cover photo by Sebastian Unrau on Unsplash

I said this was a thing I was going to do, and I’m finally sort of getting around to it.

I came to know Mahler’s symphonies very much out of order. To my recollection, without looking at the order of my (very old) posts or previous articles, I’m almost certain that the first one I tried cracking into was 5, followed by 2, 1, 6, and 3. The fourth was somewhere in there, and then after that I’m pretty sure I did 7, 8, Das Lied, 9, and 10 in order.

Mind you, this was a time when I was brute-forcing my way through getting to ‘know’ classical music, listening to Rachmaninoff’s second and third concertos, or Tchaikovsky’s fifth, or Chopin and Schumann piano pieces just on unabashed repeat, with zero regard for or interest in anything related to sonata form or thematic development, nothing structural apart from what each movement of the piece did, broadly.

What that meant for me was that the inner movements of Mahler’s first were astoundingly, captivatingly, unforgettably vivid, and the outer movements were giant nondescript masses of also very powerful but less approachable music. I have since listened many times to many recordings of this piece, seen it live at least once or twice, and even lectured on it, and my thesis statement about it is that Das Klagende Lied aside (mostly because it’s not a symphony), the ethereal lifting-fog, nature-awakening, sunrise-y, the-day-begins nature of the opening is fitting not only for a symphony but for a first symphony, the dawn of eleven symphonic works that have made up an absolutely enormous part of my musical experience over the past dozen-plus years.

Those terms, by the way, are in no way any reference to any of the programmatic stuff about this piece that the composer (rightfully) later scrapped, and while we’re at it, as much as a Mahler lover might salivate for every morsel of music from the composer’s hand that they can get, Blumine really just doesn’t belong in the symphony, in my opinion. We have it, it’s there, we can listen to it separately, but it feels too much like juvenilia to be included in the final version.

Also, and I KNOW I got into this in the respective articles about these pieces, but there’s a lot to be said for Mahler’s connection to Hans Rott and how much he influenced Mahler in their younger days. Rott gives Mahler a direct connection to Bruckner (and by extension, Wagner), as well as to Brahms, who was apparently disgusted by Rott’s quote of Brahms’ quote of Beethoven nine (which later, I mentioned in one of my articles) seems to appear distortedly as the famous, epic French horn opening of Mahler’s epic (and largest) third symphony.

Mahler’s life was marked, marred, scarred, stained by, infused with death and loss and tragedy, and even in this earliest of his efforts in the form we get reminders of that in the middle movements, in very different ways.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve already digressed to the third symphony.

Also this is now the third time I’ve written about this piece, first here and then here, not including any concert reviews.

So… back to the beginning.

As Mahler’s first symphony goes, as I came to know more of his works, and in the greater context of the later, far more mature pieces, it feels like a warm-up. Mahler was famously self-critical and an incessant reviser of his own work, and it reminds me in a way (but obviously far more enlightened and talented than this) of the way I was sometimes able to fulfill an essay assignment for school based on something I’d written elsewhere or even the previous year, of course with some additions and modifications and adjustments.

The first movement begins with that foggy, ethereal opening that might make you think we’ve gotten lost at the very beginning of our journey through some forest and have stumbled into Beethoven’s fourth. This long introduction leads us into a bright, playful, cheerful first movement that the listener doesn’t have to know is adapted from songs the composer wrote previously (yes, Tomi, songs, as in for a singing person).

We even have an exposition repeat here, but I brought up the whole structure thing earlier to say that when I was first listening to this piece, I may not even have noticed it except vaguely that something familiar was reappearing. I guess my point in all this is that even as a listener who is only hearing or experiencing things linearly, only exactly what’s in the moment rather than seeing it within the larger framework of structure or the context of the entire piece, this first movement (and indeed the entire symphony) is a wonderful place to start. It has nature, birdsong, fanfare, all of the things that make Mahler who he is.

Now, the two inner movements that I said represented or expressed the loss and tragedy in Mahler’s life. The first movement was taken from Mahler’s own songs, so where did he pull together material to make a second movement? His elder-brother figure and one-time roommate Hans Rott, whose own ländler from his symphony will sound Doppelgängerly similar to anyone familiar with the Mahler. Obviously, Rott’s came first, and as much as I do love the Rott (and without digressing yet again, the man should get far more credit than he did, but being condemned by Brahms and then dying as young as he did certainly didn’t help his career), this material sits better in Mahler’s hands. I may be biased for having come to know Mahler’s first, but it has a more effortless, stunningly beautiful elegance and lyricism than Rott’s did. Again, that’s no criticism of Rott. He deserves the bulk of the credit for the symphony he wrote and being the inspiration, but Mahler shows us that this is the kind of music that’s in his (own) bones. It’s pastoral, elegant, rustic, evocative, colorful, and just fresh and breathtaking. So there’s no outright tragedy here, but the nod to Rott (if you know it and the story) breaks the fourth wall and recognizes one of the many losses in the composer’s life.

Now to the more obvious of the tragic movements. I came to this funeral march before Beethoven’s from the Eroica, but after Chopin’s. Both of the latter are superb examples of so effectively balancing the tragic and melancholy with something so tender and hopeful and even heartwarming. Mahler gives us a funeral march that’s a warped, house-of-mirrors adaptation of a children’s tune (what could be more haunting and dark?), contrasted with a klezmery, chirpy theme (that some have suggested represent the social aspects of Christianity vs. Judaism), then followed by a tender, heartbreakingly beautiful, delicate central section that delivers only brief solace before the original material returns. Even for someone who knew little to nothing about structure and musical form, this juxtaposition and execution of tension and conflict and all those literary terms was perfection. I had the Frère Jacques theme stuck in my head to the point that I lost sleep.

So we have a first movement based on some of the composer’s own stuff, a second movement that pays homage to the composer’s friend, and a third movement with folksong source material. Let me also say that the vulgarity of including klezmer music into a symphony was lost on me. It was so convincing that only later did the thought occur to me (after having read that it was so) that people would have been very much unimpressed by a composer who presents such profane music in such a highbrow form as the symphony.

Now we get to the finale, and that crash that opens it is sort of Mahler’s liftoff as a composer. Aside from some quotes from previous movements and stuff, this is the first wholly original movement Mahler wrote, and as a fledgling listener, by the time I got here, I was already somewhat tired, or at least not as focused as I was three movements prior. It is the longest movement in the symphony (the first, perhaps counterintuitively, feels shorter to me because of the long, slow introduction: it’s not complex or difficult at all), and has a more complex structure that was lost on me.

But yes, this is where we get, in my opinion, the first real engine-revving, pedal-to-the-medal symphonic Mahler. As a green listener, it was a little perplexing, but by no means boring, because it’s at turns dramatic, fiery, beautiful, and triumphant, but my musical RAM wasn’t sufficient to sort of keep it all in mind at the time. Add that the fact that (to continue the illustration), my musical processor was not overheating but certainly getting a little warm, this movement struck me as twenty minutes of real dramatic, stormy music that ultimately ended in beautiful triumph but was much less accessible than the previous three movements.

Prior to having lectured about it last year (and that sounds a lot more glorified than it really is), I probably would have said this is my second-to-least-favorite Mahler symphony (second only to the fourth, which I still do very much enjoy), but after having done a lot more score reading and study and breaking down of it (the first), I had a renewed appreciation for the artistry and craftsmanship in this piece. It’s undeniably a young work, but it’s also a youthful work. It has a passion and a brightness and an intensity that although not as refined and polished as the later symphonies would obviously be, is still absolutely wonderful and captivating.

That said, the least-favorite remark… What I suppose I should say is that of all the Mahler symphonies I’d put on to listen to on any given day, I’m probably least likely to reach for the fourth, and maybe after that is the first, considerations of the length of the 80+ minute later symphonies aside.

And even now, as I revisit and mentally walk through this work to write this, I feel myself wanting to put it on and experience it. Just a couple of weeks ago (at the time of writing, obviously; what other time would it be?), I lectured, daringly, on Mahler’s sixth, and afterward I got to talking to a friend about one of the things I love about Mahler’s works: the replay value, how well the works stand up to relistening and comparing of different recordings and interpretations, or even revisiting a single (good) recording you like. These are pieces that keep on giving. There’s always something new to hear or see differently, something else to (re)discover and appreciate or feel differently about.

I would use the example (and have many times before) of Tchaikovsky’s symphonies or concertos as pieces that I feel deal mostly in beautiful, lush melodies and don’t have many secrets. I opened this piece by saying that in my early days, I’d have Tchaik’s fifth on repeat, and then one day not that long afterward I found it saccharine and wholly uninteresting, again not because I knew anything about its structure or formal details, but just… got bored.

Well, I hesitantly listened to Tchaikovsky’s fifth again just this morning (Muti’s) and after having really studied and prepared to teach his fourth earlier this year, I found the fifth much more compelling, so maybe I need to give the guy a second (or 452nd) chance (I still think if I ever heard his piano or violin concerto ever again, it would be too soon), but to come back around, my thesis statement is that a work that can stand up to repeated listenings, that is compelling, is one that you will remember fondly and have plenty of experiences with and remember fondly, and now I think I might just have to go off somewhere dark and quiet and listen to Mahler’s first (Boulez’s, naturally).

This was a joy to write, and if this lesser favorite of Mahler’s symphonies is already this much longer than the pieces I used to write here, then buckle up for my pieces on the second, third, fifth, sixth… okay most of the others. Thank you for reading and stay tuned for what I hope to be more regular, consistent updates. Also say hi in the comments or something. It blows my mind that people still find this website and keep following and commenting and I absolutely love it.