\u201cI think it\u2019s helpful to be reminded that Mahler’s music was coming\u00a0rom a very vulnerable place for him \u2026 almost like an eternal child looking at the big world,\u201d N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin says. Nowhere is this disarming blend of innocence and worldliness more evident than in Mahler\u2019s popular and perhaps most accessible symphony, the Fourth\u2014from the earthy humor of the first movement, with its recurring sleigh-bell motif, to the macabre dance of death led by an \u201cout-of-tune\u201d solo violin, and the winsome vocal finale that describes a child\u2019s beatific vision of the afterlife. Mahler reveled in such jarring juxtapositions, even if audiences and critics often deplored them. Elements of \u201chigh\u201d and \u201clow\u201d culture mingle promiscuously in the sound worlds of his symphonies, as they did on the streets of Vienna. In No. 1, for example, Mahler transforms the jaunty nursery tune \u201cFr\u00e8re Jacques\u201d into a slow, ironic funeral march and leavens it with reminiscences of Bohemian musicians he heard in his youth. The central three movements of the Seventh Symphony\u2014an almost cartoonishly spooky scherzo\u00a0flanked by a pair of dream-like \u201cNight Music\u201d episodes\u2014have a schizophrenic, stream-of-consciousness character that borders on the surreal.<\/p>\n
Mahler, whose busy conducting and administrative career monopolized his time during the concert season, wrote most of his music during summer vacations in \u201ccomposing huts\u201d tucked away in rural retreats far from the city\u2019s frenzied crowds.<\/p>\n
Not surprisingly, nature imagery is a recurring motif in his symphonies, from the primal, spring-like idyll of the First to the bleaker emotional landscapes of the Sixth and Ninth. What the composer called nature\u2019s \u201cpolyphony\u201d\u2014manifest in \u201cthe singing of thousands of birds, in the howling of the storm, the lapping of the waves, or the crackling of the fire\u201d\u2014was a lifelong source of thematic material. \u201cThrough his music, the human being is surrounded by every level of nature,\u201d N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin explains, \u201cfrom the rocks to the plants to the animals to other humans.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Gustav Mahler, signed by Alma Mahler<\/p>\n
For Mahler, the natural world offered not only a refuge from the daily grind, but also a window onto the subconscious. Of his monumental Third Symphony, he wrote: \u201cAll of nature speaks in it, telling deep secrets that one might guess only in a dream!\u201d On a more cosmic level, nature served as a conduit for the rich vein of spirituality that Mahler tapped in the Second, or \u201cResurrection,\u201d Symphony. \u201cPeople still think that nature stands only on the surface,\u201d he wrote, \u201cbut those who, in front of nature, are not impressed by its infinite mystery, by its divinity that we can only sense but not understand or penetrate\u2014they cannot approach it! A trace of this infinity, which is in nature, must be found in every work of art, like are flection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Perhaps the most overtly spiritual of Mahler\u2019s symphonies is the Eighth, the so-called \u201cSymphony of a Thousand.\u201d (The nickname was coined by the promoter of the 1910 Munich premiere; Mahler detested it but recognized that it was a brilliant marketing ploy.) In this massive symphonic cantata\u2014scored for double chorus, boys\u2019 choir, soloists, and supersized orchestra\u2014the composer returned to the choral forces he employed in the Second, Third, and Fourth symphonies in the hallowed tradition of Beethoven\u2019s Ninth. The Eighth\u2019s unorthodox format\u2014with two parts, as it were \u201cacts,\u201d in place of movements\u2014highlights the operatic strain that runs throughout all of his orchestral music. (Mahler never wrote an opera himself, although he seems to have abandoned a number of operatic projects.)<\/p>\n
But there is no question that Mahler\u2019s conception of the symphonic form was essentially dramatic. According to Bauer-Lechner, as a child he enjoyed inventing stories for his favorite pieces, which he recited to his parents and their friends while playing the piano. Each of his first four symphonies was initially accompanied by a literary program outlining the \u201cplot\u201d of the musical drama. Although he later repudiated such extra musical listening aids, he continued to provide detailed\u2014and often\u00a0contradictory\u2014scenarios for his works in private letters and conversations.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis imagery is so beautiful, yet painful\u2014it encompasses all of these emotions that allows the audience to create their own personal stories as they listen,\u201d N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin says. \u201cIn many ways, film music of today is indebted to composers like Mahler.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 1907, shortly after being diagnosed with the chronic heart condition that led to his death four years later, Mahler came to the United States to guest conduct the Metropolitan Opera. By the time he was appointed principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1909, the intimations of mortality that had long been present in his music were becoming increasingly explicit.<\/p>\n
In his 2020 novella The Last Movement, Austrian novelist Robert Seethaler movingly imagines the ailing maestro sailing into New York harbor: \u201cSitting on the sundeck, Mahler contemplated the meaninglessness of life with a twinge of baleful recognition. Life was little more than a brief exhalation, a breath in the storm of the world, yet he loved it so much that his sadness at the futility of this love almost broke his heart.\u201d<\/p>\n
For N\u00e9zet-S\u00e9guin, it is this dual awareness that is at the heart of Mahler\u2019s enduring appeal. His music speaks \u201cto everyone\u2019s contradictions, dualities, struggles. You know, nobody is certain of anything. If we\u2019re really true to ourselves, we know that as humans we are full of contradictions. And so as we listen to his music, we feel that we\u2019re understood by someone who doesn\u2019t try to pretend that there is only one way to think.”<\/p>\n