A Singer’s Guide to the Great Composers: Mahler
I have held back until now from writing about a composer whom I have admired and loved since my teens, and whose vocal music ranks with the very best ever written, Gustav Mahler. The reason for this is quite simple. Until now, (May 2021), I have hardly sung a note of his music in a career of over 40 years, and I was somewhat loath to commit to writing about someone whose oeuvre I had not performed. How could I write a singer’s guide when I could offer no insights into the music? In a concert to which I alluded in my recent article on Benjamin Britten (Part 3), a concert timed to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of the First World War in 2014, as well as singing part of “A Strange Meeting” from the War Requiem, I also sang Mahler’s bleak song about a drummer boy condemned to death, “Der Tamboursg’sell”. Most of his songs were written for a higher voice than my own, but I discovered that this one fitted quite well with my range, and I included it in the concert.
I found the experience rather overwhelming, but hugely satisfying, and looked at the possibility of singing more of Mahler’s songs. I had for a long time enjoyed listening to records of his songs, sung, in particular, by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, but had decided that my voice was not suited to these works. Furthermore, as there are no operas, the only music with orchestra that I considered suitable, the bass part in his Eighth Symphony, appeared too big and heavy for me.
However, as a result of the Coronavirus lockdown, I was browsing online for new songs to sing, when I discovered an edition of Mahler songs for low voice which were transposed into keys in which I could sing. In addition, just a few months previously, I had been sounded out about the possibility of singing Bass in the 8th Symphony and ordered a vocal score online. Suddenly, I had access to music by Mahler which might suit me, and so determined to learn some of it. It has been an extraordinary experience, and, consequently, I feel more prepared for writing about Mahler, and his music. In fact, as I write these words, I am preparing to sing some Mahler Rückert Lieder in Edinburgh in August, of which more later.
Gustav Mahler was born in Bohemia in 1860, an area, then, part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and now part of the Czech Republic. The family was poor, Jewish and German-speaking, and, when he was a baby, they moved to the garrison town of Iglau (now Jihlava) where his father became an innkeeper and a distiller. I visited Jihlava in the 1980s, when Czechoslovakia was still under Communist rule, and remember a long straggling town with an immense square in the middle and with the river Jihlava flowing nearby, serving as the ancient border between Bohemia and Moravia. Mahler’s Jewish origins, and his German speaking in a Czech -speaking area, contributed, at an early stage, to his feelings of alienation, feelings that infused much of his musical composition. In addition, the fact that Iglau/Jihlava was a garrison town and also on the cusp of two clearly different cultures, allowed the young man to be very aware of local folk melodies and the sound of military music playing on the streets.
As the family began to prosper, Gustav began to show signs of musical talent, and in 1875, he enrolled at the Vienna Conservatory, where he began composing and conducting. He got to know the song composer, Hugo Wolf, at the Conservatory, and attended several lectures given by Anton Bruckner. Indeed, he was present at the premiere of Bruckner’s 3rd Symphony, one of the great scandals of 19th century music, when the composer was shouted at throughout and most of the audience walked out. Mahler was hugely impressed however and combined with his admiration for the music of Richard Wagner, his thoughts began to turn to serious composition. After leaving the Conservatory, he enrolled at the University of Vienna, and pursued studies in philosophy, becoming deeply affected by contemporary German thinkers.
It was at this point, that he began to emerge as a notable conductor, and he took posts at various provincial theatres, leading eventually to appointments in Prague and Leipzig. In Leipzig, he worked with the conductor Arthur Nikisch on Wagner’s Ring Cycle in 1887, and in 1888 he reworked Weber’s unfinished opera “Die Drei Pintos” to great acclaim. Tchaikovsky was present at one of these Weber performances, along with administrators from many important opera houses, and Mahler’s star continued to rise, despite problems with orchestras who complained of his high-handed and bullying style of conducting.
An interesting fact which I hadn’t been aware of until I started this series of articles, was the number of late 19th century performances attended by other famous composers. I have continually been reading about Mahler, Strauss, Bruckner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Wagner and Liszt turning up at concerts and operas of each other’s music. This rather gives the lie to the notion of the composer as isolated genius, working away in solitary purdah, far from ordinary life. In fact, it seems that many of them were fascinated by their peers’ compositions and were always interested to hear what was new and innovative. It is also extraordinary to think of the wealth of musical genius produced in that amazing period of history, remembering also the contemporary emergence of Verdi and Puccini in Italy, and Mussorgsky and Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia, Grieg and Sibelius in Scandinavia and Bizet, Saint-Saens, and a little later, Debussy and Ravel in France. Without doubt, that was a time of unbelievable creativity across Europe.
In 1888, Mahler accepted the post of Director at the Royal Hungarian Opera in Budapest, and around the same time completed his First Symphony. There has been speculation over the years that this astonishing and truly original work could not have sprung unannounced into the world, and that there must have been predecessors, now lost. I think that is very possible, but no earlier manuscripts have been found, and we have to assume that the symphony, which received its premiere in Budapest in November 1889, was as shocking to its first audience as it is even to modern ears. Certainly, both public and critics were deeply confused by it, but Mahler’s genius as a conductor saved the day to some extent. Political infighting at the Hungarian Opera became so intense that Mahler orchestrated his own removal, but not before he had signed a contract to take him to a similar job in Hamburg. The last conducting appearance of his tenure in Budapest was ‘Don Giovanni’, a performance attended and enjoyed hugely by Brahms.
The busy life of a conductor was not conducive to composing, and this became a theme of Mahler’s life, as his fame at the podium far outstripped his success as a composer. After the apparent failure of the First Symphony, he wrote many songs and started working on his next symphonies. This period, known as his Wunderhorn Period, coincided with his discovery of volumes of German folk poems and songs which had been put together in 1808 by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano under the title of “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (The Boy’s Magic Horn). His spell at Hamburg allowed him to buy a property in Steinbach on the shores of the Attersee in the beautiful Salzkammergut in Upper Austria, and this is where, each summer in the break of the operatic season, Mahler retreated and composed.
His obsession with the Wunderhorn poems was a huge gift for posterity, as he used all his experience of growing up in a garrison town near the woods and forests of Bohemia to recreate, in music, many of his childhood sound memories. The Wunderhorn collection of love songs, military exploits and children’s stories were a vast pool of ideas that transmitted into wonderful Lieder and symphonic magic. If you can, try to obtain the magnificent recording made by Schwarzkopf and Fischer-Dieskau, the LSO and George Szell in 1968 which is utterly superb, and which was responsible in part for the flourishing of interest in Mahler’s music towards the end of last century. Here’s a Spotify link.
Some carp about some of the singing, but, with my entirely objective hat on, they are completely wrong! Schwarzkopf’s attention to the words and the sentiment expressed through them is exquisite, and Fischer-Dieskau brings out all the horror of war, coming from someone who was captured during the Second World War and whose handicapped brother was murdered by the Nazis, and yet can find some of the most beautiful sounds ever captured on record for some of the songs.
The first four symphonies are full of direct and indirect references to the Wunderhorn songs, and indeed, several of them are actually used as movements, including ‘Urlicht’ in the Second Symphony. I was lucky enough to be present at one of the great concerts of last century, during the Edinburgh Festival, when Leonard Bernstein conducted the LSO, with Sheila Armstrong, Janet Baker and the Edinburgh Festival Chorus in the Second Symphony, the ‘Resurrection’. With the most triumphant end of any symphony ever written made even more joyous by Bernstein’s inspired and truly great conducting, it remains in my memory nearly fifty years later. It can also be seen and heard on a DVD made in Ely Cathedral the following year, with the same forces, produced superbly by Humphrey Burton. It preserves a performance the like of which we cannot imagine now, conducted by a great composer in his own right who became a beacon for Mahler’s music throughout his life.
Mahler’s conducting career was greatly enhanced by his contract at Hamburg, which began in 1891. His ‘Tristan und Isolde’ was highly acclaimed and his performances of ‘Tannhäuser’ and ‘Siegfried’ were also greeted with warm approval. His ‘Eugene Onegin’ by Tchaikovsky, in the presence of the composer, was described by the Russian as “astounding, the work of a genius”. 1892 saw him leading his Hamburg forces in a tour to London, where a young Vaughan Williams was completely bowled over by the music making, and Mahler’s conducting. It is hard to envisage the success of this charismatic, and also difficult, man in his early 30s, on audiences and orchestras alike. Throughout his career, his relationships with the orchestras he conducted were fiery. He was a tyrant and didn’t suffer fools gladly, but also had to deal with the overt anti-semitism of the time. He even chose to convert to Catholicism in 1897, although his religious beliefs were largely agnostic throughout his life.
The struggles present within his Second Symphony were more personal than religious, but do not stop it being one of the most remarkable works of all time. Its premiere in Berlin in 1897 was successful (by the standards of the time where his compositions were concerned), and his astounding mixture of bravado and tension still haunt us today. His preliminary narrative plans, which he quickly dismissed, actually hold good for a simplistic analysis of the symphony. Funeral music suggests we apply ourselves to the question of life after death, the second movement examines the good times of life, while the third movement takes a more pessimistic look at life’s meaning. The fourth movement, the song “Urlicht” (Primeval light), wishes to find some hope and light, while the final movement, after more severe questioning, showing us the end of the world and its aftermath, introduces the wonderful poem by Klopstock, die Auferstehung (the Resurrection), where life is reborn in triumphant happiness, an everlasting, transcendent renewal, with full chorus, female soloists and organ. Of all the uplifting endings of symphonies and operas – Mozart’s ‘Figaro’ and ‘Magic Flute’, Beethoven’s ‘Fidelio’, his seventh and ninth symphonies, Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’, Verdi’s ‘Falstaff’ - I don’t know of any that I would put ahead of Mahler’s Second!
