Ravinia 2025 Issue 3

Haydn symphony, and went on like a madman.” Mahler was devastated. Writing to compos- er-conductor Richard Strauss—with whom he began extended correspondence at this time— Mahler admitted that he immediately locked all his scores away in a desk drawer. A half decade later, during the summer of 1893, Mahler returned to his symphonic project, com- pleting the three middle movements, although their order remained in flux for quite some time. He had built a tiny cottage in Steinbach, on the shores of the Attersee, specifically as a compositional studio. Completely absorbed in his work, Mahler had few material needs, only the companionship of two cats, occasional walks outdoors, meals (which he frequently missed), and total silence. His nerves constantly stood on edge, as the violinist Natalie Bauer-Lechner discovered one day when making an offhand comment about his haggard appearance. He rebuked, “Don’t talk to me of not looking well. Don’t ever speak of this to me while I am work- ing unless you want to make me terribly angry. While one has something to say, do you think that one can spare oneself? Even if it means de- voting one’s last breath and final drop of blood, one must express it.” Mahler’s second movement is a dignified Ländler, the rustic ancestor of the waltz. The other two new movements gleaned melodic substance from the composer’s own Des Knaben Wunderhorn (orchestral songs based on folk texts from the collection of the same name, meaning “The Youth’s Magic Horn”), which he had begun during the five-year hiatus from the symphony. The central symphonic scherzo varies the tune of his “ Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt ” (“Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fish”). With no one in his congregation, Saint Anthony delivers a seaside sermon to the fish, who swim away unaffected by his words. Mahler realized that audiences would not grasp the meaning of this movement: “But only a few people will understand my satire of mankind.” His fourth movement returned to the simple Wunderhorn song for alto voice, Urlicht ( Primal Light ), transformed into an orchestral song. The “little red rose” typically symbolized Mary, the mother of Jesus and the bearer of salvation. Mahler faltered once again with the conception of his fifth, and final, movement. Ironically, this compositional impasse was resolved with Bülow’s death in Cairo on February 12, 1894. Mahler was among the mourners at his funeral in Saint Michael Church in Hamburg when an idea for the finale drifted down from the choir. “The mood in which I sat and pondered the de- parted was utterly in the spirit of what I was working on at the time. Then the choir, up in the organ loft, intoned Klopstock’s ‘Resurrection’ chorale. It flashed on me like lightning, and ev- erywhere became plain and clear in my mind! It was the flash that all creative artists wait for—‘conceiving by the Holy Ghost’!” Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724–1803) wrote religious, nationalistic, and political epics in the form of ancient Greek odes, but adopting his native German tongue. His Der Messias ( The Messiah , 1745–73) confessed religious faith with a highly personal inflection. “ Die Auferstehung ” (“The Resurrection”) became one of its most familiar sections, as set to music by Karl Heinrich Graun, Johann Christian Kittel, and Johann Christoph Heinrich Rinck. The grandiose subject matter of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 became no less than life it- self—partly the composer’s own, but even more generally mankind’s struggle on earth. After nearly seven years, death, futility, and redemp- tion all had merged into a timeless essay of both personal and universal significance. Mahler an- nounced the completion of his finale in a letter to Friedrich Löhr on June 29, 1894, with loving parental affection: “Beg to report safe delivery of a strong, healthy last movement to my Second. Father and child both doing as well as can be ex- pected—the latter not yet out of danger. At the baptismal ceremony it was given the name ‘ Lux lucet in tenebris’ [‘The light shineth in the dark- ness’]. Silent sympathy is requested. Floral trib- utes are declined with thanks. Other presents, however, are acceptable.” For his musico-philo- sophical symphony, Mahler had drawn together mammoth vocal and instrumental forces—or- chestra (both onstage and offstage ensembles), alto and soprano soloists, and chorus—roughly comparable to the ensemble Beethoven enlisted in proclaiming his message of universal brother- hood in his Ninth Symphony. Mahler believed the subject of his Symphony No. 2 surpassed the limitations of verbal de- scriptions. However, three times he succumbed to outside pressures and supplied programmatic explanations. For a performance in Dresden on December 20, 1901, he drafted the most detailed of his programs: Gustav Mahler “ First movement . We stand by the coffin of a well-loved person. His life, struggles, passions, and aspirations once more, for the last time, pass before our mind’s eye.—And now in this mo- ment of gravity and of emotion which convulses our deepest being, when we lay aside like a cov- ering everything that from day to day perplexes us and drags us down, our heart is gripped by a dreadfully serious voice which always passes us by in the deafening bustle of daily life: What now? What is this life—and this death? Do we have an existence beyond it? Is all this only a confused dream, or do life and this death have a meaning?—And we must answer this question if we are to live on. “ Second movement—Andante . A happy moment from the life of his beloved departed one, and a sad recollection of his youth and lost innocence. “ Third movement—Scherzo . The spirit of un- belief, of presumption, has taken possession of him; he beholds the tumult of appearances and together with the child’s pure understanding he loses the firm footing that love alone affords; he despairs of himself and of God. The world and life become for him a disorderly apparition; dis- gust for all being and becoming lays hold of him with an iron grip and drives him to cry out in desperation. “ Fourth movement — Urlicht (alto solo). The moving voice of naïve faith sounds in his ear. ‘I am of God, and desire to return to God! God will give me a lamp, will light me unto the life of eternal bliss!’ “ Fifth movement . [? … the cry of desperation starts up … ?] We again confront all the dread- ful questions and the mood of the end of the first movement.—The voice of the caller is heard: The end of all living things is at hand, the last judgment is announced, and [all] the whole horror of that day of days has set in.—The earth trembles, graves burst open, the dead arise and step forth in [long] endless files. The great and the small of this earth, kings and beggars, the just and the ungodly—all are making that pil- grimage, [shuddering and (?) in endless files]; the cry for mercy and grace falls terrifyingly on our ear.—The crying becomes ever more dread- ful—our senses forsake us and all consciousness fades at the approach of eternal judgment. The ‘great summons’ is heard; the trumpets from the Apocalypse call [every body and every soul];— in the midst of the awful silence we think we hear in the farthest distance a nightingale, like a last quivering echo of earthly life! Softly there rings out a chorus of the holy and the heavenly: ‘Risen again, yea thou shalt be risen again!’ There ap- pears the glory of God! A wonderful gentle light permeates us to our very heart—all is quiet and blissful!—And behold: There is no judgment— There is no sinner, no righteous man—no great and no small—There is no punishment and no reward! An almighty feeling of love illumines us with blessed knowing and being!” RAVINIAMAGAZINE • JUNE 30 – JULY 20, 2025 72