Gustav Mahler: Symphony No. 5
Symphony No. 5
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
4 flutes (doubling piccolo), 3 oboes (3rd doubling English horn), 3 clarinets, (3rd doubling bass clarinet), 3 bassoons (3rd doubling contrabassoon), 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, harp, strings
Composed 1902. First performance: 18 October 1904, Cologne, Germany. Gürzenich-Orchester Köln cond. Gustav Mahler.
Part I
I. Trauermarsch
II. Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz
Part II
III. Scherzo
Part III
IV. Adagietto
V. Rondo-Finale
On February 24, 1901, after a long day conducting performances of both Bruckner’s Fifth and The Magic Flute, Mahler fell seriously ill when his hemorrhoids hemorrhaged. The doctor told him that he’d come within minutes of bleeding to death and that he should focus on rest and recovery. A sense of mortality sparked in this man who was already prone to obsession and hypochondria.
After undergoing two uncomfortable surgeries to address his condition, Mahler spent several months recuperating at his mountain villa in Maiernigg. It was here, in his “composing cottage”, that he began to channel his anxieties into the Fifth Symphony. By the end of the summer, the first three movements were complete.
In November, he encountered the beautiful Alma Schindler at a party. The two promptly got into a heated argument about the merits of a Zemlinsky ballet. They were married by March. The newlyweds, pregnant with their first child, relaxed at Maiernigg during a summer of happiness that contrasted starkly with the previous year. By their return to Vienna, Gustav had completed his symphony.
The Fifth Symphony marks a shift to purely instrumental music for Mahler, who spent the beginning of his composition career creating works involving text and voices. Though superficially in five movements, the first two can be viewed as a single movement, making Symphony No. 5 the most traditional work to come from the composer since his First Symphony.
The symphony begins when a trumpet solo introduces a funeral march. This mournful tune is interrupted twice: first by a raucous melody, and then by a calmer, more somber strain. The raucous melody returns as the foundation of the second movement, which continues to develop in intensity as Mahler lays bare his fears and anxieties. This is some of the most anguished music he would ever write, and only the brief appearance of a hymn-like chorale brings any peace to the journey.
In the subsequent scherzo, Mahler strives to look beyond his own struggles and to find hope. “Every note is full with life,” he wrote to a friend, “and the whole thing whirls around in a dance. There is nothing romantic or mystical about it. It is simply the expression of unheard-of energy. It is a human being in the full light of day, in the zenith of life.”
The fourth movement Adagietto is easily the most famous music Mahler ever composed. It also marks the moment in this symphony’s composition when Alma entered Gustav’s life. He composed this movement for her during their courtship, explicitly intending it as a love letter. She later revealed that he included a small poem for her with the score:
How I love you, oh my sun,
I cannot tell you with words.
Only my longing can I exclaim
And my love, and my bliss.
In this music — marked “very slowly” — strings and harp alone deliver a lyrical and passionate melody which segues with the call of a single horn into the finale. Themes from throughout the symphony reappear in intricate counterpoint. Transformed by love, the angst-ridden melodies of the opening movements interact in a joyous celebration of life, and the chorale from the second movement is finally allowed to blossom in triumphant fulfillment of its destiny.
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