Movement Three - What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me

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. Mahler's third symphony, which he considered his joyful science, began in the first movement with the birth of consciousness. In the second movement, he was inspired by the evolution of plants. Now we come to the third movement, where nature evolves to populate the world with animals. We'll hear from the thinkers that influenced Mahler's ideas about the world of animals. We'll see how those ideas influenced his choice of a text to set to music and how the song he created then inspired the third movement of his third symphony. I'm Aaron Cohen. I hope you enjoy it. The animal world has long fascinated composers. One especially notable portrayal is the Carnival of the Animals by Camille Sassons. In this piece, we hear a musical zoo complete with elephants and kangaroos. This is how Sassons portrayed an aquarium full of fish. Before we plunge into Mahler's musical version of animals, we need to look into how Mahler thought about animals and decided to make them the next step in his joyful science. We start with the philosopher Schopenhauer, who said that each more highly organized state of matter grew out of the previous one. The original mass had to go through a long series of changes before the first eye could be opened, and yet the existence of this whole world remains forever dependent on that first eye that opened. We're even that of an insect. This world is the succession of the representations of this consciousness. A ladder of consciousness and for Mahler, animals are the next step. Of course, humans are animals too. The scientist and philosopher Gustav Teodor Feschner said this, "It's true that the animals are quite different from us in appearance. Yet, like us, they move about, seek their food, generate offspring, even utter cries upon similar provocation. Consequently, we ascribe to them a somewhat similar soul, subtracting only reason in view of the differences we observe." Here, Sassons presents the full variety of animals in his zoo. Schopenhauer pointed out the key difference between animals and humans. "Animals peacefully and serenely enjoy every present moment. The life of the animal is a continual present." The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche agreed, "Consider the cattle grazing as they pass you by. They do not know what is meant by yesterday or today. They leap about, eat, rest, digest, leap about again, and so from morn till night and from day to day, fetid to the moment and its pleasure or displeasure and thus neither melancholy or bored." Schopenhauer believed that animals are more truthful than people. "In the animal we see the will to live more naked than in man, where it is clothed and so much knowledge, and is so veiled by the capacity for concealment that its true nature only comes to light almost by chance and in isolated cases." Whenever Mahler passed by a cat or dog, he loved to comment on this difference. "The absolute truthfulness of an animal, as differentiated from mankind, strikes me as pleasant." Because of humanity's propensity to lie, Nietzsche felt it was more dangerous to be among humans than among animals. In his book "Thus Spoke Zarathustra," Nietzsche reveled in the variety of animals. "Oh my animals, chatter on like this and let me listen. It is so refreshing for me to hear you chattering. Where there is chattering, there the world lies before me like a garden. How lovely it is that there are words and sounds. Are not words and sounds rainbows and elusive bridges between things which are eternally apart?" Some of the most musical chattering we find in the animal world comes from bird song. Here's how Sassans portrayed birds. Mahler had used bird song in compositions right from the start, including the cuckoo calls at the opening of his first symphony and the nightingale towards the end of his second symphony. In his third symphony, Mahler included both these birds. He based the third movement on a song he'd written much earlier in the late 1880s, where he used satiric song lyrics from a German folk poem. Here are the lyrics in translation on top of music from the third movement. "The cuckoo has fallen to his death on a green willow. The cuckoo is dead, has fallen to his death. Who shall now all summer long while away the time for us? Mrs. Nightingale shall do that. She sits on the green branch, that small and graceful nightingale, that sweet and lovely nightingale. She hops and sings, is always joyous when other birds are silent. We shall wait for Mrs. Nightingale. She lives in the green grove, and when the cuckoo's time is up, she will start to sing." The text is called "The Changing of the Guard in Summer" and comes from a collection of folk poems called "Deskenhaben Wunderhorn," which translates as "The Boy's Magic Horn." The poems were compiled by Clemens Brentano and Akhenban Arnhem and published in three volumes between 1805 and 1808. Brentano and Arnhem cite Johann Müller, a 16th-century composer, as the author of the text. As he often did, Müller made small adjustments to the text to better focus the message he wanted to get across. For more background, I spoke to Joanne Aeneely, a professor of German at Oxford University. Müller almost doubles the length of this text. He adds seven lines in total that aren't in Brentano and Arnhem's original version. In his adjustments, Müller added four new lines about the nightingale at the end. There's definitely a lot more centering on the nightingale in Müller's poem, not just taking over from the cuckoo, but as a kind of positive, happy event that seems to be really anticipated. Another change. In the original poem, the Willow Tree mentioned in the second line is "hollow." But in Müller's version, the tree is green, so I think in the original you have the death of the tree and the death of the cuckoo going hand in hand, whereas in Müller's version there's a kind of blooming, it's springtime or it's a kind of flowering or the green leaves are coming. So there's more emphasis on continuing life, I think, in Müller's subtle change there. Marilyn McCoy, a music professor at Columbia University. The death of the cuckoo is not tragic. It's an inconvenience to the people around him and there's something sort of comical complaining about it. You can imagine the animal saying, "Oh, the cuckoo's dead, man. What are we gonna do?" There's a musical symbolism built into the changing of the guard in summer. Joanna Neely. The idea of the cuckoo being replaced comes from a folk belief that the cuckoo died in summer. In fact, the cuckoo doesn't die in the summer, but its song changes, so you don't hear the same springtime song, and folklore explains the loss of this song as the death of the cuckoo. Müller loved the satiric nature of the Wonderhorn poems. They are all humor in the best and truest sense of the word. And Müller wrote many songs based on the Wonderhorn poems, although he wasn't optimistic the public would like or understand them. And I will probably have to put them away with the others. It's really an exhilarating prospect for me to write a whole library for my drawers. Why did Folk Song appeal to Müller so much? Friedrich Nietzsche offers some clues. In the poetry of Folk Song, we see language straining to its limits to imitate music. Nietzsche specifically praised the Wonderhorn poems and felt the origin of Folk Song came from the basic drives of nature. Every period which was rich in the production of Folk Songs was agitated by Dionysian currents, since these are always to be regarded as the precondition of Folk Song and as the hidden ground from which it springs. But above all else, we regard Folk Song as a musical mirror of the world. And this is likely what drew Müller to it. After adjusting the text, here's the song Müller wrote. Marilyn McCoy. In the text, he repeats certain short phrases right in a row. That makes the speaker sound like a bird. You know, because birds often repeat just little parts of their call. Müller wrote to his sister that he'd found the perfect place for this song. And it's now part of my symphony. Müller would use this song as the basis for the third movement of his third symphony. Whenever Müller uses a song as a symphonic theme, the ghost of the text is kind of hanging in the background. You can't help but wonder, well, is this text the issues of the text? Are they still in force? In this case, the answer is yes. Müller called this movement What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me. Bill Hudgens, principal clarinet of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He's trying to reproduce kind of this feeling of what it's like being in this forest or in open wooded areas, an open plain, you know, all the birds kind of interacting, these little sounds that pop here and there. [Music] In addition to birds, Müller intends to portray many parts of the animal kingdom. I think there's donkey sounds, but he ah, he ah, but he ah, he ah. Müller tells us this. All the animals always seem to be so different, characteristic and lively, so that there always was ample material for humor. The melody is passed around among different instruments, mostly woodwind instruments, flutes, oboes and clarinets. Birds are frequently portrayed by these instruments and symphonic music. This movement is a scherzo, a dance form that's playful and humorous. Müller moves away from the bird themes here. And we get a glimpse of other animals in the forest. This piece really sounds as if all of nature were making faces and sticking out its tongue. [Music] We'll return to the bird themes from the opening of the third movement, but there'll be a transition taking place. Marilyn McCoy. What Müller does, like many symphonists of the time, is he sort of takes the cuckoo song and varies it. Müller's friend and confidant, Natalie Bauer Lekner, explained how Müller accomplished these variations. He has, as usual, filled a pile of sketch sheets and his pocket music notebooks with a hundred variants of a motif or a modulation, until he has found exactly what he needs, and exactly how it is to fit into the whole. As the bird theme transforms, we start to hear a darker element in the music. On the one hand, we're delighted by animals, but there's also the ferocious side of nature. Eat or be eaten. [Music] The scherzo, the animal piece, is the most ludicrous and at the same time, the most tragic. [Music] And we're back to the light-hearted bird music. Marilyn McCoy. And so by now, if you know the cuckoo song, and you're waiting for it to unfold in an organized manner, you are sorely disappointed. [Music] And yet, it sounds familiar. All of these sort of cartoony-sounding themes, actually, we've heard before, and they're referred to later. So something that seems so simple, as usual in Müller, is not simple. [Music] Natalie Bauer-Lekner said that Müller was contemplating a surprising choice. He still did not quite dare give a big part to the flugelhorn. And where would it fit with all these animals? [Music] A flugelhorn is a type of trumpet with a wider bore, giving it a mellower sound than a trumpet. Müller had been fond of this instrument, ever since he heard it in military bands as a small child, but he had practical concerns. I'm always afraid that it might not be available in some performances here or there. Müller ultimately decided to use a post horn. A post horn is another kind of trumpet, which looks like a baby French horn. The solo that Müller created using this instrument has become one of the most famous moments in all of Müller's symphonies. Carter Brad, principal cello of the New York Philharmonic. I've always thought of that post horn solo as sort of the appearance of the human element in the animal world. [Music] And it's as if he's asking everybody to stop for a moment and cup their figurative hand behind their figurative ear and listen to this voice from afar. It's such an enchanting idea. [Music] Christopher Martin, principal trumpet of the New York Philharmonic. The very first entrance is this magical ethereal appearance from nothing, kind of from the mist, and that really can only happen off stage. Even though it's off stage, this solo has a special place in the trumpet repertoire. It's one of our, one of our most beloved, sometimes feared, but for the most part beloved and anxiously awaited. For me, the post horn solo is the most beautiful writing for the trumpet that we have in the repertoire. Mother wasn't the first person to use a post horn in classical music. Mozart used it in his post horn serenade of 1779. [Music] How did the post horn come into existence? It was in the 19th century a valve-less tube curled into a circle and it was used, it was blown by postillions for the most part. A postillion was a mailman from a different era, riding his horse and blowing his horn as he arrived in town to deliver the mail. I think of it in those days as the 19th century version of the ice cream truck jingle to let everybody know that the the mail's on the way. Marilyn McCoy. Sometimes the postmen were such skilled players of the post horn that they actually played small concerts for their customers and their various villagers and sometimes there were complaints that they weren't doing their job and that they were trying to make sort of extra money doing this. For more background, Joanna Neely. The post horn has huge significance in German literature and poetry from the romantic period. It's a major symbol both of traveling, so romantic wandering, but also longing for home or nostalgic memory a traveler might hear the post horn and be drawn back in his mind to home. I think the most famous poem evoking this feeling is The Post in Winterreise, when the traveler hears the post horn and his heart leaps for thoughts of his beloved. Winterreise, or Winter's Journey, is a cycle of 24 songs by Franz Schubert. This one is called The Post. Notice the Pustillian's galloping horse in the accompaniment. And even today the German and the Austrian postal systems have the post horn as their logo. So the post horn has this huge cultural symbolism, particularly in German and Austrian romanticism. The poet Nicholas Lainow wrote a famous poem called The Pustillian about a postman's journey as he plays his horn. Mahler said this poem was the inspiration for the post horn solo in his third symphony. He even wrote the title The Pustillian into his score. Let's listen to some lines from the poem. After a frenzied late night journey, The Pustillian arrives at the grave of a former colleague who was also a Pustillian. Here must I halt, wheel and horse have no cause to fear me. Yonder lies my old comrade's corpse in the cool earth so near me. Oh, such a jolly fellow, sir, 'tis an eternal pity. None blew the horn with such a stir, or rang so clear a diddy. Here do I rest each time I pass, his favorite tune repeating, who sleeps so calm beneath the grass and give him trusty greeting. Joanna Neely. And The Pustillian then, unexpectedly, plays happy, wandering songs in honor of his dead friend, which echo back from the surrounding mountains and echo forever in the narrator's ears. And the far echoes' thin, clear tone came from the mountains ringing, as though the dead Pustillian, with his loved songs, was singing. Full gallop, then, we sped away by fields and leaping fountains, long within my ears still lay that echo from the mountains. Marilyn McCoy. It's sort of sad but also charming that the postman is going to stop and recognize his friend like this. The offstage post horn is joined by a pair of onstage French horns. Mahler's post horn solo has a musical poetic element about it. Conductor Kent Nagano. It indicates the presence of a human world, but how is that presented? It's not presented in a direct way, it's presented indirectly, offstage, far away. It suggests that the post horn solo is meant to come from a world of feeling, a world of thinking that comes out of human imagination. After this lengthy solo, Mahler returns us to the world of birds and animals. Marilyn McCoy. The trumpet comes in and sort of slaps you in the face and says, "Hey, we're going to go back to the bird theme." Mahler is about to quote another of his Wunderhorn songs. Listen closely to this part. Mahler wrote his song "The Earthly Life" in 1892. In this song, a child begs his mother for bread. Listen to this melody. And compare it to this part of the third movement. The music here is slightly disorienting. We hear short snippets of the bird themes. Marilyn McCoy. The cuckoo song keeps trying to come back, but it keeps dissolving away into chaos. It's like Mahler will not let this tune complete itself. It has multiple personalities. It's morphing around and trying to find the body it wants to inhabit, so to speak. The music is still light-hearted, but with something darker underneath, growing in menace. But there is such a horrible panic like humor in it that one has overcome with horror rather than with laughter. There's sort of a little bit of everything being thrown into this sort of stew, and the thing just kind of keeps getting bigger and bigger and crazier and crazier. You have to kind of let yourself surf along and enjoy the flow of this. The animals have overtaken the music -- the cacophony of the animal world at full blast. It just sounds like elephants are sort of stampeding. They just can't keep track of all the stuff that he brings in, and then suddenly it takes out. It's like Mahler pulls three rugs out from under it. It's extraordinary that within about, oh, 20 seconds or so, Mahler manages just to take apart this giant thing. That herd of elephants suddenly is like a bunch of dragonflies flying by. I don't know how he did it, but he did. And we arrive at the second post horn solo. Here did Mahler get this post horn melody -- an unexpected place. In 1894, Mahler was engaged to perform a concert with the pianist and composer Ferruccio Busoni. Busoni had transformed a piano piece by Franz Liszt, the rhapsody espagnol, and turned it into a piano concerto. Mahler wrote to him in advance. And since I know neither the list nor your arrangement, I therefore ask you to have the score as well as the part sent to me immediately. Mahler and Busoni premiered the new work in Hamburg, and it contained this melody, which is very similar to the post horn melody. Marilyn McCoy. I believe that pretty much everything musical that he heard, even if it wasn't an actual piece, just went into his brain and stayed there forever. The performance was in October 1894, and just months later, in the summer of 1895, Mahler would compose his post horn solo. You know, I think Mahler just thought, "Wow, great tune. If I slow it down and put the post horn off stage, it'll sound like a post horn solo." So that's apparently what he did. And whether he was conscious of it or unconscious, that's unclear, because he never really said anything about it. It wouldn't be the first time Mahler composed music, only to realize later he'd unconsciously borrowed someone else's theme. In a way, he would probably be embarrassed. I don't think he would sit there and say to his friends, even his musician friends, "So, you know, actually the post horn melody is based on a tune. And if you know what it is, I think that's a party game that everyone would lose." Unless they were, you know, awesome list pianists, and there aren't that many of them, because you need to have giant hands, like Listhead. Even though Mahler used the post horn in his symphony, it's not a common instrument anymore. Trumpeter Christopher Martin. As the 20th century opened, the post horn was essentially non-existent, and it was completely replaced by the trumpet in the cornet. A sound from musical history, and one that still resonates with audiences. As with Mahler's music, the beauty of it can be seen simply for what it is, simply for the music, but there's always something else behind it. There's always something deeper and questioning or rejoicing in this music. When we compare the post horn solos with the changing of the guard in summer, we see a distinct contrast, Marilyn McCoy. Totally different feelings towards death. One is sort of a death, you know, of a bird as kind of a throwaway thing, and then the death of a human being, and sort of devoting sort of special sort of ceremonies to celebrate the memory of that person, and then that person's spirit having a chance to answer back from the grave. Christopher Martin. You know, if this music is asking a question, I think the second solo is, it's not the answer, but I think of it more as contentment. And in a way, one feels that the piece should be over now. And if it did end here, of course, there would be something wrong about that. The bird theme returns with one last musical surprise. At the end of the animals movement, we once again feel the heavy shadow of lifeless nature. We find ourselves back in the soundscape of the first movement, the birth of the world, of as yet uncrystallized inorganic matter. The post horn solos gave us a taste of what's to come in the next movement. With this moment of pause, we're reminded where we started. Here, it represents a relapse into the lower animal-like forms of nature, before the huge jump into the spiritual realm, the mind of the highest creature on earth, the human. [Music]