Overview by Prof. Steven Bruns
Each of Mahler's symphonies has elicited widely divergent critical responses, but none has
been heard in so many different ways as Symphony No. 7. Biographer Henry-Louis de la
Grange considers the work to be Mahler's most "advanced;' with "incessant dissonances
and sudden modulations packed tightly together" (Gustav Mahler, Vol. 3, Vienna:
Triumph &
Disillusion, Oxford 1999: p. 847). On the other hand, British Mahler enthusiast
Tony Duggan
hears the piece as Mahler "in a relaxed holiday mood-the least complicated of all his
symphonies." One gets a sense of the range of opinions by reading the essays collected in
editor James Zychowicz's The Seventh Symphony of Gustav Mahler: A Symposium (Univ. of
Cincinnati, 1990). For those interested in exploring the symphony before the January
performances, Zychowicz's anthology is highly recommended, as is de la Grange's
detailed
analysis in the volume cited above (pp. 842-888).
Mahler began composition of the Seventh with the two famous "Night Music" movements
that stand on either side of the central Scherzo ("Schattenhaft"). As numerous writers have
pointed out, these three "intermezzi" explore the fantastical nocturnal world that had
captivated the German romantics (Alma Mahler writes of the "Eichendorffian visions" that
had inspired her husband). In the second "Nachtmusik" movement, Mahler includes
extraordinary solo guitar and mandolin parts, and those instruments take on a kind of
symbolic significance in the work. Flanking the three "night" movements are the
darkly
eloquent opening movement ("Langsam") — with its aria-like tenor horn solo — and,
in de la
Grange's words, the "endlessly fascinating and often disconcerting" Rondo-Finale.
In pairing the Meistersinger Prelude with Symphony No. 7, we are following Mahler's
program when he last conducted the Seventh. Perhaps this was the composer's way
of
acknowledging the allusion, near the beginning of the last movement, to the initial chorale
phrase from Wagner's opera. Might Mahler have intended further links? In Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg, Wagner presents characters discoursing on the art of singing — it
is
Wagner's opera about opera. Theodor Adorno once characterized much 20th-century
music
as "music about music." and Mahler's Seventh often strikes one as a kind of self-reflective,
at times ironic, symphony about "the symphony." The piece calls into question many of our
expectations about symphonic form, content, instrumentation, and so forth. The use of guitar
and mandolin in Mahler calls to mind Beckmesser's botched lute song in the final scene of
Wagner's Die Meistersinger. Just as Wagner satirizes the conventions of pedantically proper
singing, Mahler's Serenade is at once sincerely amorous and wryly ironic. The interval of the
perfect fourth has special significance throughout Wagner's opera, and the fourth is motivic
in Mahler's Seventh as well. Finally, Mahler was surely referring to the sunny C Major of
Wagner's Die Meistersinger in his strategic use of that tonality in the Seventh, especially
during the closing measures.
As is always the case with Mahler's symphonies, the Seventh is overflowing with
musical
riches. However one chooses to hear this magnificent composition, we're confident that after
hearing Robert Olson lead the MahIerFest orchestra in January, you'll agree with Tony
Duggan's enthusiasm for Symphony No. 7: "I love it, by the way, because I think
it's a
symphony that you can really love all the way through!"
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