Symphony No.5

Part I

Trauermarsch: in gemessenem Schritt, streng, wie in Kondukt

Stürmisch bewegt mit grösster Vehemenz

Part II

Scherzo: kräftig, nicht zu schnell

Part III

Adagietto: sehr langsam -

Rondo-finale: allegro

Mahler’s Fifth was the first of his symphonies with neither a pro­gramme behind it nor words attached. He was between 41 and 42 when he wrote it and at a comparatively untroubled point in his career. He was settled in his post as director of the Vienna Opera - or as settled as anyone in that vulnerable position could be - and, at the time he started work on the symphony, he was enjoying his first holiday in his newly built summer house in Maiernigg on the Wörthersee. Before he finished it, in the following summer at Maiernigg, he had conducted a sensationally successful first performance of his Third Symphony at Krefeld and had found that, in spite of mutual apprehension, his marriage to Alma Schindler was working out not so badly after all.

So now was the time to write the absolute symphony, con­structed according to exclusively musical values, untroubled by fate and rising above the fears that characteristically find expression in his work. This he succeeded in doing, though not without postulating a tragedy - inspired perhaps by a recent, alarming illness - which he would have to overcome in the first part before indulging himself in the joy of purely musical affirmation in the rest of the symphony.

Part One

The first two movements - which together form what Mahler formally designated as Part One of the symphony - are inextricably linked. Neither is complete in itself. Although the opening Funeral March begins and ends in the same key of C sharp minor, it is a deliberately open-ended construction which avoids its logical conclusion. It does not turn out to be the conventional march with two trios which it is appar­ently shaping up to be.

The march, heralded by a grim fanfare for solo trumpet, is based on a sombre melody for violins and cellos in unison, tinged with the darkest of woodwind colours. The first trio, or the first contrasting section, is a passionate outburst in B flat minor, beginning with an anguished variant of the march theme on trumpet and a chromatic cry of panic on violins. The triplet rhythms of the opening fanfare recall the march and, later, introduce the second trio in A minor: first violins very quietly breathe an expressive variant of the trumpet theme from the first trio, accompanied by shuddering second violins and violas. After the heartbroken climax of the second trio, there is no return of the march, only a distant memory of the fanfare. So the movement is left incom­plete.

The Stürmisch bewegt second movement is mainly a development of the two trios. It begins and ends in A minor - the key of the second trio, whose shudder­ing violin rhythms and rising ninth figures are heard again, much agitated and quite different in colour, in the opening bars. Stormy agitation, recalling the first trio, alternates with unhappy memories of the funeral march, and there is no apparent hope of triumph over adversity. So the joyful D major chorale which actually emerges out of the conflict is a revelation

Part Two

The Scherzo, the longest of all Mahler’s movements of this kind - it stands alone, complete in itself as Part Two, between the double-movement structures of Parts One and Three - is set in D major, as though to confirm that the revelation was no illusion. Certainly, there is no adversity here. Led by an inspired obbligato horn, it is a celebration of Viennese triple-time dances - the rustic Ländler and the urban waltz (one example of which Mahler confessed to having borrowed the from the Carinthian composer Thomas Koschat). It is also a considerable structural feat, a vast expan­sion of the conventional scherzo and trio form with the material of the two sections integrated in every way, not the least remarkable of which is the subtle overlapping of the first entry of the main theme of the trio (on four horns in quiet unison) with the end of the first scherzo section.

Part Three

After that, the Adagietto, scored for strings alone and set in the remote key of F major at the beginning of Part Three, sounds as if from another world. Indeed, the similarity between its first theme and the vocal line of the Rückert setting, “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (I am lost to the world) suggests that this is precisely the impression Mahler wanted to give. Even if, as Willem Mengelberg had reason to believe, it is a love song to Alma, it still performs the same function. But how can this very beautiful, short, and simply formed slow movement be integrated with the rest of the work?

The beginning of the answer is that the A (the third of the F major triad) on first violins at the end of the Adagietto is immediately taken up by the horn (as the fifth of the D major triad) at the start of the Rondo-finale. But there is very much more to it than that. This last movement is an extraordinarily exultant display of technical mastery, as is predicted by the bassoon’s allusion to the Wunderhorn song, “Lob des hohen Verstandes” (Praise of high intellect) in the opening bars. It is not only an extended and complex sonata-rondo packed with contrapuntal interest: its exuberance is so intense that it irresistibly draws in themes from other movements - the D major chorale from the second, phrases from the Adagietto - and makes the symphony a wholesome unity.

It has its own material of course, above all the main rondo theme, a rustic tune in D major introduced by horns over a drone bass. But, since there is no recapitulation, the high point of the movement is not the conventional return of that theme in the tonic - which pleasure is reserved for the coda - but the massively confirmatory affirmation of the D major revelation when the chorale theme reappears on the brass in its original key and in its original shape.

Gerald Larner©2002