In 2005, I had the opportunity to write program notes for a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, at Lincoln Center. I was 20 when I wrote this; it's funny for me, now in 2013, to see how I wrestled with the language, kind of like the symphony itself:
In March, 1888, Gustav Mahler was an ambitious 27 year old man cutting his path in the world. He was reeling from the largest public success he enjoyed until that point, the successful premiere of his completion of Carl Maria von Weber’s opera Die Drei Pintos, and the personal triumph of completing his First Symphony. This tumultuous period in Mahler’s life was also marked by his parents falling into ill health and a secret affair with the wife of Max Weber, (not the economist) the man who asked Mahler finish his grandfather’s work. Working on the completion set Mahler’s creative flame ablaze. In February and March 1888 Mahler, in an inspired fury, completed the sketches for his Symphonic Poem in D Major, in five movements.
Mahler struggled with the concept of his work as absolute or programmatic; unsure of whether he was writing music with a distinct narrative, or music divorced of extra meaning. Mahler chose not to write a program at the premier on November 20th, 1889, although he did give each of the movements a title and divided the symphony in to two parts. The first part was entitled “From the days of youth”, consisting of the first two movements as we know them, called “Spring without end” and, “Under full sail”, with a short andante in between called “Blumine”, which was later dropped. The second part was called “The human comedy”, consisting of the third movement, “Funeral March”, and the fourth movement, “From Hell to Heaven”. At the second performance of the work in Hamburg, in 1893, Mahler retained the titles and added short descriptions for all movements.
Mahler described the third movement as being inspired by a well known woodcut he had seen as a youth entitled “The Huntsman’s Funeral”; an ironic image consisting of the fallen hunter carried by a procession of all the animals of the forest. Mahler underpins this sardonic movement with “Frère Jacques” in the minor mode. Mahler described that he "had found ‘[Frère Jacques]’ not as being gay, as it was always sung, but as rather deeply tragic”. Mahler was a man filled with the rancor of existential angst at the absurdity of death, and a fervent adoration of the natural beauty around him. In the Romantic mould, Mahler was deeply spiritual yet rejected the rigors of organized religion. His philosophy held the seeds of modern thought while firmly grounded in that which came before him. Concerning his first symphony, Mahler wrote to Bruno Walter in 1909 on the NY premiere, “both the ’Funeral March’ and the storm that breaks out immediately afterwards strikes me as burning accusations hurled at the creator.”
The First Symphony’s place in Mahler’s opus is an important one, as one can hear Mahler’s style becoming crystallized. The use of song melodies, folk tunes, rough country dances, all the sounds that Mahler thought were interesting, synthesized around a philosophic framework, form a style that is pervasive throughout all his work, and that is uniquely Mahlerian.
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