Symphony No. 7 [Mahler]

Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 7

Mahler’s Symphony No. 7 is considered by both music critics and Mahler fans to be his most difficult symphony to love. It’s a work of sometimes surprising contrasts, with a history of ups and downs to go with it.

Mahler began the work in the summer of 1904, while completing his most tragic symphony, the sixth–at, as is often pointed out, one of the sunniest periods of his life, when his adored wife Alma had just given birth to the second of their two daughters. While still putting the finishing touches on that work during the family’s annual stay at Maiernigg on Lake Wörth, Mahler began sketching the two Nachtmusiken, which would become the second and fourth movements of his seventh symphony. He was pleased with his initial progress, but soon had to return to his responsibilities as music director at the Vienna Court Opera, as well as overseeing the premieres of his Symphony No. 5 in Cologne and of his Kindertotenlieder in Vienna. By the time he returned in the summer of 1905 to Maiernigg, he found no immediate inspiration. Frustrated, he took a train to Krumpendorf on the north shore of Lake Wörth and there, as he was rowed in a boat across the lake, “the theme of the introduction (or rather, its rhythm, its atmosphere) came to me.” During the next four weeks he wrote the major portions of the remaining three movements, declaring the symphony essentially finished on August 15, 1905.

Over the next two years he continued to polish the work and make revisions, while waiting for the time to premiere it. By 1907, however, the happy days that had seen the symphony’s beginning had become tragic ones. He had been forced to resign his post at the Opera due to political infighting and anti-Semitism, he was diagnosed with a dangerous heart condition, and his eldest daughter, Maria died of scarlet fever that July. (These three events, his wife noted, seemed to have been predicted by the three tragic hammer blows of his sixth symphony.) Faced with a more hostile atmosphere in Vienna, Mahler decided to premiere his seventh symphony in Prague, where it was performed as part of a celebration for the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Emperor Franz Joseph.

The performance took place on September 19, 1908, with Mahler conducting. By all accounts it went well, attended by admirers such as the conductors Artur Bodanzky, Otto Klemperer, and Bruno Walter. The work was received respectfully, but not with huge enthusiasm, and in later performances was met with puzzlement or skepticism–except, however, by composer Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg had previously been rather cool towards Mahler’s music, but he sent an admiring letter to Mahler after hearing the seventh symphony at its first performance in Vienna in 1909. “It was an extraordinarily great treat. I simply cannot understand how I was not won over to this before,” the younger composer wrote.

Yet the work remained problematic to audiences and Mahler’s music world as well, and to this day it is the least recorded of his symphonies. Its contrasts are at times difficult to take in. The work constantly shifts from major to minor and back again. It is Romantic, even reaching towards the modern style in its tonal palette and what critic Donald Mitchell has called “peculiarly shrill and piercing” instrumentation in the first movement. Yet that same movement is resolutely classical in its form; in his letter to Mahler, Schoenberg wrote “this time I felt perfect repose based on artistic harmony–something that got me going without unsettling my center of gravity… I have ranged you with the classical composers.”

Another contrast, of course, is Mahler’s musical juxtaposition of dark and light. Although Mahler resisted giving this work a programmatic interpretation, he described the symphony to Swiss critic William Ritter as follows: “Three night pieces; the finale, bright day. As foundation for the whole, the first movement.” As mentioned earlier, the ‘night music’ was the germinating seed of the symphony. Night in this work is not necessarily ominous, but a time of watchfulness, or even romance. Some of Mahler’s friends suggested calling the work Nachtwanderung (“a walk by night”), and its popular subtitle is “Song of the Night.” However, it’s clear from Mahler’s note to Ritter that he saw the work as a progression from night into day. The passage from dark into light has been seen as a passage from the tragic nature of his sixth symphony to something more hopeful, or as a change in mood from the very personal emotions of his previous symphonies to impressions of the broader world; as critic Michael Steinberg put it, “the world humans inhabit, more than the humans themselves.”

A final anecdote may reveal Mahler’s basic intent. The second movement was said to have been inspired by Rembrandt’s famous painting “The Night Watch,” which Mahler saw during his many trips to Amsterdam. However, Dutch composer Alphons Diepenbrock, a friend of Mahler’s, discussed the symphony with Mahler during rehearsals in Amsterdam, and wrote:

“It is not true that he [Mahler] wanted actually to depict ‘The Night Watch.’ He cited this painting only as a point of comparison. It [the second movement] is a night walk, and he says himself that he was thinking of a patrol. Beyond that, he said something different each time. What is certain is that it is a march in a fantastic kind of chiaroscuro, hence the analogy with Rembrandt.”

In short, this is a symphony in chiaroscuro, “the interplay or contrast of dissimilar qualities (as of mood or character),” of dark and light, of what is clear (chiaro) and what is obscure (oscuro).

The huge first movement, Langsam–Allegro risoluto ma non troppo, opens with Mahler’s rhythmic oar strokes. A tenor horn states the first theme; Mahler writes, “Here nature roars.” The tempo gradually quickens to a stirring march, which is by turns measured and impetuous. The exposition develops from E minor to C major, then introduces a yearning violin melody, while the development juxtaposes these lyrical moments with the march themes. At one point woodwinds and trumpets sound questioning calls over high trembling strings, while soft brass recall the march theme, transforming it to a mysterious echo. Then, as Steinberg writes, “the harp wakens us to an ecstatic vision of the glorious lyric theme, with the march fragments still perceptible in the background.” Mahler telescopes all this material in the recapitulation, compressing it toward an intense final coda.

The second movement is the first of the two Nachtmusiken (night musics), Nachtmusik I: Allegro moderato–molto moderato (Andante). This is Mahler’s watchful night of the evening patrol, and it opens again with a questing horn call, met by woodwinds
in skitters and swirls. The theme that develops is two-faced, both marching and melodic, major and minor. The night watchman of this movement encounters sinuous melodies for oboes, distant cowbells, woodwind passages marked by Mahler as “like bird calls,” fragments of stately dances, and even a section reminiscent of Mahler’s sixth symphony, with a C major chord that falls into minor. The movement wanders into silence at its close, with a pluck of the harp on G, leaving it undetermined whether we have resolved on C minor (the movement’s nominal key) or major.

Mahler marks the third movement Scherzo: Shattenhaft (“shadow-like”). A spooky waltz, again sounding both major and minor, is threatening yet amusing. Woodwinds scurry, low brass call, and the strings swoop and slide. The central trio section, introduced by oboes, is brighter with a lyrical line, but ends almost as soon as it begins. Then the ghosts continue their weird dance, finally slowing in a series of stuttering figures by different instruments, with a final strike on the drum and a brass chord to end.

Nachtmusik II: Andante amoroso is a romantic serenade augmented by mandolin and guitar, recalling the strolling musicians from whom the Nachtmusik form got its name (the name goes back to Mozart’s time, to describe popular night-time serenades by street musicians). Though this movement also has its moments of minor against the major, here they are lyrical. It is orchestrated lightly, with only horns for brass. Individual instruments or small groups of instruments engage in gentle or passionate interplay that ends with quiet pulses over a trilling clarinet.

After the calm of the fourth movement, Mahler’s final “bright day” bursts forth with loud drums and brass fanfares in the Rondo-Finale: Allegro ordinario–Allegro moderato ma energico. The rondo form lets Mahler introduce several varied sections, including references to Wagner’s Die Meistersinger, Lehar’s The Merry Widow, and Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, yet always return to the main theme and its triumphal strains. Mahler also quotes portions of the march from the first movement. At first they do not seem to integrate into the whole, but eventually the march theme joins with the fanfare to come to a brilliant climax, with pealing bells and rolling drums. The constant contrasts of the entire symphony make their final appearance in the resolution of the penultimate chord (augmented) to the ultimate chord (major).