Movement Two - What the Flowers in the Meadow 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 five dollars to five thousand dollars, 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. After the creation of life in the first movement of his third symphony, Mahler began his stepwise journey upwards through the different orders of consciousness in the second movement, beginning with plants. We'll meet some of the thinkers who influence Mahler's ideas about the world of flowers, and then we'll dive into the second movement. I'm Aaron Cohen. I hope you enjoy it. Flowers have inspired a lot of music, and often that music is dance music. For instance, here is perhaps the most famous example, Tchaikovsky's waltz of the flowers from the Nutcracker Ballet, premiered in 1892. Another example of flowers represented in dance music comes from Alexander Glasnov's ballet The Seasons from 1899. We'll listen to some of his musical depictions of summer, beginning with his waltz of the cornflowers and poppies. Mahler also used dance forms for his musical portrait of flowers. But before we get to that, we need to understand how Mahler thought about flowers when creating a symphony based around science, his own joyful science, as he called it. I asked Caroline Kita, a professor of German literature at Washington University in St. Louis, if Mahler was trying to create his own philosophy. I don't think that was his aim in so much as he was trying to make sense of the world, which is what a philosopher does. And I think even though music was always the central mode of expression, it was part of his process to articulate that. And he did so by turning to other great minds and authorities, in his eyes anyway, who were looking at the world through different perspectives and lenses. One philosopher who inspired Mahler's thinking was Arthur Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer was a favorite among musicians, because he said, among many other things, that music was the highest and most profound of all the arts. Schopenhauer also had ideas about the evolution of consciousness that line up with how Mahler was thinking about his joyful science. Schopenhauer said this, "Each more highly organized state of matter succeeded in time, a cruder state. Animals existed before men, fish before land animals, plants before fish, and the inorganic before that which is organic." And Schopenhauer felt that everything, whether organic or inorganic, has an intelligible character. For instance, plants have a very honest character. For the plant reveals its whole being at the first glance and with complete innocence. And plants have knowledge to impart. Every plant expresses the special will of its species and says something that cannot be expressed in any other language. Another important figure who contributed to Mahler's ideas about flowers was the philosopher and scientist Gustav Theodor Fechner. Fechner believed the entire world is a living world and that all things are connected. Here's one of his observations. "I stood once on a hot summer's day beside a pool and contemplated a water lily which had spread its leaves evenly over the water and with an open blossom was basking in the sunlight. How exceptionally fortunate thought I must this lily be which above basks in sunlight and below is plunged in the water. If only it might be capable of feeling the sun and the bath. And why not?" I asked myself. I was inclined rather to think that nature had built it thus in order that all the pleasure which can be derived from bathing at once in sunlight and in water might be enjoyed by one creature in the fullest measure." Mahler's close friend Siegfried Lippener had worked with Fechner and we know that Mahler was especially delighted by Fechner's ideas. More from Caroline Keeta. "And he was exploring this idea of all living things having a soul or a consciousness of all living things being able to feel and have sort of sensory perception. This was an idea that Fechner was exploring that Mahler was very much interested in." Fechner believed that plants have an inward luminosity corresponding to the outward luminosity of their bodies. And he took issue with those who didn't believe that plants have souls. "I believe that the oak could easily retort against us all the arguments we use against her soul. How freshly she puts forth branches on all sides, brings forth leaf upon leaf and adorns herself anew with what she herself generates. We put on only outward adornments which we have not generated." While we certainly enjoy the fragrance of flowers, Fechner believed that the plants themselves enjoy it the most. The fragrance of plants could be considered their music. "Who has ever heard a sweet song song which was not more keenly felt by the person who sang it, especially if the hearer was not a kindred soul." With this in mind, let's now turn to the second movement of Mahler's Third Symphony. Mahler originally had a title for the movement when he composed it in 1895. He called it What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me. Mahler's friend and confidant Natalie Bauer-Lechner provided some background. This is the movement that Mahler composed last summer, directly after his arrival at Steinbach. On the very first afternoon, as he was gazing out of his summer house that nestles amidst grass and flowers in the meadow, the music came to him. He sketched it quickly, completing the draft at one sitting. Mahler put it this way. "Anybody who doesn't actually know the place will practically be able to visualize it from the music, so unique as its charm, as if made just to provide the inspiration for a piece such as this." Here's what it sounds like. In his flower movement, Mahler chose to cross-pollinate dance forms. For the main melody, he fuses the spirit of two popular triple meter dances, the rustic Austrian Lenner and the elegant 18th century minuet. Mahler will mix elements of different dance forms throughout this movement. Mahler has other surprises in store. Carter Bray, principal cello of the New York Philharmonic. The most remarkable thing in the beginning of this movement is the sudden Hollywood-like outburst. This movement is like this most beautiful dessert ever. It's full of these touches. It's the most carefree thing I've ever written, as carefree as only flowers are. It all sways and waves in the air, as light and graceful as can be, unaffected by any gravitational pull from the depths, like the flowers bending on their stems in the wind. Mahler changes mood in the trio sections. A trio section provides contrasting material. Here's the first one. The picture of flowers in their resting position soon becomes useless for illustration of the music. Now I've viewed them as tossed about by storm and thunder. During this faster section, Mahler brings in other dance forms, switching from triple to duple meters. Surprisingly, he injured himself while writing it. In copying the vast quantity of notes involved, I recently strained my hand again, because as I've noticed, the only way I can write the innumerable sex tuplets is by putting them down on paper as fast as possible. That is in their proper note value and speed. This happens quite unintentionally and unconsciously. Mahler had first come up with this music several years earlier, in 1892. This is a song called The Heavenly Life. Mahler was originally planning on using this song as the final movement of his third symphony. It would have been the seventh movement. But somewhere along the process, Mahler decided not to include it and instead used it as the finale of his fourth symphony. But because he was originally planning on having it in his third, there's a quote from it woven into the texture of this particular movement. Listen to this part from The Heavenly Life and pay close attention to the music behind the singer and now compare it to this part of the second movement. We'll return to the opening dance melody. Marilyn McCoy, a music professor at Columbia University in New York City. It does not start at the very beginning of the tune, but it starts as if it's already been running a bit just for a couple of measures. His motto that he said was that if something is going to come back, of course that's going to be different. How boring to bring something back and have it be exactly the same. And this time there are smaller chamber music sections. Robert Chen, concertmaster of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. There are a lot of these solos that are like little commentaries that occur. It's like you come out and you tell a little story and then you disappear into the wings. The music expands and contracts the way the flowers do, sometimes blossoming. Marilyn McCoy. There's sort of a freedom here to the music, a refusal to be bound by four plus four phrases. It doesn't want to be symmetric, it doesn't want to be controlled, it doesn't want to be regulated. A symbolism that nature is uncontrolled. There's nothing that humans can do and in fact nature doesn't try to control or discipline itself and so that happens in all of the sections of this dance. Mahler tells us this. As you might imagine, the mood doesn't remain one of innocent flower-like serenity, but suddenly becomes serious and oppressive. With the second trio section, Mahler again changes the mood. This second trio section is more virtuosic than the first one. Mahler also uses more instruments. Marilyn McCoy. And a tambourine is added. Towards the end it's really stunning. The trio sections are considerably faster than the opening dance. cellist Carter Bray. I think they work because they're metrical changes only. He never changes the tempo. In fact he writes always the same tempo. So there's always a common element here. The common element is the beat, which stays the same as the meter changes. It's more of a Stravinskyan change because typically Stravinsky would do this and the underlying pulse would remain unchanged while the meter would change around it. Listen to this part of Stravinsky's ballet Petrushka, which premiered in 1911. Notice how Stravinsky has very quick meter changes. Switching between 2/8, 3/8, 5/8, 3/4, and they seem to flow naturally. And this is the technique Mahler is having fun with. And he just uses that like a gear shift lever really. It's a simple device. All you have to do is keep playing that beat and the meter adjusts itself around you. Mahler strained his hand writing down these fast sections, but he eventually recovered. My hand is so much better now that it hardly knows what the other one is doing. I shall now make the flowers tell me something beautiful. Music professor Marilyn McCoy. Every time this melody returns, the ornamentation of the melody alone just begins to proliferate. Violinist Robert Chen. He wanted a certain kind of freedom in this figuration, so he would write groups of fives and sixes and fours next to each other. It gives the illusion of being free, but you know if you're reading the music, it can be kind of jarring. It's not normal. Mahler said these were variations that become increasingly rich. Marilyn McCoy. Typical malaria and humor. He's sort of making fun of variations in a way. It's like, well, have you ever heard variations like these? Probably not. Because of the variations and the proliferation of ornaments and the faster and faster notes sort of overflowing, they become something you bathe in. Mahler said this. The violins have the most supple, ethereal and graceful figures. I've written not a single note that is not absolutely true. Mahler's musical flowers constantly grow and change, transformed and caressed by the rays of the sun. Organic musical composition. And you can't predict it. He makes it utterly unpredictable. Carter Bray. It's full of delicious moments and jokey illusions and compositional trickery, but it always remains light in effect, light and charming. Marilyn McCoy. You know, you're in such ecstasy from the beauty of nature, and he kind of leaves us there.