aux champs' in Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique. The major chord that modulates to the minor is a simple quotation of the harmonic motif from the preceding symphony but is here robbed of its 'pessimistic' significance. The general mood of this first Nachtmusik has nothing tragic about it in spite of the march's fateful rhythm, with its reminiscences of the Wunderhorn settings of Mahler's Hamburg period and a 'military' dactylic rhythm borrowed from the song Revelge and heard on col legno violins. There are two alternating sections, the first on the first horn (with imitative writing in the lower strings) and the second on the double basses. Like the first, this second movement also contains passages where the musical argument comes to a halt, with fanfares and birdsong mingled at times with the cowbells from the preceding symphony. (Mahler gives instructions for the sound to be now closer, now more distant.) In the end the listener is disturbed by the surfeit of 'symbolic' elements borrowed from such different worlds. The cello melody of the first Trio, with its brass accompaniment of chordal triplets, is one of the most blatantly 'vulgar' of all Mahler's tunes, but a more detailed examination reveals asymmetries and subtleties of every kind. In the second Trio, marked 'Poco meno mosso', the tender duet for the two oboes seems to herald a total change of atmosphere, but the march rhythm gains the upper hand after only a few bars. The structure is harmoniously rounded off by the return of the two initial episodes freely reworked.

3. Scherzo. Schattenhaft. Fließend aber nicht schnell [Shadowy. Flowing but not fast], 3/4, D minor. A feeling of disquiet is manifest from the outset due to the curious rhythmic instability of the opening bars, with timpani strokes on the third (weak) beat and unstressed double-bass pizzicati on the strong beat. Mechanical-sounding triplets gyrate in an icy void, almost without harmonic support. A waltz episode briefly clears the atmosphere, but its initial gracefulness soon degenerates into wild and popular merrymaking (Berlioz's Witches' Sabbath is not far away), in which the triple rhythm is heavily, almost brutally, punched out on the brass. In the Trio, the lyrical and somewhat plaintive strains of the flute and oboe seem to reestablish a sense of calm, but scurrying quavers almost at once destroy it.

4. Nachtmusik. Andante amoroso. Mit Aufschwung [With verve], 2/4, F major. Mahler knew what he was doing when he gave a crucial role not only to the harp but also to the guitar and mandolin, three instruments that rarely play such a prominent part within a symphonic context. Although this second Nachtmusik is not specifically described as a serenade, the marking 'amoroso', the insistent presence of plucked strings and its rhythmic regularity invest it with the character of a serenade. It is easy to understand why Schoenberg should have been so fascinated by this enigmatic movement, to the extent of incorporating Mahler's guitar into his own Serenade op. 24 of 1923.

Coming, as it does, before the fairground mood of the final movement, this second Nachtmusik fulfills a function similar to that of the Adagietto of the Fifth Symphony, but on this occasion we are dealing not with a simple orchestral song but with a genuine slow movement, the atmosphere of which has nothing in common with that of the famous Adagietto. Indeed, such is its ambiguity, false innocence, remote sense of nostalgia and absence of all subjectivity that it resembles no other movement by Mahler. The opening bars serve as an introduction, suggesting the serenader tuning his instrument. The same obsessive refrain returns between each episode, giving the form an air of simplicity and obviousness that is otherwise belied. The general tone and atmosphere remain impersonal and profoundly ambiguous while the movement as a whole defies any clearcut definition. A few brief passages suggest a more subjective feeling, but on each occasion they are interrupted by the return of the movement's regular rhythm and archaic-sounding accompanying figures.

5. Rondo-Finale. Allegro ordinario, 4/4, C major. We come now to the most surprising, unusual, disconcerting and, certainly, the least popular of Mahler's symphonic movements. He claimed that in writing it he wanted to depict 'the broad light of day' and dazzling midday sun, but, as in the final movement of the Fifth Symphony, irony invariably transforms merrymaking into mockery. Consequently, this final movement will always exercise a grim fascination as a sort of 'monster', not because of its outbursts of rambunctious good humour but on account of its paradoxes, grimaces, about-turns and grotesque Neo-Classicism.

The first thematic element to be heard is played on the least melodic of instruments—the timpani—and played, moreover, in a key (E minor) that is not even the key of the movement as a whole. The principal theme proclaims its origins in the overture of Wagner's Die Meistersinger. Within this fairground hubbub, all manner of bizarre events take place, notably the appearance of tonal formulas and fanfares divorced from their original context, which now affirm nothing so much as the impossibility of affirming anything at all. After so exuberant an opening, one might expect the movement to pursue an equally boisterous course, with a divertimento or a fugato, but instead an abrupt change of tone (and tonality) ushers in a curious tune in A-flat in which certain commentators have detected an allusion to the famous waltz from The Merry Widow. These two strongly contrasting episodes are soon followed by a third, a sort of parodistic minuet peppered with archaic formulas and old-fashioned contrapuntal passages. Its false innocence is out of place in such a context and confirms the sense of ambiguity familiar from Die Meistersinger, in which the learned and the comic are held in precarious balance. No less evident is the whimsical humour, irony and mocking tone associated with E.T.A. Hoffmann.

No amount of descriptive prose can ever do justice to this most disquieting of Mahler's movements, nor to the vast kaleidoscope of its development sections, in which the various motifs are ceaselessly broken down, distorted, transformed and shuffled like a pack of cards. The listener is left permanently wondering on what level to approach the music. The most striking aspects are the sense of discontinuity in which Mahler seems on this occasion to delight, the abrupt divisions between the different sections and what might be termed the 'polyphony' of the various styles and moods, a polyphony that ultimately seems to be the movement's essential raison d'être.

In any event, the return of the Allegro's swaggering theme at the end of this final movement is far from consummating the definitive triumph of some symphonic hero. To fathom the meaning of this enigmatic Rondo, we need, perhaps, to refer to more recent music in which quotations, borrowings and allusions to the past constitute the principal aim. In this writer's opinion, we need to listen to the final Rondo of the Seventh Symphony as though it were 'new music' or at least music presciently conscious of the malaise of our age. The phrase used by Mahler himself to define the mood of this movement, 'Was kostet die Welt?' (everything, after all, has a price), takes no account of its ferocious irony, its sense of dislocation, its borrowed smiles, its false innocence or its dense developments and almost dizzying complexity. Is it not ultimately the triumph of the Alltag [quotidian]—Mahler's great enemy—that he celebrates here? For rejoicing constantly topples over into parody, the heavens merge into hell, day into night, joy into despair, laughter into grimacing, incense into sulphur, the Te Deum into a carnival song and gold into lead. And in spite of everything, in spite of all these abrupt divisions, these challenges and provocations—and perhaps even because of them—the listener may become convinced, in the course of these final pages, that Mahler never wrote anything as original or as prophetic as this unloved and disconcerting Rondo.