Movement One - Pan Awakes and Summer Marches In

Hi everyone. It's Aaron Cohen. We've finally released our fourth season. I don't know if you noticed. There was a year between each of the first three seasons. This new fourth season took two and a half years. Why? Because of gaps in funding. We'd love to get out season five in record time. I hope you'll join the Embrace Everything community on Patreon to support our exploration into the wonderful world of Mahler's symphonies. From $5 to $5,000, every gift counts. Please join us at theworldofgustavmahler.org and click on Support. There's also a link in the show notes. And thank you. Season three of Embrace Everything, The World of Gustav Mahler, was made possible by a generous grant from the Kaplan Foundation. You can find a complete list of pieces and performers featured in this episode on our website, theworldofgustavmahler.org. Please follow us on X and Blue Sky at World of Mahler and on Facebook and Instagram at The World of Gustav Mahler. Gustav Mahler told his fellow composer Sibelius that a symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything. And that's where we get the title of our series. We're going to explore Mahler's musical embrace. Mahler lived from 1860 to 1911, and his symphonies weren't understood during his own lifetime. He was better known as one of the greatest conductors of his era, commanding orchestras in Hamburg, Vienna and New York. About his music, Mahler famously said, "My time will come." He was correct. His symphonies are now staples of the classical music repertoire. I'm Aaron Cohen, and in season three of Embrace Everything, our focus is going to be Mahler's massive third symphony. There are six episodes this season, one for each movement of the symphony. In this symphony, Mahler creates a musical ladder upwards, where each movement presents an idea higher than the previous movement. For this reason, I'd recommend you listen to the segments in order if you can. We'll kick things off in the summer of 1895, when Mahler's friend and confidante Natalie Bauer Lekner visited him at his lakeside summer home in the beautiful Austrian countryside. Only just arrived here, Mahler has already begun working on his third symphony. With it, I hope to earn applause and money. He said to me jokingly on one of the first days, "For this one is pure humor and merriment, a great laugh at the whole world." But the very next day, he took back what he'd said. You know, as far as money making goes, the third won't do any better than the others, for at first people won't understand or appreciate its deity. It soars above that world of struggle and sorrow in the first and second symphonies, and could have been produced only as a result of these. Albrecht Meyer, principal oboe of the Berlin Philharmonic. Mahler was not only this celebrated conductor, he was leading us in the musical world into a new era. And I think for the listeners at this very time, it was a big shock, it was a big shock. Kent Nagano, conductor and music director with the Hamburg State Opera. In many ways it's a groundbreaking symphony, it's a symphony of and about and for nature, and with that comes extraordinary dimensions and unusual, if not pioneering, structural concept. Mahler's third is a creation symphony, presenting the birth of the planet and the evolution of consciousness. While writing it, Mahler said this, "I'll call the whole thing my joyful science, for that's just what it is." Mahler ultimately decided not to give the symphony a title, but my joyful science nicely captures what he was trying to do. When Mahler's protege Bruno Walder visited him that summer, he admired the incredible mountain landscape surrounding Mahler's summer home. Mahler told him, "No need to look there anymore, that's all been composed away and set to music by me." Mahler labeled the opening of the symphony "The Awakening Call", where the world wakes up for the first time. Andrew Bain, principal horn of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It's such an impactful start to a symphony, you know, you have eight horn players basically playing as loud as they get, more or less. Here's what it sounds like. Mahler tells us this, "It's the world, nature as a whole that is, awakened out of the unfathomable silence into tones and sounds." An atmosphere of brooding midday heat hangs over the introduction of this movement. Not a breath stirs, all life is suspended, and the sun-drenched air trembles and vibrates. Those tones and sounds are the birth of the world, with an ominous feel to them. Carter Bray, principal cello of the New York Philharmonic. The cellos and basses have these, they're marked, in fact, wild, these upward-surging scales. It's very much like the beginning of the second symphony, actually, same kind of gestural brutality. It's almost a sort of King Lear-like defiant gesture, and each one seems to double down on the previous one. Mahler tells us more. It has almost ceased to be music. Eerie, the way life gradually breaks through out of soulless, petrified matter. I might equally well have called the movement "What the Mountains Tell Me." Marilyn McCoy, a music professor at Columbia University in New York City. You feel like it's having trouble generating the energy to move forward. This piece doesn't have the same kind of momentum that other first movements have. Chalice Carter Bray, this movement and the last movement especially, they seem very fragmentary, that he introduces ideas only to beat them down with a stick, and have them rise, supplicating they only to be beaten down once again before they finally are able to consummate their message, so to speak. And so we're off to a pessimistic start. It's Mahler and his darkest, most doom-laden mode, for sure. The music deteriorates to a low rumble, but organic life is about to make its first appearance. In the summer of 1896, Mahler landed on a subject for the first movement. For weeks, I've been searching for a title for the whole of this work of mine, and finally I hit upon Pan, which, as you know, was the name of a Greek divinity that subsequently symbolized the essential nature of all things. Pan is Greek for everything. The Greek god Pan is typically depicted as half-man and half-goat. Mahler wasn't the only composer to find musical inspiration in the figure of Pan. In Ravel's ballet, Daveness and Chloe, which premiered in 1912, there's a whole scene devoted to Pan. Here's what it sounds like. For more background, I spoke to Ioannis Konstantakos, a professor of ancient Greek literature at the University of Athens in Greece. In ancient mythology, poetry and art, Pan is most often represented in a country setting, especially in pasture fields and the slopes of hills and mountains, where he plays his rough musical instrument, the reed pipes, and dances with the nymphs. Perhaps one reason composers have been especially drawn to Pan is because he's a musical god. He plays the Pan pipe, often performed by the flute in orchestral compositions. This is how Ravel depicted Pan. He represents in general the powers of natural growth and fertility, as is usual with such lesser deities of the countryside in the Greek collective imaginary. And there's a symbolism in his appearance. So-called "theoromorphic" aspects, I mean his animal features, the fact that he's represented as half-man and half-goat, point exactly to this relation to nature and its powers of vitality. The animal traits of the god are a graphic visualization of his intimate connection to the sources of natural life and growth. The word "Pan" in Greek is the name of the god, but if you change the vowel pronunciation, it becomes the word "all". So because of the popular connection between Pan and the Greek word for "all", Pan acquired a larger dimension in later Greek philosophy and mysticism, but this happens later, especially in the Roman period, in the first centuries of the Common Era. He was identified as a pantheistic deity, the god of all, the representation of the universe, a kind of pantheistic enlargement of the concept of nature. In Mahler's Third Symphony, Mahler put the marking "Pan sleeps" at this place in the score. As the summer of 1896 went on, Mahler had more ideas. I've also now found the title for the introduction, "Pan's Awakening", followed by "Summer Marches In". It's the maddest thing I have ever written. Perhaps here is where Pan awakes. Mahler called this part "The Herald". The Herald is the name of the god. This is Organic Life's first attempt to wake up. And... it doesn't last. Let's find ourselves back at the birth of the world. Mahler gives us more details. A young man moans, struggling for salvation. He is still chained in the abyss of lifeless, rigid nature, as in Hulderlin's Rhine. Friedrich Hulderlin was a German romantic poet that lived about a century before Mahler. Here are some key lines from his poem "The Rhine", which is set in the Alps at noon. Deep below the silver cliffs and cheerful greenery, where the shivering forests and the cliff tops one over another look downwards all day upon him. There, in a frigid chasm, I heard a youth clamoring to be set free. "The Rhine" There are three major trombone solos in the first movement. Toby Offd, principal trombone of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The first one is big and thunderous and bravado. Almost like things you would say with all the strength and vitality of youth. Like the world will be yours. "The Rhine" Life makes a second attempt to wake up. The music of Pan returns. We hear Pan's theme first in the bass. Then in the oboe. This music is just the beginning of where Pan will take us. I always feel it's strange that when most people speak of nature, what they mean is flowers, little birds, the scent of the forest. No one knows the God Dionysus or the great Pan. Another composer who found inspiration in a Pan-like character is Claude Debussy in his Prelude to the Afternoon of Afon. Composed in 1894, the year before Mahler started work on his third symphony. Debussy's piece was inspired by a poem in which a fawn, a creature that is half-man and half-goat, plays his Pan pipe and is aroused by the nymphs. Here's what it sounds like. More about Pan from Professor Ioannis Konstantakos. Like many deities connected with the forces and spirits of nature in ancient Greece, Pan also has a sexual side. Pan is lustful and he expresses his lust by erotically pursuing handsome people of both sexes. His lust and sexual energy are a representation of the natural powers of fertility and reproduction, the force of growth and vitality that keeps animals alive and ensures the survival of the natural world. With Debussy's music, we feel the sensual side of the fawn. There's also a sense of good-natured humor about Pan. Yes, Pan is depicted as a playful god, sometimes also as a tricksterish and mischievous god. He likes to dance and flirt with the nymphs on the mountains, the fields and the caves. He also seems to be a trickster, a figure of a teal-oil and spiegel type, who likes to play pranks on his unsuspicious victims. The author E. M. Berry was influenced by the playful side of the god when he created his famous character of literature, Peter Pan. There is also a darker aspect in the forces represented by Pan, as is often the case with the ancient Greek deities and demons of nature. Pan may also express in the channel more dangerous powers. He may inspire emotions of sudden uncontrollable fear or states of manic frenzy. Pan is the source of the word "panic". He thus represents not only the idyllic side of nature, but also the wild powers that are inherent in the elements of nature, the uncontrollable aspect of natural drives, the elemental fear that wild nature can inspire. When we meet Pan early on in Mahler's first movement, we revel in the light-hearted music. Mahler will portray the panic a little later. Mahler's protege, Bruno Walter, said that he saw Pan within Mahler himself, and perhaps this isn't surprising. Music professor Marilyn McCoy. Every topic in there is Mahler. Nature, shepherds, rustic areas. It's like that is Mahler. Like Pan, Mahler reveled in the physical side of life. Mahler was a health fanatic. He could run and hike and bike and swim and never get tired. He had pretty bad digestion, but otherwise physically he was in incredible shape. Mahler considered many titles for his third symphony, including calling it Pan, Symphonic Poems. Another title was My Joyful Science. Mahler actually was very interested in science, you know, was one of his sort of hobbies, and so I think he probably thought it had kind of a nice ring to it. Mahler's title was likely taken from a book by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, The Joyful Science. In that book, Nietzsche had this to say about science. We are so convinced of the uncertainty and fantasies of our judgments and of the eternal change of all human laws and concepts that we are really amazed how well the results of science stand up. As we'll see, Nietzsche was an important influence for Mahler at this time. Here is the official arrival of the summer march. If you listen closely, you can hear that this march is related to the awakening call from the opening of the movement. But now it's transformed into a lighthearted march. And we hear Pan's sleepy theme now wide awake. [Music] Mahler tells us more. I need a regimental band to give the rough and crude effect of my Marshal Comrade's arrival. It will be just like the military band on parade. Such a mob is milling around. You never saw anything like it. Marches played a huge role in Mahler's output throughout his career. cellist Carter Bray. He couldn't stay away from them and they obviously had a very deep significance for him whether they were clearly a funeral march or a different kind of military sounding march or even a merry kind of town band sort of march. Summer marches in and blossoms. [Music] Summer has arrived in all its glory. Here there's such a ringing and singing that you just can't imagine. It blossoms forth from all sides. How can people forever think that nature lies on the surface? Those who aren't overwhelmed with awe at its infinite mystery, its divinity these people haven't come close to it. And in every work of art which should be a reflection of nature there must be a trace of this infinity. The infinity of the universe. And a mystery that includes the wild uncontrollable powers of nature. And this takes us back to the creation of the Earth of the struggle between inorganic matter and life itself struggling to be born. Mahler tells us this. It's Zeus toppling Kronos, the higher form overcoming the lower that finds expression in this movement. More and more I see how the Greek's vast conception of nature underlies it. Kronos was Zeus' father. More from Ioannis Constantakos. Yes, and it is in the first movement which is actually the beginning of creation just as the conflict of Zeus and Kronos was at the beginning of the creation of the world as we know it. This was the Titanomachy, the hard cosmic battle between two generations of gods for dominion over the universe. In the end Zeus and his siblings won with the help of other primordial divine beings and Zeus imprisoned Kronos and the Titans in the Tartaros, the deepest races of the underworld. Zeus then undertook power in the world and he established the new age of history, the one in which we are living now. We come to the second trombone solo. Back to the moans of youth, of captive life struggling for release. Trombonist Tobi Aft. But the second solo is like this tender feeling of loss and sort of adultery sweetness. Where did Mahler get the idea for a trombone solo like this? One inspiration might have been this piece. The grand funeral and triumphal symphony of Berlioz composed from military band and premiered in 1840. And the second movement is this dramatically long, very similar in kind of style and texture to this Mahler III solos. But this is a longer solo. Music Professor Marilyn McCoy The melody itself sounds quite similar to Mahler's melody that he uses. I can imagine him studying the score. He was a real fan of Berlioz. We don't know if Mahler knew this piece. He never conducted it. But I'll tell you that that trombone solo in the Berlioz sounds suspiciously like parts of the solo from the third. Berlioz accompanies his trombone solo with brass instruments. Listen closely to Mahler's trombone solo, where the trombone is accompanied by the cellos. New York Philharmonic cellist Carter Bray. And it's very interesting during this trombone solo, here you have a baritone tenor range instrument being accompanied by baritone tenor range instruments. So the whole feel of the section, the whole vibe, the color is very dark. These darker parts are meant to portray Winter. Perhaps Mahler had this quote in mind from Friedrich Nietzsche. "Winter. A wicked guest is sitting at home with me. My hands are blue from the handshake of his friendship. I honor this wicked guest, but I like to let him sit alone. I like to run away from him, and if one runs well, one escapes him." And Pan returns with Summer, which is another spot where Mahler could have drawn inspiration from Nietzsche. Upon a concealed woodland meadow, he sees the great Pan sleeping. All things of nature have fallen asleep with him, an expression of eternity on their face. Then, at length, the wind rises in the trees. Noon has gone by. Life again draws him to it. Mahler was writing this great tribute to Summer during the summer of 1896. Natalie Bauer Lechner was there. We do not have lunch these days until one o'clock, for Mahler works intensively from eight till twelve, after which he has to wander around for an hour or so in order to relax and find his way back to the everyday world and to people. He is preoccupied with his work all the time, not just during the four hours in the summer house. You can see this when you're walking or cycling with him. He's constantly losing himself in his thoughts, or else he lingers behind and pulls out his manuscript notebook to jot something down. Only you mustn't notice this, or he becomes furious. Mahler acknowledged the inspiration he drew from nature. As one had perhaps aptly called Mozart "the singer of love," one will also, naturally with considerable leeway, be able to give me the title "singer of nature." Ever since my childhood, nature has been for me one and all. [Music] It's the path of development of nature, from rigid matter up to the highest articulation, but above all the life of nature, Dionysus, the driving creative force. The music of Stravinsky was labeled Dionysian, especially his Rite of Spring from 1913, in which the characters dance and become one with the earth. Dionysus and Pan have some elements in common. Ioannis Constantakos. Both Pan and Dionysus are gods of merry celebrations, festivals with boisterous music and vigorous dance, which often take place in a rural setting. But Dionysus is a broader god. And above all Dionysus is a god who grants a particular kind of religious experience. The ancient Greeks called it mania. We would term it in psychological terminology, ecstasy or trans. The Dionysic trans is an experience of heightened mental and psychological power, which leads the individual to the point of paroxysm and ecstasy. And the purpose of the Dionysic ceremonies was the achievement of this state, during which the faithful lose their sense of self and they experience a spiritual union with the god. In his third symphony, Mahler derived many important ideas about Dionysus from Friedrich Nietzsche. And Nietzsche was himself an expert on the ancient Greek world. He said this. Not only do the festivals of Dionysus forge a bond between human beings, they also reconcile human beings and nature. The Dionysian Greek wants truth and nature at full strength and sees himself transformed by magic into a satyr. A satyr is a lustful demigod that's half human and half goat. Dionysian art too wants to convince us of the eternal lust and delight of existence. Mahler's Dionysian march is about to get started, beginning with the bass players. Dominic Seldis, principal bass of the Royal Concert about Orchestra of Amsterdam. This is actually really quite difficult because there are no open strings. There are too many flats. He writes it in five flats. So there are no open strings, which is a bit of a nightmare for a bass player. Mahler put this marking in the score. The mob, rabble. [music] More from Nietzsche. Dionysian music in particular, excited all and terror. [music] The emotional power of the tone, the uniform flow of the melody and the utterly incomparable world of harmony. [music] Everything here speaks only of overbrimming, indeed triumphant existence, where everything that exists has been deified, regardless of whether it is good or evil. Thus, the spectator may stand in some perplexity before this fantastic superabundance of life. [music] A parade of jubilant existence, cellist Carter Bray. I'm waiting for some Midwestern college marching band to play this coming down Central Park West for the Thanksgiving Day Parade sometime. I think it would work perfectly. [music] Conductor Michael Tillson Thomas. He pushes the front edge of the musical expression a lot to a point that seems to threaten to break the shape and the order of what a normal symphony would be. [music] Mahler invites the weather right into his symphony, the Southern Storm. [music] A Southern Storm with a marching band at the center of it. [music] It will really sound as if a band from the castle comes marching in, attracting the kind of rabble one would seldom see at other times. [music] After all the excitement, Mahler takes us back to the awakening call from the opening of the symphony, horn player Andrew Bain. He uses that thematic material again, but it sort of extends the range of the horns and we even go higher than what happens at the beginning. [music] [music] The way Mahler connects the different kinds of music is especially interesting. Conductor Kent Nagano. Those bridging materials, if you look at them closely, they're so cloudy and so nebulous You feel a sense of a nearly invisible and inaudible transitions taking place. It's as if something is melting away and suddenly exposes something new underneath what used to be ice or underneath what used to be a rigid form. [music] As the music melts away, we find the rigid form of inorganic matter still there. [music] The sinister trumpet melody outlines a D minor major 7 chord. cellist Carter Bray says this is a very curious harmony. This is one of the musical ways Mahler keeps us guessing. What's going to come next? We come to the third and final trombone solo. [music] [music] This solo sounds much like the first one. Trombonist Toby Offd. But right about the middle, it goes back to the pain of the second solo. [music] And you hear these kind of like tender sighs. It sounds like taking a deep breath and be like, like you would if you were crying. [music] You're just holding it while the strings are kind of like sobbing with you. [music] Winter's Defeat. Music professor Marilyn McCoy. There isn't a sense of death, but yeah, there's a sense of I'm going to stop fighting this fight. It's not working. [music] And the mood gently transforms. cellist Carter Bray. So in the space of just a couple of bars, Mahler goes from something incredibly dark to something that just feels like celestial comfort. [music] Summer can now triumph fully. Mahler explained. It doesn't come off without a struggle with the opponent, Winter. But he is easily dispatched. And Summer, in his strength and superior power, soon gains undisputed mastery. This movement, treated as an introduction, is humorous. Summer peeks out, making sure the coast is clear. No sign of Winter. With Winter defeated, Summer has the floor. In Nietzsche's book The Joyful Science, an inspiration for Mahler at this time, Nietzsche wrote this. It's instantly reminded no less of the proximity of Winter than of the triumph over the Winter that is coming, must come, and perhaps has already come. Mahler called this part of the first movement the Parade of Bacchus, also known as a Bacchanal, Professor Ioannis Constantacus. Bacchanal is a Latin word, directly derived of course from the name Bacchus, which was an alternative appellation of Dionysus. The most famous Bacchanal in classical music is in the 1877 opera Samson and Delilah by Camille Sassons. A Bacchanal is often thought of as a drunken party. The Bacchanal is a kind of drunken party, but it is a religious party and a religious party of grave spiritual weight and significance. They drink copious quantities of wine, which is the sacred potion of Dionysus Bacchus, and they experience great pleasure and merriment as a result. A holy ritual of exuberant life. Properly therefore, the Bacchanal is a ceremony in honor of Bacchus, the god of Dionysian ecstasy, in which the participants experience a trance-like state and are brought into spiritual communion with the god. Here's what Mahler did with the parade of Bacchus in his first movement. Mahler completed the first movement in 1896. It would take a few more years before the symphony was performed in its entirety. While conducting the first movement at the dress rehearsal for the premiere of the third symphony in 1902, Mahler turned to his wife and quoted the book of Genesis. And he saw that it was good. Music professor Marilyn McCoy. I mean, he was joking, but a little bit not. He was probably a little bit serious. He was feeling kind of full of himself at this time, but in, you know, kind of a charming way. As summer reaches its climax, Mahler relies heavily on the brass instruments. Horn player Andrew Payne. It's some pretty exciting moments when he has the entire brass section playing at their full limit. It's pretty hair-raising. Mahler is famous for the instructions within his scores. He often gives very specific direction to each player. Christopher Martin, principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic. Some of the greatest ones that you could see as a brass player, as a trumpet player, he writes Schaltrick to Indijue, which means put your bell up, you know, so point it right at the conductor, which is one of our favorite things to do. Music At the very end of the first movement, Mahler unleashes his brass cavalry. He writes Alas Ubertonent, which means sound over everyone. Which, as a trumpet player, that is, that is everything. Music Always and everywhere, it is only the sound of nature. Music We are again reminded of the infinity of the universe. Music A mystery that we all participated in. Music The lifeless world gradually leaps to life. Music And when summer comes marching in, watch out. Music