Mahler 2 grant

Featured Essay
Mahler’s Second Symphony
by Parks Grant
James Huneker once pointed out that the opening of Wagner’s Die Walküre sounds like that of Schubert’s The Erl-King. The opening of Mahler’s Second or C Minor Symphony is reminiscent of both – though not for long; we quickly become aware that Mahler – not Schubert, Wagner or a second hand version of anybody else – is speaking. The cellosand double basses enter in the second measure with a powerful declamatory theme, which continues for sixteen measures under a constant tremolo G in octaves. During the next fifteen measures the cellos and double basses repeat this declamatory theme (with a slight change near the beginning) while higher instruments, mostly woodwinds, later violins, claim the center of our attention with anotherimportant theme. The restless bass figure persists, however, during quite a few measures to come. The rhythms it has already established, and to a lesser degree its melodic characteristics, dominate much of the entire movement. The second theme or subordinate subject is presented in E major, harmonically a very distant relative of C Minor, key of the first subject. Mahler ever so gently slips from onekey to the other. The effect is sheer music – as delightful as it is unconventional, and represents one of the happiest incidents in a symphony that is replete with them. (See example below.)

Someone has written that the second theme seems to be “suffused with light” as it appears, pianissimo, chiefly in strings and horns. The cellos and double basses meanwhile keep muttering away at amelodically compressed fragment of the first theme, with its characteristic triplet rhythm. By causing a particle of the first subject to serve as an accompaniment to the second, Mahler insures a subtle and subconscious connection between them on the listener’s part; different as the two are in spirit and tonality, they convincingly belong together. The comparatively short and peaceful second theme movestoward a climax and cadence in E-flat minor. If we have been lulled away into any daydream, Mahler rudely shatters it with an abrupt loud G–natural, which jars against the just-released G-flat of the E-flat minor triad (Eflat, G-flat, B-flat) on which the theme has just cadenced. The composer’s method of bringing us back to the grim business of the first theme (for as will be seen, that is hispurpose) is truly a brusque one, but memorable nonetheless. It must be borne in mind that the typical sonata-allegro movement which forms the first movement of any normal symphony, the section consisting of the two themes (known as the exposition) is almost always enclosed in repeat signs, though actually the practice of repeating the enclosed materials often becomes “a custom more honored in thebreach than the observance.” Mahler insures the rehearing of his two themes by the simple expedient of writing them out again, though it is no mere literal repetition; on the contrary he varies them tremendously. Undoubtedly their growth during the second presentation is his real aim, not merely their restatement. The first subject in its new form is at first highly compressed, but then continueswith fresh material freely derived from that of the first presentation, so the result turns out to be one of expansion rather than abridgement. Mahler leads to the second subject by way of a quiet connecting passage in G minor over a steadily-moving bass, during part of which two oboes in unison carry a melody with accompaniment by trumpets – just one of the innumerable unexpected but ingeniousorchestrationeffects which are scattered through all of the composer’s works, reflecting his vast experience as an orchestral conductor. The second presentation of the second theme occurs again in strings and horns, pianissimo, but this time more soberly (though not prosaically) in the key of C major, and with no restless bass beneath it. It soon moves however to its former key, E major (the key...