The Auditory

In February 1892, Mahler was in the midst of one of his most compositionally dry periods.  He had gone eighteen months with very little creative output and had abandoned his usual routine of composing during the summer months at his famous forest cabin(s) (set as his solitary compositions studios).  Mahler was immersed in the Vienna Court Opera, where he was serving as music director, when had decided to write again.  “I now have the Wunderhorn in my hands.  With that self-knowledge which is natural to creators, I can add that once again the result will be worthwhile!”  What came out of this was one of Mahler’s most monumental projects Des Knaben Wunderhorn: a collection of epic “Humoresques” for voice and orchestra.  With this sudden confidence Mahler composed the fifth song in the set Das himmlische Leben.  This song would later go on to be the intended for Third Symphony under the title ‘Was mir das Kind erzählt’ (What the Child Tells Me).  After much consideration,  Mahler became conscious of this gem that was Das himmlische Leben and decided, instead, to use it for the finale of another symphony.  This would later reflect Mahler’s passion for Beethoven and his Ninth Symphony (the choral apotheosis of their respective works).

Mahler started work on Symphony No. 4 at the pinnacle of his post at the Vienna Court Opera, where he had taken up residence and accepted the city as his home.  Mahler had envisioned the Symphony to be very different from what was to be the final product.  Even during his work on the Third Symphony he had drawn up a synopsis for the Fourth, in which almost every movement had a programatic title:

1. Die Welt als ewige Jetztzeit (The World as Eternal Present), in G major

2. Das irdische Leben (Earthly Life), in E-flat minor

3. Caritas (Adagio), in B major

4. Morgenglocken (Morning Bells), in F major

5. Die Welt ohne Schwere (The World without Gravity), in D major (Scherzo)

6. Das himmlische Leben (Heavenly Life)

 As Mahler’s grand plan for his Wundorhorn symphonies was unfolding organically, he had decided to make some fundamental changes.  For instance, Morgenglocken became part of the Third Symphony; the Die Welt ohne Schwere or Scherzo in D bares a striking if not identical resemblance to the movement,  “Mahler later inserted into the Fifth Symphony” as well as Das irdische Leben which became an independent song later added to the collection of Wunderhorn songs.

When one is exploring the compositional elements used by Mahler to construct the Fourth Symphony, it is helpful to understand the context of the three preceding symphonies, or as Philippe Herreweghe calls it, ‘the tetralogy they form which reflects the spiritual evolution of Mahler in his first period.’  Legendary conductor and great interpreter of Mahler Bruno Walter goes further in describing the context of each symphony outlining Mahler’s “first period”:

“In the First, the music reflects the stormy emotions of a subjective experience. The Second seeks a possible meaning of the tragedy of the human condition. The very clear answer is justification through immortality. In the Third, the composer becomes convinced that the answer lies in that all-powerful love that forms everything and embraces the world. In the Fourth, a joyous dream of happiness and of eternal life promises him, and us also, that we have been saved”

In the context of the previous three symphonies offered my Mahler, the music of the Fourth represents “jubilant ecstasy, over a background of ultimate writhings of existential anguish.”  To understand the Fourth Symphony one music fully immerse themselves in the music and writings of Des Knaben Wunderhorn.  The freshness, cruelty and irony of the text fall in line with the romantic spirt encapsulated by the writer Jean Paul - a writer that Mahler (like Schumann) celebrated in his music.

Mahler didn’t begin to work on the Symphony until July 1899.  The summer had been spent in a small spa in the Salzkammergut of Austria where he suffered a “disastrous vacation.” He found this location to be extremely irritating and detrimental to his work (the villa he had rented was close to a local bandstand).  Mahler’s frustration with the location he had decided to choose for a creatively fertile vacation spot, eventually turned out success.  Mahler had began reading a tremendous amount as well as taking long walks as he carried his sketchbook, so that no ideas were lost.

The final weeks of his vacation were indeed spent with “feverish activity” as the thoughts of returning to Vienna were surely fueling his fire.  Mahler wrote in his journal that he had fallen on one of his walks as the music inside his head led to dizziness and stirring feeling that ‘my music will never see the light of day.’

Mahler’s effect for the final movement is significant in that he is not thinking of how to wrap-up the symphony, but rather, how to end an epic narrative that has lived in all four symphonies. His vision here is philosophical: that his symphonies are a spiritual quest that only become realized in the end of ones journey, represented here as the child-like innocence of song in this fourth movement. Jeremy Barham points out this parallel of Genisis through death in the works of Ernst Bloch:

‘the true Genesis is not at the beginning, but at the end … Once the [creative human] has grasped himself and that which is his … so there will arise in the world something that shines into everyone’s childhood, but where no one has yet been: Heimat (home)’.

- Daniel