Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony

It's night and I go back to Swarthmore tomorrow. So I might as well discuss the symphony that always seemed to me to be a very long goodbye.

Movement 1: Andante comodo
The very long journey

Sometimes I hear about how the journey is more important than the destination. I agree with that. This movement is a very long journey, at 30 minutes. It has an epic, sweeping feel and puts me in mind of a past that may only exist in legends. When we were a lot closer to nature and to our origins, rather than our current sterile lifestyles. I hear the sun, flowing water, and the night in this movement. I hear the surprisingly important sequence of notes A D C# F# B, the first audible notes when I start listening. I'm tempted to say this would be good background music for the Baroque Cycle (or choose your favorite story in the past), but despite being epic, the music has none of the humor and vulgarity of real life. (That's in the second movement.) Other stuff: This movement is in D major, although there are many modulations to different keys. There is a real menace at times, which finds its fruition in the third movement. Mahler uses the motif 3-2 pretty obsessively. (That is, the 3rd scale degree followed by the 2nd scale degree, like F#-E in the key of D.) The 3-2 motif gives me hope. (Oh, the journey is long, but it is beautiful.)

So: movement 1. It's a very long journey. Actually, this movement (or any of the others except maybe the 4th) could be played by itself. It's very weighty and substantial. They all are. The end is worth mentioning - the music becomes more sparse, but the 3-2 motif is still going on in the strings and later winds. The final time it is played, the 2 (E) is sustained for several measures, before finally resolving to the 1 (D) high in the winds. That resolution is Mahler turning off the light.

Movement 2: Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb
The evening dance

This movement is on firmer ground. For one, unlike the always flowing, somewhat rubato 1st movement, this movement contents itself with strict 3/4. You can always hear the beat. Structurally this movement consists of three types of dance: an unhurried landler (at the beginning, moderate and in C), a waltz (fast and in E), and a slow landler (moderately slow and in F). These are presented in sequence, but then the dance types are recapped in no particular order and often they collide. Don't think of it as a sequence of dances (like the Blue Danube waltz), just as an ever-mutating dance.

While the first movement may have taken place in some distant past, here we are clearly in 19th century Europe. It reminds me in particular of a chapter in a book called the Octopus, which I read last summer. At the end of part 1 (the first half), there is a country dance for an evening which all the main characters attend (and discuss how to beat the railroad, the titular Octopus). A lot of times the textures are pretty thin and I can imagine the music being played by local musicians. One of those local musicians must be a bassoon - this features the bassoon about as prominently as anything in Mahler. It's my favorite movement.

What else - I've heard this movement referred to as a Dance of Death. I disagree, but the more I listen to it, the more charmless the music seems. There are no grand melodies. There are sometimes moving harmonies, and the slow Landler aspires to be something more. But the unhurried landler is crude, and the waltz just goes downward. At one point late in the movement, the waltz is so furious, always rushing down, that the movement really is on the verge of becoming a dance of death, but the unhurried landler drags it out of its tailspin for one last dance, one last chance. As the texture continually thins in the final unhurried landler section, the feeling of finality becomes stronger and stronger. The end is a true end, the likes of which I have rarely heard. Nothing in 3/4 could possibly follow this movement. The dance is over.

In that chapter in the Octopus, at the end, one of the characters wonders "Didn't they dance the night before Waterloo?"

Movement 3: Rondo-Burleske. Allegro assai, sehr trotzig
Trench warfare

No nineteenth century, no epic past. Here we are clearly in World War I. The ninth symphony was written in 1909 and 1910, but (like Mars from the Planets) this is clearly a prehearing of the Great War. I wonder what possessed Mahler to write such a violent movement. We're a long way from movement one: no melodies, no epic feel. What distinguishes this movement for me is the incredible disintegration: this is music as motives, mutating throughout the movement. It's counterpoint, but hardly Bach. One melody is the whole-tone scale going downward, similar to the waltz theme in the 2nd movement.

At one point, the music shifts to a much more ethereal D major, rather than the harsh A minor that is the key of the movement. And to continue the Great War metaphor, this is the Christmas truce. But the sound and fury resumes soon enough, and becomes louder and louder as it drives to the end.

This is the movement of the Turn. 1-2-3-2-(1) in most of the sections, and 3-2-1-2 in the D major section. The latter turn motif becomes the foundation of the fourth movement. But before that, we have to keep playing the other motif, 1-7-1 (scales are mod 7), which grows in strength throughout the movement, and almost inevitably closes the movement. Unlike all the other movements, this one ends very loud. Generally, if you want to annihilate everything, a big bang will help. This is nihilistic music.

Movement 4: Molto adagio
The very long goodbye

What comes after the end?

When I first burned this symphony onto my computer, I only burned the first 3 movements. (The fourth movement was on another disc.) So for the longest time I only heard this as a three movement symphony. I suppose it has merit in being heard that way, especially if you like symphonies to end in utter hopelessness. So the fourth movement will always be an interloper for me.

The title of this post is not original to me. It is the title of an essay by Lewis Thomas, and his new hearing of this movement as death everywhere. This is the death movement. Mahler started work on a 10th symphony, but this is his last completed symphony. Thomas ruminates on the young in the age of nuclear war. What is it like for a young person to not only be uncertain of their future, but of their life? If this view sounds strange, it is because he wrote the essay in the 1980s, when US-Soviet nuclear war was a very real, very terrifying threat. Very real indeed.

To go back to death - I said it was the death movement. Well, maybe. More properly, I view this movement as caught in the middle between life and death. The first movement is all about life. The second movement is all about life too - in the sense of partying before you go off to enlist in WWI, or go evacuate your home because of an oncoming hurricane. Might as well, you might never come back. The third movement is war and you die at the end. But...what is between life and death? For the music is not over. The conductor does not lower his baton for good after movement 3. Something is sounding. The death of the music requires the cessation of sound.

I must mention the end of the movement. As in the end of the first movement and 2nd movement, the texture thins out and the movement ends quietly. But I do not like saying the movement "ends". It just keeps on growing softer. The turn motif keeps growing longer, until finally it reverses and the music becomes inaudible. That's where the double bar is, so I guess that's the end. But there's never a point for me in which I can say "Here the music has stopped sounding." The very long goodbye never concludes. In an auditorium, the music concludes when everyone applauds, but when I listen to it myself, I determine when the conclusion is. I'm probably not making too much sense at this point, but these are late night thoughts. Perhaps I can best compare it to falling asleep. You get sleepier and sleepier, but you never know when you fall asleep. This movement is a very long goodbye to the world of wakefulness. Perhaps it is also a very long hello to the world of sleep - a sleep which is very long indeed. Eternal sleep.