The Sixth is often called the "Tragic." However, it is not clear that Mahler named it himself (as claimed by Bruno Walter), or that someone else did and he accepted the name. Kelly Hansen's Notes explain why many commentators feel that the name, "Tragic," is appropriate. For example, Donald Mitchell says it is the only one of his symphonies in which Mahler lets Death win at the end. Alma wrote that "it was his most personal work." Alma quotes Mahler as saying that in the final movement, the hammer blows represent fate, the third blow felling a hero as an axe does a tree. This symphony poses intriguing enigmas, as do many other Mahler works. Jeffrey Gantz treats many of these enigmas, or perhaps better to say, uncertainties.
Mahler composed the symphony at his little composing hut hidden in the woods up a hill from his villa at Maiernigg, in the years 1903-4, and had it published first in 1906. He had married Alma Schindler, the "Belle of Vienna," and Alma had presented him on November 3, 1902, with a beautiful daughter, Maria (Putzi), of whom Mahler was deeply fond. On June 15, 1904 Anna, (Gücki) was born. Mahler had become a happily married man and father, with a lovely young and vivacious wife who was also his musical companion. He was at the height of his career at the Court Opera in Vienna. At least two of his works, Symphonies 2 and 3, had had enthusiastic public reception, never mind the critics who did not understand his new music. He had made friends with his future champion, Willem Mengelberg of Amsterdam. Yet, his creative spirit drove him to compose a work with obviously tragic overtones. While almost all of Mahler's symphonies have some dark elements, in the end they rise to joyous finales or peaceful resignation to Fate, but in the Sixth he struggles with Fate, and apparently loses, or does he? Notwithstanding, there are many exuberant and joyous passages in this symphony, and one of Mahler's loveliest Andantes.
Mahler conducted a trial rehearsal in Vienna with the Vienna Philharmonic in March or April 1906 (different dates are quoted), in preparation for its première in Essen, Germany on May 27, 1906. The matter of the order of the two inner movements has been debated hotly, ever since Mahler changed his mind at the first Essen rehearsal. Jeffrey Gantz discusses some of the important facts in hand, based on the research on this matter by Jerry Bruck, one of our distinguished lecturers in our Symposium
Another matter of contention is the third hammer blow. Jeffrey Gantz treats the hammer blows in his essay so I will only add here that from his own letters and reported discussions with Alma, Mahler wanted the hammer blow to be non-metallic, a dull wooden thud, e.g., as an axe hitting a tree. Anyone who has tried to fell a tree with an axe, however, knows that the sound, no matter how mightily the axe is swung, is not very loud. Some conductors have actually used a large stump placed near the front of the orchestra and an axe - not very effective aurally, though very effective visually. Mahler himself never achieved the sound he wanted. The famous MahlerFest carnival "Test Your Strength" large wooden hammer (borrowed a few years ago and again this past summer by the National Repertory Orchestra at Breckenridge, and also last season by the Colorado Symphony Orchestra), will provide a satisfying visual image of the strokes of fate on a large tree trunk, producing a satisfyingly loud but dull THUD. Mahler would have liked it!
Back to the Music! As noted above, this symphony is usually called 'The Tragic," and in its Vienna performance the play bill listed it as Gustav Mahler, Symfonie No. 6, "Tragische." Evidently Mahler did not object to this name. I had always thought of it myself as dark and tragic, until one day a Mahler friend related this story. He asked his two teen-age daughters to listen, for their first time. They did, attentively, and seemed to like it. After it was finished, father asked, "What did you think of this symphony? The girls unhesitatingly answered: "What a wonderfully happy symphony!" Out of the mouths of innocence, as it were.
With this new insight I began to listen, and especially this year, after some 100 hearings to maybe 20 performances, I concluded that I had changed my mind. Considering the events in Mahler's life up till the Sixth, as related above, I decided to agree with the girls. For me this can be played and listened to as basically a symphony of proud conquest, of happy moments, but clouded in a few places. What great person never had any setbacks?
Take the first movement, an inexorable march. Is it a march to death, or a triumphant march of accomplishment? Mahler marks it fast and energetic (but not too much). Does one march energetically to death? Mahler was not a neurotic, as is so often claimed, but a well-balanced, highly intellectual person. I feel that he was expressing his pride and joy at achieving his life's objectives - the High Priesthood of Opera as Director of Europe's most highly regarded house, able to serve the best intentions of the world's greatest composers, as well as having become the proud husband of "The Belle of Vienna" and happy father of a dear daughter
The Scherzo, to me, crazy-quilted as Kelly Hansen describes in his notes, represents Mahler's crazy-quilted career - director of a country music hall where one of his duties was to take the children for outings in their perambulators, conducting assignments in houses with imperious impresarios where he had to play politics, and resist much politics, and on-again off-again love affairs. He endured clashes with most music critics, who hated his "new music," and even clashes with the public, only a small portion of whom understood what Mahler was aiming at in his "new music." Kelly writes of the section where the horns have a powerful passage with sliding grace notes. To me these braying horns represent Mahler giving the Viennese equivalent of the "Bronx Cheer" to those critics, who now had to endure him as Chief of the most advanced opera house on the continent.
The Andante could represent the bucolic life Mahler now enjoyed, at least in the summers, in his comfortable villa on the shores of the W\xf6rthersee, in beautiful southern Austria, and the peaceful solitude of his little composing hut, secluded up hill in deep woods.
The Finale is where the elements of darkness make themselves known in this work - the three hammer strokes. As Kelly remarks in his notes, some of Mahler's most joyous music is to be found here; a triumphant march-like section appears four times, each introduced by four dark and possibly threatening passages. Each hammer blow is introduced by an almost frantically up-beat section, only to be cut short by the sharp and powerful strokes of - what? Fate? A Near-Death Experience? Or are they admonitions from the Gods - be careful, we're not done with you yet, Little Jewish Boy from the provinces. You may think that you have achieved your highest ambitions, Europe's Highest Music Point, but watch out, the price is coming?
Much is made of the hammer blows by commentators, perhaps inspired by Alma saying that she feared that Mahler was tempting fate with his three hammer blows (and also tempting fate with his Kindertotenlieder - foretelling the death of his beloved Maria in 1907. Alma felt that that incident was also foretold by the first hammer blow. Alma further felt that the second blow foretold the diagnosis of his "fatal" heart condition shortly thereafter, and that the third presaged his dismissal from the Vienna Opera.
The first event was surely a difficult blow to both Alma and Gustav, and may indeed have been the moment when their marriage began to flounder. Mahler never got over Maria's tragic and traumatic death. Maria was buried in Maiernigg and the Mahlers immediately sold the villa, never to return to the inspiration of some of Mahler's greatest works - the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and the Eighth symphonies, song cycle Kindertotenleider, the song set Rückert Lieder, and the two last songs for the song set Das Knaben Wunderhorn.
The second important event, Mahler's heart condition, was overreacted to by Alma and Gustav's sister Justine, and eventually by Mahler himself. One doctor advised Mahler to stop his swimming, biking and hiking, and take only a prescribed number of steps each day. Another doctor, a cardiac specialist, told him that his heart condition (mitral valve defect) was entirely compensated and that he should lead a normal (for him very vigorous) life, only taking care not to exhaust himself. However, he did not heed that good advice and the women around him didn't either. That heart defect, however, non-fatal by itself, was the reason why the streptococcus infection of Spring 1911 traveled to his heart and did actually fell him.
The third blow of fate, dismissal from Vienna, bears close scrutiny. Mahler, at age 47 in 1907, had borne up well under the furious and often anti-Semitic criticism of his management of the opera and his own music. But he was a tough personality, used to meeting challenges and overcoming set-backs. He was naturally worried about his heart and perhaps he did feel mortality lurking in his near future. However, Mahler was also a practical man. He had always been underpaid and had not been able to provide a safe financial future for his wife and surviving daughter. And his work load - conducting, coaching, producing new operas, management, politics, composing - was fearsome. Then, good fate intervened. He received a most generous offer from New York's Metropolitan Opera - a generous salary (three times that of Vienna) and a sensible work load. He had done his bit for Vienna, now it was time to think of himself and his family. It was as simple as that - financial freedom, more time for his composing, and new challenges!
The final four measures of the last movement, as Kelly describes - a loud and violent chord followed by strong tympani cadences fading out to a low wail of brass and winds - signifies what? Defeat? Or, in my view, picking himself up once again to face new challenges. Mahler signals this to me by a subtle modification of the strikingly powerful tympani cadences, indicarting in this music that this is not the end, but a new beginning. Is this work basically one of confidence, laced here and there with near defeat (as was Mahler's own life), or one of marching, perhaps bravely, to inevitable death all along? I prefer the former, as Mahler's story of his lifelong struggle devoted to the perfection of musical expression, in performance as well as in composing. You make your own choice.
With thanks to Kelly Hansen, Jeffrey Gantz, Jerry Bruck and Henry-Louis de La Grange for many thought-provoking ideas, and to Robert Olson, whose stirring performance of this work in 1993 inspired these off-beat thoughts.