Symphony No. 1 in D major

Gustav Mahler revised and reworked his first symphony over a span of 15 years, more than he did with any of his other symphonies. He incorporated previous works of his own such as music from his love songs, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), and incidental music he wrote for Joseph Victor von Scheffel’s production, Der Trompeter von Säkkingen. He drew inspiration from popular and familiar sounds, imagery, and themes, including a birdsong at dawn, yodeling, Ländler (folkdance), café music, a children’s round, military fanfares, funeral marches, and more. The symphony was not well-received in its early days, in part because his use of these familiar elements in distorted and unconventional ways was offensive to listeners of the time. 

Mahler himself struggled to feel content with it as a completed work. He could not decide whether it was a symphonic poem, a tone poem in symphonic form, a program symphony, or simply a symphony. At its 1889 world premiere with the Budapest Philharmonic, Mahler unveiled it as a Symphonic Poem in Two Parts. In this form, it consisted of five movements that Mahler described as spring, happy daydreams, and a wedding procession (Part 1), and a funeral march and hard-won progress to spiritual victory (Part 2). In program notes following its premier, Mahler titled the work “Titan” after the novel by Jean Paul Friedrich Richter, although he insisted the work had no association with the book and that the title was instead intended to help the audience, as he explained to a critic, “…at one time my friends persuaded me to provide a kind of program for the D Major Symphony in order to make it easier to understand; therefore, I had thought up this title and explanatory material after the actual composition.” He dropped the title after the first two performances and was said to have preferred not to have program notes or titles that would influence the audience’s listening. The second movement of the Symphonic Poem in Two Parts, a piece called Blumine, was also removed, and the symphony took its final four-movement form by the time it had its US premiere on December 16, 1909, at the New York Philharmonic.

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Next to the tempo indication of Langsam, schleppend, are also the words, Wie ein Näturlaut – “like a sound of nature.” This direction characterizes the opening of Mahler’s Symphony, as we are slowly introduced to sounds that evoke nature waking from a slumber. The strings start the first movement with a seven-octave drone on A, before the woodwinds establish a descending fourth motif that is present throughout the rest of the symphony. The end of a tense, yet pensive introductory section is marked by “cuckoo” calls in the clarinet, which develops into the main, folksy theme of the movement, which Mahler borrows from his Lied (art song), Ging heut’ Morgen über’s Feld (Went this morning across the field). Following sonata-allegro form, this theme is repeated and developed, and new themes are added, including another bird call. The development gradually turns into a sinister darkness that foreshadows the fourth movement, but ultimately returns to recapitulate the pleasant main theme in the home key of D major. Mahler ends with a witty, quick-paced coda, which he is said to have described with the depiction, “My hero breaks out in laughter and runs away.”

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The second movement is Mahler’s take on the minuet and trio, or A-B-A dance form. Mahler replaces the traditional minuet with a Ländler, a folk dance in 3/4 time from his native Austria, which offers a light and rustic contrast to the expansive first movement. In the dominant key of A major, the movement begins with the low strings establishing a dance-like bass line with descending major fourths borrowed from the first movement. After the violins add their own repeated ‘whooping’ motif, the woodwinds quickly enter with the joyful main theme of the Ländler. Mahler continues to develop and restate this theme (watch for the horns and woodwinds lifting their bells during key moments) until the section accelerates to a rousing finish. A solo horn signals the beginning of a calmer, lyrical trio, which takes on the form of a slower waltz with thinner orchestration. Mahler hints at the Ländler theme at the end of the trio, and the solo horn re-enters to signal the recapitulation of the exciting opening section, which brings the movement to a ringing close.

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The funeral theme of the third movement shook early audiences most. Mahler attributed the inspiration for this movement to a nineteenth-century woodcut, The Hunter’s Funeral Procession by Moritz von Schwind. The use of a familiar children’s tune, Frère Jacques (Bruder Martin), spun in a dark, minor key and distorted and woven into a heavy, somber funeral march, left audiences feeling unnerved. Most listeners will instantly recognize the children’s round as the movement opens with it as a melancholic double bass solo. What follows is an unusual mix of a dirge, parodic dance music (played by the oboes and trumpets over the bass drum), and a sweet and delicate Wayfarer song layered in the strings, harp, and woodwinds. The sadness mixed with parody creates a dark and intriguing experience before leading into the symphony’s final movement.

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The fourth movement opens with a “flash of lightning from a dark cloud; it is the outcry of a wounded heart,” described Mahler, jolting the audience out of the lull of the end of the previous movement and immediately thrusting listeners into the fury of conflict between the hero and darkness. The struggle is heard in the layered textures of counterpoint throughout the movement; two four-note motifs, one ascending and the other descending, battle with one another in intense agitation. The symphony’s key of D major, not heard since the first movement, reappears, as Mahler explained, “as if it had fallen from heaven, as if it had come from another world.” Material from the first movement re-emerges and the listener is taken back to the opening themes of the symphony. The final battle that follows ultimately ends in victory with the horns rising and playing a triumphant chorale reminiscent of Händel’s “And he shall reign.” For a work that took years to shape and bring to its final form, the exaltation of the finale is a fitting closure and this symphony and its hero emerge as victorious after all.  – Gabriela Angeles-Paredes and Jennifer Reid

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