Welcome back to CSO Chorus! Rehearsals resume at 7:30 this evening, and it will be wonderful to see everyone again! We will begin working on the Mahler for our performance on October 17th and 18th. Below are some fabulous program notes provided so graciously by Michaelene Gorney to give you a little background on Mahler’s 2nd Symphony. Enjoy!
The CSO is continuing to update and expand its website. Explore the special CSO Chorus links, which include a calendar of CSO Chorus rehearsals and events, a posting of our newsletters, a listing of our members, and a brand new online store with shirts and fun items available with the CSO Chorus logo. We would love to include your picture and bio on our member page – just email them to me and I’ll make sure they are added to the site. While you are on the CSO website, check out the video clips of Michael Alexander as the Cobb Symphony prepares to launch the new season on Sept 12 – 13.
The Force of Destiny!
September 12 | 8 PM
September 13 | 3 PM
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We are very pleased that the ticket initiative will once again be offered to CSO Chorus members. The chorus fees remain at $100 for the new season, and under the initiative, 30% of each ticket (including season tickets!) sold by your family members and friends may be applied to your fees. We have a new invoicing system that will make it easier to keep you updated on the status of your account. Invoices will be sent in the next few weeks that will let you know how much credit you have carried forward from last year’s ticket initiative. Remember when ordering tickets online, indicate the name of the Chorus member when tix.com asks for a referral name, or give the Chorus member’s name when ordering by phone. Chorus fees may be paid at rehearsal or mailed to:
Cobb Symphony Orchestra
P.O. Box 791
Marietta, GA 30061
Symphony No. 2 in C Minor (“Resurrection”) by Gustav Mahler
by Michaelene Gorney
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) composed almost exclusively songs and song cycles. Yet it is his monumental symphonies, together with those of Anton Bruckner, the tone poems of Richard Strauss and the early works of Arnold Shönberg, that bring to a close the significant orchestral development of the Romantic period, a period defined in its later years by works that are lengthy, formally complex, programmatic, and that require gigantic performance resources. Mahler, whose career was spent primarily as a conductor of opera, never wrote even a sketch for one, but he paid homage to the voice in major works such as Das Lied von der Erde and in his symphonies, which frequently include melodies from his songs or include vocalists. “Whenever I conceive of a large musical form,” he wrote, “I always arrive at the point where I have to turn to the word as a bearer of my musical ideas.” There is no better example of this than Symphony No. 2 in C Minor, also known as the “Resurrection” Symphony.
After attending the Vienna Conservatory from 1875-1878, where he took prizes in piano and composition, Mahler held a series of modest conducting assignments that gradually led to appearances in important musical centers like Prague and Leipzig. His first major appointment was as director of the Royal Budapest Opera in 1888, a post he held until he accepted a position as head of the Hamburg Opera in 1892. In 1894, he succeeded the renowned Hans von Bülow as leader of the Hamburg Symphony, and in 1897 was named director of the Imperial Vienna Opera, then recognized as the highest musical position in the Austrian Empire. There, during a brilliant decade of service, he transformed the taste of the Viennese public from lightweight French opera to a rediscovery of Mozart and an acceptance of Wagner. For part of this period, he also conducted the Vienna Philharmonic. Mahler conducted the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1908-1909 and the New York Philharmonic from 1909 to his death in 1911, but his tenure with the latter organization was not a happy one. He frequently disagreed with management and committee matrons, and his programming - which included such notorious contemporary composers as Chabrier and Debussy! - was not always popular. Mahler’s wife complained that in Vienna, “even the emperor himself” did not dare meddle in her husband’s artistic affairs.
Mahler insisted that he did not write “program-music” and decried the use of program notes; yet he wrote incessantly about his music and his non-musical influences, and every one of his works truly reflects the then-current state of his life-long spiritual journey. Although Symphony No. 2 should certainly be appreciated for its sense of classicism, its superb orchestration, and its effective vocal writing, it would be negligent not to recognize it as a baring of the composer’s soul, in which he exposes the depths of his existential angst and his journey to spiritual redemption. Here is charted the course of that journey, during which “one is battered to the ground and then raised on angels’ wings to the highest heights.”
Written from 1888-1984, Symphony No. 2 might more appropriately be sub-titled “Death and Resurrection,” as the philosophical questions it raises have more to do with death and dying than with their resolution. Todtenfeier (“Funeral Rites”), an orchestral funeral march which became movement one, was inspired in 1888 after a successful performance of an unfinished Wagner opera. In a dressing room surrounded by flowers from admirers, Mahler saw himself “dead, laid out in state, beneath wreaths and flowers.” In 1891, he was invited by Hans von Bülow to play through Todtenfeier. When Mahler was finished, von Bülow “almost gave up the ghost” and “became quite hysterical with horror,” so disheartening the young conductor that he considered “locking away my scores forever.” Mahler did nothing more with the work until the summer of 1893, while on holiday in the alpine village of Steinbach. There, within a week, he completed the Andante, movement two, an Austrian ländler which had already been sketched. He also completed an orchestral version of “Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt” (“St. Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fish”), a song for voice and piano on a poem from the German folk collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”) of 1805-1808. This became the basis of movement three, a symphonic scherzo. Ironically, the finale was inspired at a memorial service for von Bülow - he who had originally rejected Todtenfeier - where Mahler heard a boys’ choir sing a setting of Freidrich Klopstock’s poem “Aufersteh’n” (literally, “Rise again”). Realizing that his spiritual journey could end only in resurrection, he altered the first two verses of Klopstock’s poem, added several of his own, and set them within a movement equal in stature to that of the first. Mahler later added the fourth movement, a setting for alto and orchestra of another Wunderhorn poem, “Urlicht” (“Primal Light”).
Musically, the first movement of Symphony No. 2 is in modified sonata form, with its primary themes - one a forceful funeral march, the other a lyrical expression of yearning – recapitulated at the end of the movement. These same themes are further repeated and modified within a lengthy development section where more new themes are presented, one a melody first heard on the English horn, one a darker funereal melody first played by the English horn and the bass clarinet. Also heard prominently are the first four notes of the Dies irae, a hymn from the Roman Catholic Mass of the Dead. After a violent climax, the opening themes return and the movement ends with a chromatic scale. Yet Mahler’s spiritual quest has just begun as he asks of his imaginary hero: “What did you live for? Why did you suffer? Is it all only a vast, terrifying joke?”
Realizing that the first movement would overpower anything that followed, Mahler directed that there be a pause of at least five minutes before the playing of the second movement, a gentle ländler, an Austrian folk dance used in other of his symphonies to replace the traditional scherzo. Here the elegant dance theme alternates with a pulsating darker theme, the “decorative variations, arabesques, and garlands woven around the themes” representing “a memory! A ray of sunlight pure and cloudless, out of that hero’s life.” A powerful two-note figure on the timpani dispels the nostalgic quiet, beginning a third movement that constantly re-invents and spins out its opening theme. “The turning and twisting movement…seems senseless…the world looks…distorted and crazy” as the movement builds to a frenzied “scream of anguish.” A final strike of the gong leads without pause to the fourth movement, “Urlicht” (“Primal Light”), a simple statement of faith to be sung by an alto soloist “like a child who imagines he is in heaven.”
Movement five, like the first, could also stand on its own. Rich in thematic material – some revisited, some new – it carries us from that state of existential angst to Mahler’s visions of Judgment Day, Death, and finally, Resurrection. After a frightful opening outburst, the music becomes serene. A fanfare begun by the horns and representing the compelling “voice of Caller,” is followed by a march on the tune of Dies irae and by the first presentation of the Resurrection theme in trombone and trumpet. The passionate section which follows presents a theme later sung by the alto soloist on the words “O Glaube” (“Oh Believe”). The Dies irae and Resurrection themes are then combined in a series of fanfares, slowly building in intensity, after which a crescendo in the percussion section introduces the fantastic “march of the dead.” A rather schizophrenic passage introduced by solo trombone features an offstage band which interrupts from a distance with a trivial-sounding march, getting louder as the band draws near. Peace returns and an awesome moment ensues as “der grosse Appell” (“the great call”) is sounded in the distance by horns, trumpets and timpani. Donald Mitchell describes this passage as “the last, barely audible murmurs of a world which awaits the Creator’s own coupe de théâtre, Resurrection.”
In an entrance so soft as to border on cosmic silence, the chorus ushers in several minutes of incredible calm on “Aufersteh’n” (“Rise again”), the first word of Klopstock’s poem and the key to this entire symphony. Alto and soprano soloists sing the entreating “O Glaube” (“O Believe”) in turn, the chorale returns, then soloists join together in “O Schmerz” (“O Pain”), a celebration of personal triumph. Interspersed throughout are meditative orchestral interludes. The ending of Symphony No. 2 defies description, as Mahler’s final words are voiced by chorus, soloists, full orchestra and organ, complete with pealing bells and ten horns: “Arise, you will arise, my heart, within a moment! What you have conquered, to God, to God it will bear you up.”
General Bibliography:
Nicolas Slonimsky, ed., The Concise Baker’s Biographical Dictionary of Music, Schirmer Books, New York, New York, 1994
Dom Michael Randel, The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England, 1996.
Constantin Floros, Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies, Reinhard G. Pauly, General Ed., Amadeus Press, Portland, Oregon, 1994, with further references foot-noted.
Liner notes by Gilbert Kaplan, Mahler Symphony No. 2, “Resurrection,” London Symphony Orchestra, Gilbert Kaplan, MCA Classics, Atlantis Music, Ltd, and MCA Records, Inc., 1988, MCAD2-11011, MCD-20111, with further references foot-noted.