FAREWELL TO THE WUNDERHORN ROMANTICISM
In all its forms and facets, Gustav Mahler’s musical oeuvre is primarily symphonic. As a modern composer, he developed a gigantic orchestra to support the construction of his symphonic world, included trite stylistic devices and broke with hitherto sacrosanct form models. Critics of his day disparaged his symphonies as “band-leader music” and accused him of eclecticism and megalomania. Thus Mahler, who was celebrated as a brilliant conductor, was forced to wait until 1907 for his breakthrough as a composer, which was provided by his Symphony No. 8.
Mahler wrote his Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor during the summers of 1901 to 1903 in Vienna and Maiernigg am Wörthersee. This work depicts a cut-off point in his symphonic development: it is the first of three purely instrumental symphonies (Nos. 5 – 7) that followed on the so-called Wunderhorn Symphonies (Nos. 2 – 4), which had also included the human voice. The Symphonies Nos. 5 - 7 are considered to be “absolute music”, i.e. music which stands by itself, without any need of further programmatic, poetic declarations.
In contrast to its predecessors which included the human voice, the chief characteristics of the Symphony No. 5 consist mainly of the purely instrumental elaboration of the details, an unusual brilliance of sound, the virtuosity of the orchestral idiom, the employment of a linear-polyphonic style of composition, as well as a clearly more complex technique used in the movements. Mahler sums up the five movements of the work in three “sections”, which are symmetrically related to one another. The first section consists of the first movement (Trauermarsch = funeral march) and the second movement (written in sonata movement form). The third section consists of the fourth movement (Adagietto) and the Rondo-Finale. And between these two sections comes the second section - the Scherzo - which consists of over 800 bars and forms the axis on which the work turns. The symmetry of the symphony arises principally from the thematic relationship between the mutually complementing movements: thus every second movement of a section assimilates the material of every first movement. Furthermore, the first and third sections end with a “thematically identical” chorale ending.
“In gemessenem Schritt. Streng. Wie ein Kondukt” (= “At a measured pace. Severe. Like a cortège”): thus the first movement in the unusual key of C sharp minor kicks off with a trumpet fanfare, which like a far-off signal reminds one of a military funeral ceremony. Both parts of the first movement and both trio sections are strongly contrasted with one another: the ceremonial march ductus is heard against the lyrical theme of the strings and woodwinds. Despite constant changes in the motivic forms, the movement is still not pushed off course and “ebbs away [after various waves of intensification] into a field of dissolution” (Sponheuer). Lonely, the introductory trumpet signal, echoed by the flute, continues to sound.
In its structure, the second movement follows the sonata movement scheme and depicts a kind of “wild” development of the first movement, which had introduced the thematic material in a gigantic exposition. In a tumultuous motion, the laments and funeral march signals of the first movement, as well as the fragile main theme of the second are, as it were, ripped apart symphonically. Then, as the sole novelty in the movement, the chorale theme appears, entering shortly before the Coda, which admittedly interrupts the trumpet music in a fortissimo entrance, only to disappear again immediately in order to make place for the “chaos” from the beginning of the movement.
The third movement is a hugely expanded Scherzo with two Trio sections. Mahler presses ahead in mainly contrapuntal fashion, however, without risking the dance-like ductus in the Waltz (1st Trio) or Ländler (2nd Trio). Instead of a dance movement with the character of an interlude, here the Scherzo becomes the main symphonic movement of this symphony.
Since Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice, the “Adagietto” has probably become the most popular movement ever written by Mahler. Many conductors interpret the Adagietto as a “Lied ohne Worte”
(= song without words). In this piece for harp and strings, Mahler recalls a melody from the Rückert Lied “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” (= I have lost touch with the world). Before the whirling Finale, the listener experiences peace and the deepest expression of Weltschmerz (= “world-weariness”) in this Tristan idyll.
This is followed on without a break by the Rondo-Finale, in which Mahler takes up the chorale theme from the second movement, and turns it into the motto theme of the final movement. In the process, however, both function and character are withdrawn from the theme. Mahler observes this through a kind of “compositional time-lapse” (Adorno). Its individual, motivic parts are taken apart, and then subjected to a compositional reshuffling. In a process of “secularization” (Sponheuer), the theme loses its apotheosis-like character. The combination of rondo and variation movement in this Finale indicates the complex compositional processes which Mahler is tackling here. The Finale is a momentous movement, full of complicated polyphony, which at times even takes on the character of a “sound collage”. Mahler takes his leave of the more or less obvious programme of the Wunderhorn symphonies and leads his audience forward on a new path: one, which demanded enormous efforts of Mahler himself in his various revisions. However, one which also signified the beginning of a new symphonic world that Mahler was constructing for himself from every means available.

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