Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection” Program Notes

Symphony No. 2 in C minor, “Resurrection”

World Premiere December 13, 1895; Berlin, Germany
90 minutes

Gustav Mahler was one of the great post-Romantic symphonists.
He wrote primarily in large forms, composing little chamber or solo music.
During his lifetime, he was better known as a conductor than as a composer.
He married Alma Schindler in 1902.

A labor of love

Imagine laboring over a big project for more than two decades. Gustav Mahler worked on his Second Symphony intermittently between 1888 and 1894 with subsequent revisions in 1903 and 1910. His initial concept was a symphony, but he considered issuing the first movement independently as a large tone poem entitled Todtenfeier (“Funeral Rite”). He told the composer and journalist Max Marschalk that the title denoted funeral rites for the deceased hero of his First Symphony. Late in 1891, Mahler played Todtenfeier through at the piano for the great German conductor and pianist Hans von Bülow. The older man was a mentor and proponent of Mahler’s promising conducting career but could not fathom Mahler’s music. His remark after listening was, “Well, if that’s music, then I know nothing about music!” He purportedly later commented, “Mahler’s Todtenfeier makes Tristan sound like a [Joseph] Haydn Symphony.” Mahler never completely abandoned the idea of this movement’s independence. A note in the published score indicates that a five-minute pause should ensue after the first movement before proceeding with the balance of the symphony.

The Todtenfeier movement forms one of twin pillars that anchor the Second Symphony. The other is the massive finale. In between, Mahler interpolates three intermezzi, movements more intimate in approach and far more modest in scope. He spent the summer of 1893 working on the middle movements. Still, the finale eluded him.

Ironically, the solution dawned on him at Hans von Bülow’s funeral in 1894. The memorial service included a performance of the German lyric poet Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s hymn, Auferstehung (“Resurrection Ode”). The text hit Mahler like the proverbial thunderbolt, and he knew he had his finale. By 1895, he had set the hymn but, being Mahler, had also rewritten it, changing one line and adding six stanzas of his own to Klopstock’s three. The premiere took place in Berlin on December 13, 1895.

A lavish score

A Wagnerian mantle lies heavily on Mahler’s first movement, establishing a stark emotional pull that holds throughout the work. Moving through several key centers and theme groups, the Todtenfeier movement resolves in triumph, concluding with a brass chorale that alludes in a fragmentary manner to the medieval Dies Irae chant.

The second and third movements are twin scherzos but quite different in character. The Andante moderato is a Ländler, a characteristic Austrian folk dance like a slow waltz. After the first movement, this comparative miniature in A-flat major (a mere 12 minutes) sounds incongruously melodic, even nostalgic.

The scherzo that follows returns to C minor and is distinctly more waltz-like. Mahler’s use of the E-flat clarinet – the instrument of Richard Strauss’ Till Eulenspiegel – underscores the sardonic tone. The scherzo has two trio sections, the first emulating Viennese cabaret music, the second a sentimental trumpet chorus. Most of this third movement is based on a song he had written in July of 1893. Its text was from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Boy’s Magic Horn”), a collection of folk poetry published by Clemens Brentano and Achim von Arnim from 1805 to 1808.

The Symphony’s fourth movement, “Urlicht,” is another Wunderhorn movement, introducing the human voice. Mahler accompanies the mezzo soloist’s opening line, “Roschen rot,” with a string chorale, answered by trumpets, bassoon and horn. It is a heartrendingly lovely example of the orchestral detail that the composer lavishes throughout this symphony.

A journey of transformation

The finale is a gigantic segment. Cataclysmic chords open the movement, inevitably prompting comparison to the epic opening to the finale in Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Mahler’s expansion of the ensemble to include chorus and vocal soloists encourages the parallel. His addition of organ and offstage ensemble to the orchestra further enhances the spirituality of his music. His use of both soloists and full chorus invites grandeur, and there are certainly plenty of big moments in this conclusion. Its great strength, however, lies in the eloquence of the text and the consummate delicacy and skill with which the composer presents his and Klopstock’s text. Progression from death through transfiguration to resurrection is complete, the ultimate affirmation.

A message to humankind

The Second Symphony is important because it grapples with the largest issues that face all humankind and each of us individually and also because it is Mahler’s most profound expression of faith and spirituality. Despite his preoccupation with the hereafter, the “Resurrection” succeeds because Mahler understood instinctively how to touch our souls. Though he wrote programs explaining the “Resurrection” Symphony, music speaks to us in ways that words cannot. It is true that Mahler uses text in his penultimate and final movements, but the sheer power and shimmering beauty of the music is what ultimately drives home the message of love and redemption.

Symphony No. 2 in C minor, “Resurrection”

Gustav Mahler

Born July 7, 1860, in Kalischt, Bohemia · Died May 18, 1911, in Vienna, Austria

Shadows from Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle

Mahler’s first movement seems to bear the heavy footprints of the giants Fasolt and Fafner and the monumental power-brokering of Wotan in Wagner’s Ring Cycle. Obviously, Wagner’s funeral music is not far away either. Funeral marches are their own Leitmotif in Mahler’s symphonic first movements, and this one is colossal.

Navigating the tonal universe

The first movement is remarkable for its extraordinary key patterns. Mahler opens in C minor. However, his second theme is in E major and proceeds to E-flat minor, a startling switch (both of these key centers are quite distant from C minor on the circle of fifths that governs tonal music progressions). He works in groups of themes rather than single melodic ideas. Musicologist Constantin Floros has written:

Mahler devised a four or five-key plan, and each section has a distinct character that contrasts strongly from one section to another.

This huge Todtenfeier movement resolves in triumph, concluding with a brass chorale that alludes in a fragmentary manner to the medieval Dies Irae chant.

Double dessert? A second scherzo

Partly because of pizzicato strings and percussion, odd shadows of Edvard Grieg’s “Anitra’s Dance” from Peer Gynt and even Georges Bizet’s Carmen flicker across this central movement, which seems to have feet planted all over Europe and in various cultural venues at that.

Most of this third movement is based on Mahler’s “Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt” (“St. Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fishes”), a song he had written in July of 1893. Its text was from Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Boy’s Magic Horn”).

Mahler and Christian heritage

The term “resurrection” is closely associated with Christian imagery, specifically the rising of Jesus from the dead the third day after His crucifixion. The dictionary offers a broader spectrum of meanings, including a coming back to life, revival and – again in Christian theology – the rising of the dead at the last Judgment. Never one to shrink from grappling with major topics in his music, Mahler addressed all of these in his mighty and monumental Second Symphony. Not surprisingly, it took him five movements, two of which incorporated text, to deal with these perplexing issues that touch on the very meaning of life and attempt to come to terms with death. Clocking in at about 80 minutes, it is one of the lengthiest symphonies in the literature. Even among Mahler’s works, which tend to tip the scales in several ways, the “Resurrection” Symphony is remarkable.

An early program for the “Resurrection” Symphony

In the years prior to his marriage in 1902 to Alma Maria Schindler, Mahler’s closest female friend was Natalie Bauer-Lechner. An Austrian violinist who was also friendly with Mahler’s sister Justine, Bauer-Lechner was speculated to be in love with Mahler herself. That accounts, in part, for the careful records she kept of her interaction with the composer. In 1923, she published Recollections of Gustav Mahler, a memoir that provides essential source material for Mahler and his world, particularly in the 1890s. Bauer-Lechner is considered to be more reliable than Alma Mahler, whose own 1946 Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters is controversial and often factually inaccurate.

In January of 1896, Bauer-Lechner recorded Mahler’s comments about the Second Symphony following an evening when he had played through a two-piano reduction of the work for friends with the conductor Bruno Walter. Excerpts from her recollections follow.

The next morning Mahler spoke to me about this work: ‘The first movement depicts the titanic struggles of a mighty being still caught in the toils of this world; grappling with life and with the fate to which he must succumb – his death. The second and third movements are episodes from the life of the fallen hero. The Andante tells of love … the Scherzo I can describe only in terms of the following image: if, at a distance, you watch a dance through a window, without being able to hear the music, then the turning and twisting movement of the couples seems senseless, because you are not catching the rhythm that is the key to it all … To one who has lost his identity and his happiness, the world looks like this – distorted and crazy, as if reflected in a concave mirror. The Scherzo ends with the appalling shriek of this tortured soul.

The “Urlicht” represents the soul’s striving and questioning attitude towards God and its own immortality.

In the last movement, everything is inward experience. It begins with the death-shriek of the Scherzo. And now the resolution of the terrible problem of life – redemption. At first, we see it in the form created by faith and the Church – in their struggle to transcend this present life. The earth trembles. Just listen to the drum-roll, and your hair will stand on end! The Last Trumpet sounds; the graves spring open, and all creation comes writhing out of the bowels of the earth, with wailing and gnashing of teeth … None is just in the sight of God. Breaking in again and again, the Last Trumpet sounds from the Beyond.

After … indescribable confusion, nothing is heard but the Bird of Death above the last grave – finally that, too, fades away … Everything has ceased to be. Softly and simply begins: “Auferstehn’n, ja aufersteh’n” [“Rise again, yea, rise again”] – the words themselves are sufficient commentary. ‘And,’ cried Mahler, ‘I absolutely refuse to give another syllable of explanation! The increasing tension, working up to the final climax, is so tremendous that I don’t know myself, now that it is over, how I ever came to write it.’

Mahler subsequently refined this scenario in letters to other friends and, notably, for a Dresden audience at a 1901 performance. He grew mistrustful of such programs for his music. Nevertheless, the passion that Bauer-Lechner recalled in such detail provide a fascinating window into his concept of the Second Symphony at the time of its first complete version.

Instrumentation: Mahler’s orchestra for the Second Symphony consists of four flutes (third and fourth doubling piccolo), four oboes (third and fourth doubling English horn), three clarinets in B-flat, bass clarinet, two clarinets in E-flat, four bassoons, contrabassoon, six horns plus four additional offstage horns, eight trumpets (two of which only play offstage), four trombones, contrabass tuba, organ, two sets of timpani, bass drum, cymbals, two tam tams, triangle, snare drum, glockenspiel, chimes, two harps, soprano and mezzo-soprano soloists, mixed chorus and strings.