"Aus dem Leben eines Einsamen" ("From the life of a lonely one")

This Project

I began working on this wonderful symphony back in 1995 with a rendition of the iconic 3rd movement only. An acoustic rendition of that movement was completed in 1999 - from then on a more than 10 year long break occured in which I did no work on any recording of this symphony. In anticipation of the 150th birthday of Gustav Mahler which was be celebrated on 7.July 2010, I decided in March 2010 that it would be great to record at least one whole symphony by Gustav Mahler with my new recording computer MAESTRO-2. The rendition of all 4 movements and the long lost movement "Blumine" was completed just in time for the celebration of this anniversary. During the following months I refined the renditions and finalised the recording by 17.May 2011.

Composition - Inspired by Failed Love

The composition work on this first symphony was begun by Gustav Mahler sometime in 1884. He had completed the song cycle "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" (Songs of a Wayfarer), which had been somewhat inspired by his unfulfilled love to the beautiful (blond hair, blue eyes) soprano Johanne Richter from the Municipal Theatre in Kassel, who rejected his proposal for marriage around Christmas 1884. This song cycle led to early sketches of the symphony, but work on this composition was not resumed until 21. January 1888. Around that time he fell in love with Marion von Weber, the wife of the grandson of composer Carl Maria von Weber. He was collaborating in the production of Weber's opera fragment "The Three Pintos". An attempt to elope with Marion was unsuccessful - she bailed out of the relationship. At the beginning of March 1888 the first version of this symphony was completed.

Performances and Revisions

The first performance of this symphony took place on 20.November 1889 in Budapest - the reception was "mixed" . After revisions of the score, further performances in Hamburg (1892) and Weimar (1894) also had a lukewarm reception. The symphony had originally five movements. For the 1896 performance in Berlin which took place on 6.March, Mahler had dropped the "Blumine" movement and had removed any programmatic notes, so as not to (mis)lead the reception of his music. The score was published in 1899 by Weinberger as "Symphony No 1 in D Major" in its form in which is performed today.

Programmatic Notes

Teil I: Aus den Tagen der Jugend, Jugend-, Frucht- und Dornenstücke.
  1. Frühling und kein Ende. Die Einleitung schildert das Erwachen der Natur am frühesten Morgen.
  2. Bluminenkapitel (Andante).
  3. Mit vollen Segeln (Scherzo).
Teil II: Commedia umana
  4. Gestrandet. Ein Totenmarsch in Callot's Manier.
  5. Dall'inferno al Paradiso (Allegro furioso), als der plötzliche Ausdruck eines im Tiefsten verwundeten Herzens.

Part I: From the days of youth, "youth, fruit, and thorn pieces".
  1. Spring and no end. This introduction describes the awakening of nature at the earliest dawn.
  2. Flowerine Chapter (Andante).
  3. Set with full sails (Scherzo).
Part II: Commedia umana
  4. Stranded. A funeral march in the manner of Callot.
  5. Dall'inferno al Paradiso, as the sudden expression of a deeply wounded heart.

By 1896 Mahler had dropped all such program notes, as he became convinced that an explicit program would not be helpful, and he believed that such a program would need to be inherently in the music itself and should not be told to the listener in explicit words, but the listener should rather experience this program when listening to the music instead of being told about it.

Reviving the Original Subtitles for this Rendition

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the music community has respected Mahler's decision to abandon the programmatic titles, with exception of this First Symphony which is once in a while being labelled as "Titan". As most other symphonic work, symphonies are mostly known by their numbers, with exception when the title has somewhat become popular (e.g. "Das Lied von der Erde", or Dvorak's "From the New World"). Movements within symphonies have often been just known by their numbers indicating their position within the symphony (1st movement, 2nd movement, etc.), by their tempo indication ("Adagio", "Presto", etc.), or by their formal denotation ("Scherzo"). But in my opinion, these titles do not appropriately express the musical content and may even present an obstacle wo a wider acceptance of classical music. The concerns which were relevant in Mahler's time regarding if music should have a program or not are completely mute today, as today nobody really cares if there is a program or not. What counts is the music itself. Music is always about feelings, and in my opinion music addresses particular areas in the brain which are related to emotions. Titles such as "Second movement of the First Symphony" do not really do justice to the emotional power that this music has. Also, denoting a movement by its tempo ("kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell" - strongly moved, but not too fast) to me seems inappropriate: these annotations are instructions for the orchestra and the conductor, but not meant for the public. To abuse these instructions as titles for each movement as is being done regularly is in my view not appropriate, and does contribute to build a certain wall between the music and the potential audience by implying that you need a lot of knowledge in order to enjoy the music: one needs to know what a symphony is, what an Adagio/Andante is, etc. I think that this is one of the reasons why there are so few young people interested in classical music.

Therefore, I have decided to break with this tradition of giving only the sparse and non-descriptive technical playing instructions as the titles of symphonic movements, and instead will use more descriptive titles. In this case of Mahler's First Symphony, we are lucky that the composer himself has chosen very appropriate titles, even though he discarded them later. In my opinion, the title "From the life of a lonely one" is so much more appropriate than "Symphony No.1, D major", and instead of "Langsam, schleppend" (slowly, dragging) the title "Spring and no end of it" is so much more vivid, especially because those tempo indications actually would need to be extended, as they change throughout the movement. So I will label the Symphony according to the following scheme:

1. "Spring and no end" (I)
2. "Bluminenkapitel"
3. "Set with full sails" (II)
4. "The hunter's funeral" (III)
5. Dall'inferno al Paradiso (IV)

In order to be consistent with the current most frequently used denotation of movement numbering, I am keeping the usual labels (1. - 4. movement) for the respective movements as well, when for example refering to them in the context of online music distribution sites, where it is important that listeners are able to find the music they are searching for. The inserted "Blumine" will in my notation get no movement number, as this would otherwise increment all the subsequent movement numbers.

References