Circle City Clarinerd

Hello, again!

As I revealed in my last blog post, I absolutely love Mahler's First Symphony and cannot wait to hear the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra perform it this weekend! Although I am always intrigued by the soft opening chords, haunted by the funeral march, and excited by the rousing ending, what makes Mahler 1 so fascinating to me is the way in which Mahler incorporates various melodies and motifs from several different works to create a coherent symphony. While I once found Mahler 1 to be dense and incomprehensible, an understanding of these different musical ideas interwoven throughout the work helped me better appreciate the "Titan." 

This weekend, while listening to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra perform Mahler's First Symphony under the baton of Larry Rachleff, try to pick out some of some of these themes and ideas!

In the first movement, after hearing the "cuckoo" clock-like sounds from the clarinet and the distant tones of the off-stage trumpets (that's right - a couple of ISO trumpeters will be playing from behind the Hilbert Circle stage, as Mahler directed in the score!), listen for this tune, from the second song ("Ging heut morgens übers Feld" or "As I Walked Out This Morning Through the Field") from Mahler's song cycle "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" or "Songs of a Wayfarer." 

In this clip, soprano Measha Brueggergosman performs "Ging heut morgens übers Feld" in New York. 

Skip ahead to approximately 4:00 to hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under Pierre Boulez perform the "Songs of Wayfarer" section of the first movement

In the second movement, Mahler introduces the rhythm of the traditional Austrian "Ländler" folk dance. When a professor first mentioned this dance to my class in a lecture on Mahler 1, my hopelessly romantic mind went immediately to the famous scene in "The Sound of Music" in which Maria and Captain von Trapp dance the "Ländler" at a party. Sure enough, this similar rhythm and tune appears in the second movement of Mahler 1. 

The "Ländler" from "The Sound of Music"

The "Ländler" section in the second movement of Mahler 1, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra - one can almost picture Maria and Captain von Trapp dancing to this!

Perhaps the most haunting part of Mahler's First Symphony occurs in the third movement, when Mahler incorporates melodic material from the popular children's song "Frère Jacques." However, Mahler manipulates this tune into the minor mode to create the scene of a "Hunter's Funeral" (the title of the movement). Mahler was inspired by the woodcarving below (by Moritz von Schwind in 1850), which depicts animals carrying a hunter's body in a funeral procession.

Woodcut that inspired the third movement of Mahler 1

"Frère Jacques" as it appears in a children's language learning video. The lyrics of the song roughly translates as: "Are you sleeping? Are you sleeping? Brother John? Brother John? Ring the morning bells! Ring the morning bells! Ding ding dong! Ding ding dong!"

Listen to the opening of this movement to hear the way in which Mahler manipulates this tune into the minor mode.

Yet, Mahler soon moves out of this idea of a funeral procession into what one of my professors once called a "Bar Mitzvah-like" dance, inspired by the sounds of a Jewish Klezmer band.  Listen to the clip above at about 2:45 to hear this upbeat, dance-like section.

Finally, after a reiteration of the "Frère Jacques" theme, Mahler incorporates another one of his tunes from "Songs of a Wayfarer:" the fourth song, or "Die Zwei Blauen Augen von Meinem Schatz." Listen to the recording above at around 5:30 to hear the haunting melodies and dance-like tunes settle into a beautiful song. Below, I have posted Brueggergosman singing this tune.

Brueggergosman performs "Die Zwei Blauen Augen von Meinem Schatz," which appears in the third movement of Mahler 1.

The way in which Mahler creates a "roadmap" for the symphony by integrating all of these different musical ideas is my favorite element of Mahler 1. I always find it amazing to hear how deliberately Mahler intertwined these various themes, and I always grin when I hear these little "surprises" pop up throughout the symphony! I know as I listen to the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra perform Mahler's First Symphony, I will be listening for the "cuckoo" sounds from the clarinet, the tunes from "Songs of a Wayfarer," and of course, the haunting "Frère Jacques" melody. I cannot wait to hear how the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra interprets these various ideas and portrays them to the audience, tonight at 8 pm and tomorrow at 5:30 pm in the Hilbert Circle Theatre!