Mahler: The Third Symphony

"...nature hides within itself everything that is frightful, great, and also lovely (which is exactly what I wanted to express in the entire work, in a sort of evolutionary development) … It always strikes me as odd that most people, when they speak of ‘nature', think only of flowers, little birds and woodsy smells, no one knows the god Dionysus, the great Pan .” Mahler

In the summer of 1894, Gustav Mahler hired Franz Lösch to build a 'composing hut' on the shore of the Attersee in Steinbach, Austria. Many years later, Lösch recalled to an interviewer why Mahler was so keen for his häuschen (little house):

"[Mahler] would always say: the lake had its own language, the lake talked to him. From up at the inn he couldn't hear it, so he needed to have a little house right by the shore. When he heard the lake, he composed more easily, and the compositions flowed fully formed from his head."

That Mahler listened to what the lake told him should come as no surprise to those familiar with the most expansive work he created in his hut on the shore. Mahler intended this opus, his third symphony, to contain no less than the totality of existence--from the world of nature to that of the spirit. And so, during the summers of 1895 - 96, Mahler sat by his lake and wrote something "the like of which the world has never yet heard."


By the end of the summer of 1895 Mahler had sketched six of seven planned movements, including a closing section based on a song he had written in 1892, Das himmlische Leben (The Heavenly Life). This had been inspired by the poetry cycle, Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), to which Mahler would turn time and again for inspiration throughout his composing life. He imagined the movements as steps in a chain to eternity, and in keeping with his 'conversation' with the lake, named them as conversations with different parts of nature: flowers, animals, man. However, by the summer of 1896, as he worked on the huge first movement, he realized that the heavenly life section no longer fit musically as a finale. He set that movement aside, using it later as the finale to his Symphony No. 4. Now he had a six-movement work with sections titled:

1. Pan Awakes. Summer Comes Marching In (Bacchic Procession). 2. What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me. 3. What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me. 4. What Humanity Tells Me. 5. What the Angels Tell Me. 6. What Love Tells Me.

"Just imagine," he wrote that summer to soprano Anna von Mildenburg (with whom he had begun a stormy affair earlier that year), "a work of such magnitude that it actually mirrors the whole world." Yet, as he had done with previous compositions, in the end he eschewed programmatic titles, and in its first public performance in Krefeld in 1902 the symphony appeared with just tempo markings for each of the movement titles. As Mahler wrote to critic Max Kalbeck, "No music is worth anything if first you have to tell the listener what experience lies behind it and what he is supposed to experience in it." And without the titles, the music speaks to each listener in its own way. Arnold Schoenberg wrote to Mahler after hearing the symphony in Vienna in 1904: "I felt the struggle for illusions; I felt the pain of one disillusioned; I saw the forces of evil and good contending; I saw a man in a torment of emotion exerting himself to gain inner harmony. I sensed a human being, a drama, truth, the most ruthless truth!"

Such a description might seem melodramatic until one turns to the actual music. The first movement, marked Kraftig. Entschieden (Strongly. Confidently) lasts anywhere from 30 to 40 minutes in performance, roughly one-third of the entire symphony's length and one of the longest single movements in all symphonic music. In its way it summarizes all of the musical ideas of the rest of the symphony, but at the beginning instead of the end, as if Mahler is giving us an outline by which we can understand the rest of the piece. Pan awakens with stormy, martial brass and a dark trombone solo over brooding drumbeats, in contrast with the twittering of woodwinds and cheerful or swaggering marches. Light and dark contend, with despairing musical cries pitted against bright trumpets or horn flourishes, and the light of summer is in the end brilliantly victorious.

Movement two, a minuet (Tempo di Menuetto), was originally named Blumenstück (Flower piece) by Mahler, and he called it "the most carefree thing that I have ever written--as carefree as only flowers are. It all sways and waves in the air ... like flowers bending on their stems in the wind." A solo oboe introduces the theme, commented on by clarinet and flute, and the flowers dance over a stately pizzicato in the lower strings. Even during the faster trio section, the piece never loses its sense of delicacy.

Mahler based portions of the third movement, marked Comodo. Scherzando. Ohne Hast (Moving. Scherzo-like. Without haste), on another song he had written circa 1890, Ablösung im Sommer (Relief in Summer). This song describes waiting for the nightingale to sing, after the cuckoo has finished (or perished). An offstage posthorn cries an evening fanfare, then takes up the nightingale's song, as divided high strings sound the quietest of accompaniments. A tender tune for strings and then horns is interrupted by a brief reference to the 'great summons / final judgment' of Mahler's second symphony, then a peppy coda reminds us that this is, after all, the symphony's scherzo.

We move from evening to darkest night in the fourth movement, Sehr langsam. Misterioso. Durchaus ppp (Very slow. Mysterious. Pianissimo throughout). At the risk of rousing Mahler's ire, one recalls that this section was "What Humanity Tells Me," and fittingly we now hear a human voice, an alto solo, for the first time. The poem is Friedrich Nietzsche's "Midnight Song," from Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra). The eleven lines of the poem are meant to be spoken--or, in this case, sung--between each toll of the bell at midnight. Like the dynamics, the harmony is relatively static, built almost entirely over a pedal D, with the exception of the framing A chords at beginning and end, and the haunting section with solo violin for "Lust tiefer noch als Herzeleid" (Joy deeper still than heartbreak).

O Man! Take heed!

What says the deep midnight?

"I slept, I slept—,

from a deep dream have I awoken:—

the world is deep,

and deeper than the day has thought.

Deep is its pain—,

joy—deeper still than heartache.

Pain says: Pass away!

But all joy

seeks eternity—,

—seeks deep, deep eternity!"

From midnight bells Mahler segues immediately to joyous bells and heavenly choirs (performed by both women's and boy's choruses). Marked Lustig im Tempo und kech im Ausdruck (Cheerful in tempo and bold in expression), it shines with the brilliance of a heavenly dawn. This song, Es sungen drei Engel (Three Angels Were Singing), also stems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn. The movement briefly moves into minor as the speaker admits his sins ("Ich hab' übertreten die zehen Gebot," I have trespassed against the Ten Commandments). Violins are silent, highlighting the bright tones of voice, brass and woodwinds.

Three angels sang a sweet song,

with blessed joy it rang in heaven.

They shouted too for joy

that Peter was free from sin!

And as Lord Jesus sat at the table

with his twelve disciples and ate the evening meal,

Lord Jesus said: "Why do you stand here?

When I look at you, you are weeping!"

"And should I not weep, kind God?

I have violated the ten commandments!

I wander and weep bitterly!

O come and take pity on me!"

"If you have violated the ten commandments,

then fall on your knees and pray to God!

Love only God for all time!

So will you gain heavenly joy."

The heavenly joy is a blessed city,

the heavenly joy that has no end!

The heavenly joy was granted to Peter

through Jesus, and to all mankind for eternal bliss.

The final movement, Langsam. Ruhevoll. Empfunden (Slow. Peaceful. Deeply felt), begins with a heartbreakingly lyrical melody for strings alone. The rest of the instruments join in one by one--an oboe, a horn, a flute--as we move slowly but inexorably to the climax. Although one might hear the ache of romantic love (and surely Mahler, who wanted to encompass the world, intended this too), Mahler's original title, "What Love Tells Me," refers to Christian love, and his draft is marked, "Behold my wounds! Let not one soul be lost!" As he later wrote, "I could almost call this movement 'What God tells me.'" The adagio builds to a grand, expansive climax, never losing its broad, slow pace but achieving, as Mahler instructs, "a grand noble, tone" with brass chorale and timpani. Thus Mahler completes his world-in-a-symphony, with reverence and awe.

Barbara Heninger April 6, 2008 (Additional material: The Mahlerian)

Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 3 (Lucerne Festival Orcherstra, Claudio Abbado)