The Symphony No. 2 in C minor by Gustav Mahler, known as the Resurrection Symphony, was written between 1888 and 1894, and first performed in 1895. This symphony was one of Mahler's most popular and successful works during his lifetime. It was his first major work that established his lifelong view of the beauty of afterlife and resurrection. In this large work, the composer further developed the creativity of "sound of the distance" and creating a "world of its own", aspects already seen in his First Symphony. The work has a duration of 80 to 90 minutes, and is conventionally labelled as being in the key of Cminor; the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians labels the work's tonality as C minor–E♭ major.[1] It was voted the fifth-greatest symphony of all time in a survey of conductors carried out by the BBC Music Magazine.[2]
Mahler completed what would become the first movement of the symphony in 1888 as a single-movement symphonic poem called Totenfeier (Funeral Rites). Some sketches for the second movement also date from that year. Mahler wavered five years on whether to make Totenfeier the opening movement of a symphony, although his manuscript does label it as a symphony. In 1893, he composed the second and third movements.[3] The finale was the problem. While thoroughly aware he was inviting comparison with Beethoven's Symphony No. 9—both symphonies use a chorus as the centerpiece of a final movement which begins with references to and is much longer than those preceding it—Mahler knew he wanted a vocal final movement. Finding the right text for this movement proved long and perplexing.[4]
When Mahler took up his appointment at the Hamburg Opera in 1891, he found the other important conductor there to be Hans von Bülow, who was in charge of the city's symphony concerts. Bülow, not known for his kindness, was impressed by Mahler. His support was not diminished by his failure to like or understand Totenfeier when Mahler played it for him on the piano. Bülow told Mahler that Totenfeier made Tristan und Isolde sound to him like a Haydn symphony. As Bülow's health worsened, Mahler substituted for him. Bülow's death in 1894 greatly affected Mahler. At the funeral, Mahler heard a setting of Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock's poem "Die Auferstehung"[de] (The Resurrection), where the dictum calls out "Rise again, yes, you shall rise again / My dust".
"It struck me like lightning, this thing," he wrote to conductor Anton Seidl, "and everything was revealed to me clear and plain." Mahler used the first two verses of Klopstock's hymn, then added verses of his own that dealt more explicitly with redemption and resurrection.[5] He finished the finale and revised the orchestration of the first movement in 1894, then inserted the song "Urlicht" (Primal Light) as the penultimate movement. This song was probably written in 1892 or 1893.[3]
Autograph manuscript of the symphony
Mahler initially devised a narrative programme (actually several variant versions) for the work, which he showed to a number of friends (including Natalie Bauer-Lechner and Max Marschalk[de]). He even had one of these versions printed in the program book at the premiere in Dresden on 20 December 1901. In this programme, the first movement represents a funeral and asks questions such as "Is there life after death?"; the second movement is a remembrance of happy times in the life of the deceased; the third movement represents a view of life as meaningless activity; the fourth movement is a wish for release from life without meaning; and the fifth movement – after a return of the doubts of the third movement and the questions of the first – ends with a fervent hope for everlasting, transcendent renewal, a theme that Mahler would ultimately transfigure into the music of Das Lied von der Erde.[6] As generally happened, Mahler later withdrew all versions of the programme from circulation.
Publication
The work was first published in 1897 by Friedrich Hofmeister. The rights were transferred to Josef Weinberger[de] shortly thereafter, and finally to Universal Edition, which released a second edition in 1910. A third edition was published in 1952, and a fourth, critical edition in 1970, both by Universal Edition. As part of the new complete critical edition of Mahler's symphonies being undertaken by the Gustav Mahler Society, a new critical edition of the Second Symphony was produced as a joint venture between Universal Edition and the Kaplan Foundation. Its world premiere performance was given on 18 October 2005 at the Royal Albert Hall in London with Gilbert Kaplan conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.[7]
Reproductions of earlier editions have been released by Dover and by Boosey & Hawkes. The Kaplan Foundation published an extensive facsimile edition with additional materials in 1986.[8] 1989 saw the publication of an arrangement by Bruno Walter for piano four hands.[9]
Instrumentation
The symphony is scored for large orchestra, consisting of the following instruments.
The first movement is marked Mit durchaus ernstem und feierlichem Ausdruck (With complete gravity and solemnity of expression). It is written in C minor, but passes through a number of different moods and resembles a funeral march.
Mahler uses a somewhat modified tonal framework for the movement. The secondary theme, first presented in E major (enharmonic of F♭ major, Neapolitan of E♭),[10] begins its second statement in C major, a key in which it is not expected until the recapitulation.
The statement in the recapitulation, coincidentally, is in the original E major (F♭ major). The eventual goal of the symphony, E-flat major, is briefly hinted at after rehearsal 17, with a theme in the trumpets that returns in the finale.
Following this movement, Mahler calls in the score for a gap of five minutes before the second movement. This pause is rarely observed today. Often conductors will meet Mahler half way, pausing for a few minutes while the audience takes a breather and settles down and the orchestra retunes in preparation for the rest of the piece. Julius Buths received this instruction from Mahler personally, prior to a 1903 performance in Düsseldorf;[11] however, he chose instead to place the long pause between the fourth and fifth movements, for which Mahler congratulated him on his insight, sensitivity, and daring to go against his stated wishes.[12]
A practical way of following Mahler's original indication is to have the two soloists and the chorus enter the stage only after the first movement. This creates a natural separation between the first movement and the rest of the symphony and also saves the singers more than twenty minutes of sitting on stage. One can get an idea of Mahler's intention through a comparison with his Symphony No. 3, where – due to the length of the piece – a real break after the first movement (as between two acts of an opera) is highly recommended, and indeed indicated by Mahler. As in the case of Symphony No. 2, this is not always observed nowadays.
The second movement is marked Sehr gemächlich. Nie eilen. (Very leisurely. Never rush.) It is a delicate Ländler in A♭ major.
It has two contrasting sections of slightly darker music.
This slow movement itself is contrasting to the two adjacent movements. Structurally, it is one of the simplest movements in Mahler's whole output. It is the remembrance of the joyful times in the life of the deceased.
The third movement is a scherzo in C minor. It opens with two strong, short timpani strokes.
It is followed by two softer strokes and then followed by even softer strokes that provide the tempo to this movement, which includes references to Jewish folk music.
Mahler quoted Hans Rott's Symphony No.1 third movement in this scherzo.
Mahler called the climax of the movement, a blistering B♭m/C chord in triple-forte which occurs near the end, sometimes a "cry of despair", and sometimes a "death shriek".
The movement is based on Mahler's setting of "Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt" from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which Mahler composed almost concurrently; in correspondence, Mahler expressed amusement that his sinuous musical setting could imply St. Anthony of Padua was himself drunk as he preached to the fish.[13]
In 1967–68, the movement was used by Luciano Berio for the third movement of his Sinfonia, where it is used as the framework for constructing a musical collage of works from throughout the Western classical tradition.
The fourth movement, "Urlicht" (Primal Light) is marked Sehr feierlich, aber schlicht (Very solemn, but simple). It is a Wunderhorn song, sung by an alto, which serves as an introduction to the Finale. The song, set in the remote key of D♭ major, illustrates the longing for relief from worldly woes, leading without a break to the response in the Finale.
The finale is the longest movement, typically lasting over half an hour. It is divided into two large parts, the second of which begins with the entry of the chorus and whose form is governed by the text of this movement. The first part is instrumental, and very episodic, containing a wide variety of moods, tempi and keys, with much of the material based on what has been heard in the previous movements, although it also loosely follows sonata principles. New themes introduced are used repeatedly and altered.
The movement opens with a long introduction, beginning with the "cry of despair" that was the climax of the third movement, followed by the quiet presentation of a theme (another quotation from Hans Rott's Symphony No.1) which reappears as structural music in the choral section.
This is followed by a call in the offstage horns.
The first theme group reiterates the Dies irae theme from the first movement and then introduces the "resurrection" theme to which the chorus will sing their first words, and finally a fanfare.
The second theme is a long orchestral recitative, which provides the music for the alto solo in the choral section.
The exposition concludes with a restatement of the first theme group. This long opening section serves to introduce a number of themes, which will become important in the choral part of the finale.
The development section is what Mahler calls the "march of the dead". It begins with two long drum rolls, which include the use of the gongs. In addition to developing the Dies irae and resurrection themes and motives from the opening cry of despair, this section also states, episodically, a number of other themes, based on earlier material. The recapitulation overlaps with the march, and only brief statements of the first theme group are restated. The orchestral recitative is fully recapitulated, and is accompanied this time by offstage interruptions from a band of brass and percussion (which some had explained as the apocalypse's seven trumpets). This builds to a climax, which leads into a restatement of the opening introductory section. The horn call is expanded into Mahler's "Great Summons", a transition into the choral section.
Tonally, this first large part, the instrumental half of the movement, is organized in F minor. After the introduction, which recalls two keys from earlier movements, the first theme group is presented wholly in F minor, and the second theme group in the subdominant, B♭ minor. The restatement of the first theme group occurs in the dominant, C major. The development explores a number of keys, including the mediant, A♭ major, and the parallel major, F major. Unlike the first movement, the second theme is recapitulated as expected in the tonic key. The restatement of the introduction is thematically and tonally a transition to the second large part, moving from C♯ minor to the parallel D♭ major — the dominant of F♯ minor — in which the Great Summons is stated. The Epiphany comes in, played by the flute, in a high register, and featuring trumpets, that play offstage. The choral section begins in G♭ major.
The chorus comes in quietly a little past the halfway point of the movement.
The choral section is organized primarily by the text, using musical material from earlier in the movement. (The B♭ below the bass clef occurs four times in the choral bass part: three at the chorus' hushed entrance and again on the words "Hör' auf zu beben". It is the lowest vocal note in standard classical repertoire. Mahler instructs basses incapable of singing the note remain silent rather than sing the note an octave higher.) Each of the first two verses is followed by an instrumental interlude; the alto and soprano solos, "O Glaube", based on the recitative melody, precede the fourth verse, sung by the chorus; and the fifth verse is a duet for the two soloists.
The opening two verses are presented in G♭ major, the solos and the fourth verse in B♭ minor (the key in which the recitative was originally stated), and the duet in A♭ major. The goal of the symphony, E♭ major, the relative major of the opening C minor, is achieved when the chorus picks up the words from the duet, "Mit Flügeln", although after eight measures the music gravitates to G major (but never cadences on it).
E♭ suddenly reenters with the text "Sterben werd' ich um zu leben," and a proper cadence finally occurs on the downbeat of the final verse, with the entrance of the heretofore silent organ (marked volles Werk, full organ) and with the choir instructed to sing mit höchster Kraft (with highest power). The instrumental coda is in this ultimate key as well, and is accompanied by the tolling of deep bells. Mahler went so far as to purchase actual church bells for performances, finding all other means of achieving this sound unsatisfactory. Mahler wrote of this movement: "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."[14]
Text
Note: This text has been translated from the original German text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn to English on a very literal and line-for-line basis, without regard for the preservation of meter or rhyming patterns.
Fourth movement
Urlicht O Röschen rot! Der Mensch liegt in größter Not! Der Mensch liegt in größter Pein! Je lieber möcht' ich im Himmel sein.
Da kam ich auf einen breiten Weg: Da kam ein Engelein und wollt' mich abweisen. Ach nein! Ich ließ mich nicht abweisen! Ich bin von Gott und will wieder zu Gott! Der liebe Gott wird mir ein Lichtchen geben, wird leuchten mir bis in das ewig selig Leben! —Des Knaben Wunderhorn
Primeval Light O little red rose! Man lies in greatest need! Man lies in greatest pain! How I would rather be in heaven.
There came I upon a broad path when came a little angel and wanted to turn me away. Ah no! I would not let myself be turned away! I am from God and shall return to God! The loving God will grant me a little light, Which will light me into that eternal blissful life!
Fifth movement
Note: The first eight lines were taken from the poem "Die Auferstehung" by Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock.[15] Mahler omitted the final four lines of this poem and wrote the rest himself (beginning at "O glaube").
Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst du, mein Staub, nach kurzer Ruh'! Unsterblich Leben! Unsterblich Leben will der dich rief dir geben!
Wieder aufzublüh'n wirst du gesät! Der Herr der Ernte geht und sammelt Garben uns ein, die starben! —Friedrich Klopstock
O glaube, mein Herz, o glaube: es geht dir nichts verloren! Dein ist, ja dein, was du gesehnt, dein, was du geliebt, was du gestritten!
O glaube, du warst nicht umsonst geboren! Hast nicht umsonst gelebt, gelitten!
Was entstanden ist, das muss vergehen! Was vergangen, aufersteh’n! Hör' auf zu beben! Bereite dich zu leben!
O Schmerz! Du Alldurchdringer! Dir bin ich entrungen! O Tod! Du Allbezwinger! Nun bist du bezwungen!
Mit Flügeln, die ich mir errungen, in heißem Liebesstreben, werd' ich entschweben zum Licht, zu dem kein Aug' gedrungen!
Sterben werd' ich, um zu leben!
Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst du mein Herz, in einem Nu! Was du geschlagen zu Gott wird es dich tragen! —Gustav Mahler
Rise again, yes, rise again, Will you, my dust, after a brief rest! Immortal life! Immortal life Will he who called you, give you.
You are sown to bloom again! The lord of the harvest goes And gathers sheaves, Us, who have died. O believe, my heart, O believe: Nothing is lost to you! Yours, yes yours, is what you desired Yours, what you have loved What you have fought for!
O believe, You were not born for nothing! Have not lived for nothing, Nor suffered!
What was created Must perish; What perished, rise again! Cease from trembling! Prepare yourself to live!
O Pain, you piercer of all things, From you, I have been wrested! O Death, you conqueror of all things, Now, are you conquered!
With wings which I have won for myself, In love's fierce striving, I shall soar upwards To the light which no eye has penetrated!
I shall die in order to live.
Rise again, yes, rise again, Will you, my heart, in an instant! What you have conquered, To God shall it carry you!
Notable premieres
World premiere (first three movements only): 4 March 1895, Berlin, with the composer conducting the Berlin Philharmonic.[16]
World premiere (complete): 13 December 1895, Berlin, conducted by the composer.[17]
Belgian premiere: 6 March 1898, Liège, 'Nouveaux Concerts', conducted by Sylvain Dupuis. This was the first performance outside Germany.[18]
The original manuscript score was given by Mahler's widow to conductor Willem Mengelberg at a 1920 Mahler festival given by Mengelberg and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It was bought from the Mengelberg Foundation in 1984 by entrepreneur Gilbert Kaplan, who specialised in conducting the symphony as an amateur.[8]
In 2016 the score was auctioned at Sotheby's of London for £4.5million, the highest price ever attained for an auctioned musical manuscript.[19] The buyer was subsequently revealed to have been Herbert Kloiber[de], an Austrian businessman and trustee of the Cleveland Orchestra, to which he subsequently donated the score. It is the only known handwritten and autographed manuscript of the work in existence.[20] The score is displayed at the Cleveland Museum of Art.[21]
Gustav Mahler was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic 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 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
The Symphony No. 5 by Gustav Mahler was composed in 1901 and 1902, mostly during the summer months at Mahler's holiday cottage at Maiernigg. Among its most distinctive features are the trumpet solo that opens the work with a rhythmic motif similar to the opening of Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 5, the horn solos in the third movement and the frequently performed Adagietto.
The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera in Germany. Although in his letters Mahler almost always referred to the work as a symphony, the first two performances described it as a symphonic poem and as a tone poem in symphonic form, respectively. The work was premièred at the Vigadó Concert Hall in Budapest, Hungary, in 1889, but was not well-received. Mahler made some major revisions for the second performance, given at Hamburg, Germany, in October 1893; further alterations were made in the years prior to the first publication, in late 1898. Some modern performances and recordings give the work the title Titan, despite the fact that Mahler only used this label for the second and third performances, and never after the work had reached its definitive four-movement form in 1896.
The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. As it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is normally presented with far fewer than a thousand performers and the composer disapproved of the name. The work was composed in a single inspired burst at his Maiernigg villa in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. The last of Mahler's works that was premiered in his lifetime, the symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted the Munich Philharmonic in its first performance, in Munich, on 12 September 1910.
The Symphony No. 4 in G major by Gustav Mahler was composed from 1899 to 1900, though it incorporates a song originally written in 1892. That song, "Das himmlische Leben", presents a child's vision of heaven and is sung by a soprano in the symphony's Finale. Both smaller in orchestration and shorter in length than Mahler's earlier symphonies, the Fourth Symphony was initially planned to be in six movements, alternating between three instrumental and three vocal movements. The symphony's final form—begun in July 1899 at Bad Aussee and completed in August 1900 at Maiernigg—retains only one vocal movement and is in four movements: Bedächtig, nicht eilen ; In gemächlicher Bewegung, ohne Hast ; Ruhevoll,poco adagio ; and Sehr behaglich.
The Symphony No. 7 by Gustav Mahler is a symphony in five movements composed in 1904–05, sometimes referred to by the title Song of the Night, which was not the composer's own designation. Although the symphony is often described as being in the key of E minor, its tonal scheme is more complicated. The symphony's first movement moves from B minor (introduction) to E minor, and the work ends with a rondo finale in C major. Thus, as Dika Newlin has pointed out, "in this symphony Mahler returns to the ideal of 'progressive tonality' which he had abandoned in the Sixth". The complexity of the work's tonal scheme was analysed in terms of "interlocking structures" by Graham George.
The Symphony No. 6 in A minor by Gustav Mahler is a symphony in four movements, composed in 1903 and 1904, with revisions from 1906. It is sometimes nicknamed the Tragic ("Tragische"), though the origin of the name is unclear.
The Symphony No. 3 in D minor by Gustav Mahler was written in sketch beginning in 1893, composed primarily in 1895, and took final form in 1896. Consisting of six movements, it is Mahler's longest composition and is the longest symphony in the standard repertoire, with a typical performance lasting around 95 to 110 minutes. It was voted one of the ten greatest symphonies of all time in a survey of conductors carried out by the BBC Music Magazine.
The Symphony No. 9 by Gustav Mahler was written between 1908 and 1909, and was the last symphony that he completed. A typical performance takes about 75 to 90 minutes. A survey of conductors voted Mahler's Symphony No. 9 the fourth greatest symphony of all time in a ballot conducted by BBC Music Magazine in 2016. As in the case of his earlier Das Lied von der Erde, Mahler did not live to see his Symphony No. 9 performed.
Das Lied von der Erde is an orchestral song cycle for two voices and orchestra written by Gustav Mahler between 1908 and 1909. Described as a symphony when published, it comprises six songs for two singers who alternate movements. Mahler specified that the two singers should be a tenor and an alto, or else a tenor and a baritone if an alto is not available.
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen is a song cycle by Gustav Mahler on his own texts. The cycle of four lieder for medium voice was written around 1884–85 in the wake of Mahler's unhappy love for soprano Johanna Richter, whom he met as the conductor of the opera house in Kassel, Germany, and orchestrated and revised in the 1890s.
The Rückert-Lieder is a collection of five Lieder for voice and orchestra or piano by Gustav Mahler, based on poems written by Friedrich Rückert. Four of the songs were written in the summer of 1901 at Maiernigg, with one completed in the summer of 1902, also in Maiernigg. Both smaller in orchestration and briefer than Mahler's previous Des Knaben Wunderhorn settings, the collection marked a change of style from the childlike, often satirical Wunderhorn settings, to a more lyrical, contrapuntal style. The collection is often linked with the Kindertotenlieder, Mahler's other settings of Rückert's poetry, and with the 5th Symphony, and both were composed concurrently with the collection and contain subtle references to the Rückert-Lieder.
G-flat major is a major scale based on G♭, consisting of the pitches G♭, A♭, B♭, C♭, D♭, E♭, and F. Its key signature has six flats.
Des Knaben Wunderhorn is a series of songs with music by Gustav Mahler, set either for voice and piano, or for voice and orchestra, based on texts of German folk poems chosen from a collection of the same name assembled by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano and published by them, in heavily redacted form, between 1805 and 1808.
The Fantasy for piano, vocal soloists, mixed chorus, and orchestra, Op. 80, usually called the Choral Fantasy, was composed in 1808 by then 38-year-old Ludwig van Beethoven.
The Chinese University of Hong Kong Chorus is founded by a group of students of the Chinese University of Hong Kong in December 1972.
Oskar Fried was a German conductor and composer. He was known as a great admirer of Gustav Mahler, whose works he performed many times throughout his life. Fried was also the first conductor to record a Mahler symphony. He held the distinction of being the first foreign conductor to perform in Russia after the Bolshevik Revolution (1922). He eventually left his homeland in 1933 to work in the Soviet Union after the political rise of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party, and became a Soviet citizen in 1940.
The Symphonisches Präludium in C minor, WAB 332 is an orchestral composition by Anton Bruckner or his entourage, composed in 1876. The work was discovered shortly after World War II. Heinrich Tschuppik, who found the orchestral score of the work in the estate of Bruckner's pupil Rudolf Krzyzanowski, attributed the authorship to Bruckner. Thirty years later, Mahler scholar Paul Banks, who knew only a four-stave reduction of the work, proposed that the work might be attributed to Mahler. While the exact circumstances of the composition of this Prelude have not been determined, it is certain to have been composed within the circle of Bruckner and his students at the Vienna Conservatory of Music. Based on the original orchestral score, it seems likely that the work was at least sketched by Bruckner, possibly as an exercise in orchestration for Krzyzanowski.
↑ Schram, Albert-George. Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 2 (C minor): A Historical Background and Analysis. Thesis (D.Mus. Arts) University of Washington, 1985.
↑ Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Recollections of Gustav Mahler, trans. Dika Newlin, ed. Peter Franklin (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 43–44.
↑ Klopstock's poem "Die Auferstehung" is not, as is commonly believed, one of his Oden, but rather from the 1758 collection Geistliche Lieder (Spiritual Songs).
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