Symphony No.1 in D major (including Blumine)

Langsam, schleppend - gemächlich

Blumine: Andante

Kräftig bewegt - Trio: recht gemächlich - tempo primo

Feierlich und gemessen

Stürmisch bewegt

On its first three performances - in Budapest in 1889, in Hamburg in 1893 and in Weimar in 1894 - the work we now know as Mahler’s First Symphony consisted of five movements. Whatever title Mahler attached to it on those occasions - “Symphonic Poem in two parts” in Budapest, “Titan, a tone poem in symphonic form” in Hamburg and Weimar - it included an Andante in C major as its second movement. This Blumine (or “Flower Piece”), as it was called in the programmes of the Hamburg and Weimar performances, was dropped before the work was first published in 1899 and was lost to view until the manuscript of the 1893 version of the score emerged at Sotheby’s in 1959. Blumine was given its first modern performance under the direction of Benjamin Britten at the Aldeburgh Festival in 1967 and it was first restored to its original place in the larger work by Frank Brief at a concert in New Haven, Connecticut in 1968.

The legitimacy of including Blumine in a performance of the First Symphony is inevitably a matter of some controversy. Once the composer had discarded it in his 1896 revision of the score - having concluded, after conducting it three times, that the work was better off without it - there was no doubt in his mind that it should be suppressed and that it should remain that way. On the other hand, it is both instructive and entertaining to be reminded from time to time of the shape and size of the First Symphony as it when first performed as a symphonic poem in 1889.

On that occasion in Budapest the programme carried no more than the tempo headings for all the movements except the fourth, which was described in faulty French as “A la pompes funebres.” It was only for the two next performances, in Hamburg and Weimar, that he supplied the “Titan” title (from a novel by Jean Paul) and more or less elaborate indications of the putative hero’s activity or state of mind in each movement. Before the first Vienna performance in 1900, however - although he leaked a certain amount of advance information to the press - he wisely decided to omit all programmatic description and leave the music to speak for itself.

So it would be as well to ignore the external clues to the interpretation of the symphony and concentrate instead on those in the work itself, in its structure and its material. Obviously, no symphony which opens like this one is concerned solely with the abstractions of tonal conflict and thematic development. There is a highly charged if initially vague atmosphere in the quietly sustained harmonies on the strings, in the mysterious descending fourths in the woodwind, in the faraway fanfares on clarinets and in the distant trumpet calls. By altering the rhythm of the descending fourth motif, converting it into a cuckoo call, and repeating it high on the clarinet, Mahler precisely identifies the place as the countryside and the time as spring.

As activity increases - the lovely song on the horns, the chromatic theme sliding quietly up the lower strings, the continued descending fourth - the tempo rises. Changing the key from D minor to D major, the cellos enter (on a descending fourth) with a tune which you do not have to recognise as Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld from the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen to understand its cheerful at-one-with nature message. That is the first subject and, in a sense, the only main theme of the move­ment. Other themes arise and they are important as far as later events in the symphony are concerned, but there is no sonata-form duality or conflict here: it is a statement of the ideal. After the exposition repeat, a sigh on the cellos (an extension of the descending fourth) is developed into a not insignificant theme. There is a potentially splendid four-horn call derived from the same source, and there is a potentially threatening ascending figure in F minor. But the point of the whole movement is the innocent blaze of glory in which, encouraged by its fanfares and horns calls, it ends.

As the sole survivor of seven orchestral pieces designed to accompany a series of tableaux vivants on Viktor von Scheffel’s poem, Der Trompeter von Säkkingen in Kassel in 1884, Blumine was actually written before the First Symphony was even sketched. Even so, while it is comparatively immature in its structural and melodic inspiration, it is not irrelevant to the larger context in that it does have a melodic relationship with the second subject of the finale and, by implication, with the sighing cello melody in the first movement. A simple ternary construction based on the trumpet serenade with which it begins, it is an interesting anticipation of the “post-horn” episode in the Third Symphony.

The middle section of the next movement conveys the same message, if in very different terms. Again one does not have to recognise the song allusions in the outer sections - some of the material derives from the early Hans und Grethe - to understand the message of peasant festivity. It is a rustic scherzo in A major, the outer sections of which are a Ländler of transcendental vigour. The middle section begins as a satirically sentimental love song, with affectionate portamenti written into the string parts, and then proceeds to involve the composer’s heart as well as his sense of humour when the cellos enter with a new melody in G major.

The celebration comes to an end as the third movement begins. That much is clear from the music, though it is far from clear how serious the setback is. There is so much obvious parody here and so much that could easily be taken for parody that it is difficult to decide how to take it. According to his own suppressed programme notes and his leaks to the press, Mahler took it very seriously. And yet the inspiration of the movement - the children’s engraving, The Huntsman’s Funeral, with small and big game as the mourners in the procession - is obviously parodistic. So too, you might think is the choice of a D minor version of Frère Jacques, first played high on muted solo double bass, as the main theme. The first trio in F major, with its unmistakable sounds of the village band, is certainly parodistic. But then it modulates into G major for the first violins to introduce a gentle melody which (yet again) you do not have to recognise as the epilogue of the last of the Lieder eines fahrendend Gesellen to understand its soothing, consolatory message.

It is probably only when Frère Jacques returns in E flat minor, more pathetic than ever, that the listener is warned of the despair that will suddenly break in on him (in F minor) as the fourth movement breaks in on the third. The first subject of the finale is a magnificently sustained and heavily nostalgic expression of anguish, based thematically on the F minor figure which did not carry out its threat in the first movement and on a sinister triplet figure from the same source. The second subject is a no less well sustained and heavily nostalgic memory for strings of the sighing cello theme in the first movement; and before the anguish breaks in again the first movement is directly quoted - the chromatic theme in the lower strings, with its sinister triplet figure, the descending fourth on clarinets.

The last movement represents, in fact, the ideal world of the first movement set against bitter reality. But there is still hope, as a woodwind version of the horn call and a brass chorale version in C major of the F minor threat (and its inversion) indicate. Despair breaks in again but is defeated by the brass chorale, now triumphant in D major. After more nostalgic and direct reminiscences of the first movement, the anguish reasserts itself in F minor, but only to prove that the ultimately stronger force is the so much more positive one represented by trumpet fanfares, brass chorales and descending fourths in D major.

Gerald Larner