3-2 Young People's Concert: Who Is Gustav Mahler?

Hello again all my dear young friends. It's wonderful to be back with you again after so long a

time and after that long tour we made this summer of Europe and Russia. We thought about you

a lot while we were over there. And we hope that you thought about us and missed our concerts

as much as we missed you. Now just to welcome you back in a happy way, we're going to play

you a little music:

[ORCH: OPENING 4th SYMPHONY, 1ST MOVEMENT—TO #3, NO UPBEAT]

Now, I'll bet there isn't a person in this whole Carnegie Hall who knows what that music is. Well,

maybe some of you do, because you've peeked at your programs, and you know that today's

concert is about a composer called Gustav Mahler. But who is this Mahler? Has any one of you

ever heard of him? I'll bet not, or only very few of you. You see, Mahler isn't one of those big

popular names like Beethoven or Gershwin or Ravel, but he's sure famous among music lovers.

In fact we're playing an awful lot of Mahler these days right here at the Philharmonic; there's one

of his pieces on every program for at least two months. And the reason is that this year is his

hundredth birthday. Imagine, he would have been a hundred years old in July, if he were still

alive. And so we're having this long birthday party for him, by playing his music every week,

and I thought: Why shouldn't you all be invited to this party too, and celebrate with us? That's

why we're going to talk about Mahler today, and play some of his music for you.

There's also another very special reason why we should be celebrating Mahler's birthday here,

and that is that fifty years ago he was the conductor of this very same New York Philharmonic

Orchestra. Of course it wasn't called the Philharmonic then, and it certainly wasn't made up of

the same players who are sitting here today. But they gave many beautiful concerts with Mahler

right here on this same stage of Carnegie Hall, and I am very proud to stand here on the same

stage, with the same great orchestra, because Mahler was one of the greatest conductors that ever

lived. Of course, I never heard him conduct myself, but everyone who did hear him said he was

simply marvelous. Now, there are some people, a lot of them, who say that Mahler may have

been a fine conductor but he wasn't so hot as a composer. Some people say that Mahler's own

music sounds too much like all the composers he used to conduct—Mozart and Schubert and

Wagner and all the other composers belonging to his German tradition—and that he just

remembered their music and imitated it when he wrote his own. They say that anyway a

conductor's head is too full of everyone else's music, so how can he write original stuff of his

own? Naturally I don't agree with these people at all; I think Mahler's music is terrific, and very

original, too, as I'm sure you'll agree when you hear it.

But still I admit it's a problem to be both a conductor and a composer; there never seems to be

enough time and energy to be both things. I ought to know because I have the same problem

myself, and that's one of the reasons why I'm so sympathetic to Mahler: I understand his

problem. It's like being two different men locked up in the same body; one man is a conductor

and the other a composer, and they're both one fellow called Mahler (or Bernstein). It's like being

a double man. But with him, with Mahler, the problem was much worse even; he was a double

man in every single part of his musical life. And today we're going to try and get a picture in our

minds of this double man, by listening to his music, and discovering how the battle between

those two different Mahlers inside him made his music come out sounding the original way it

does.

Now for instance, take that happy music we played a little while ago, which was the beginning of

his Fourth Symphony. You remember those merry Christmasy sleigh bells at the beginning?

[ORCH: 4TH SYMPHONY, 1ST BAR ONLY]

And you remember that lovely, graceful melody, that sounds like the happiest sort of Mozart

tune?

[ORCH: 4TH SYMPHONY, BARS 4, 5 & 6, WITH VIOLIN UPBEATS, AND DOWNBEAT

BAR 7]

And you remember this other gay tune, which is full of high spirits, like whistling when you feel

on top of the world?

[ORCH: 4TH SYMPHONY, #2, CLARINETS ALONE, WITH UPBEAT, 2 BARS—LEAVE

OUT LAST 8TH]

Well, you might not believe it, but the man who wrote all that jolly stuff was one of the most

unhappy people in history! And the reason he was so miserable was exactly because of that battle

that was always going on inside him. In this very same symphony which is so happy and so

delightful, every once in a while you will hear this sad, crying voice, the other Mahler's voice, as

if his heart were breaking, right in the middle of all that happiness and gaiety. Like this part, in

the third movement of this symphony:

[ORCH: 4TH SYMPHONY, 3RD MOVEMENT, 11 AFTER #2 TO 13 AFTER #3, FERMATA

ON DOWNBEAT]

Is that heartbroken-sounding music the real Mahler? Or is it the other happy sleigh-bell music?

No—they're both Mahler, the voices of the two different people inside him. But then, of course,

you'll say, "Doesn't every composer go from happy to sad and back again? I mean, it's true of

Mozart, isn't it, and Bach and everyone?" Yes, but no composer goes quite so far in each

direction, so happy and so sad. When Mahler is sad, it is a complete sadness; nothing can

comfort him, it's like a weeping child. And when he's happy, he's happy the way a child is—all

the way. And that's one of the keys to the Mahler puzzle: He is like a child; his feelings are

extreme, exaggerated, like young people's feelings. That's another reason why it's so especially

right to have you come to his birthday celebration; I think young people can understand Mahler's

feelings even better than older ones. Once you understand that secret of his music—the voice of

the child—you can really love his music.

So that's the main secret about him. He was struggling all his life to recapture those pure,

unmixed, overflowing emotions of childhood. I'm sure you've all had emotions like that, that

filled-up feeling that nature sometimes makes you have, especially in the spring, when you

almost want to cry because everything is so beautiful. Well, Mahler's music is full of those

feelings and full of the sounds of nature, like bird calls and hunting horns and forest murmurs—

which are all part of his idea of beauty, childlike beauty. Here was this grown-up, very

sophisticated, learned man, with children of his own and a heart full of struggles between the

different voices fighting inside him, always trying to feel pure and innocent again, like a child.

And that, too, is another one of those battles he had, the battle of the double man—half man, half

child.

We're going to play for you now the last movement of his Fourth Symphony, the whole

movement, because it is a perfect example of what we have been talking about. It is like a man's

dream of childhood, quiet, peaceful, and contented. But it is done with the knowing art of a

grown-up man.

This music is sung as well as played. It uses a soprano, who sings—in German, of course—a

charming poem about how heaven is going to be when we get there—whoever of us is going to

get there, that is. And naturally it is a child's dream of how heaven's going to be. And the voice

that sings it has to be light and clear and young, like a child's voice. Let me first give you a short

translation of the poem into English, so that you'll be able to understand what the soprano is

singing about. She says:

We are enjoying the pleasures of heaven,

Free from all the noise and troubles of earth,

Everything is quiet in heaven, in gentle repose,

But lots of fun just the same.

We dance and skip and sing

With St. Peter looking on.

When we're hungry, St. John brings us lamb to eat,

And St. Luke brings us beef.

By the way, at this point in the music you will hear Mahler imitating the sound of the lamb like

this:

[OBOE EXAMPLE—2 AFTER #5, 1 BAR]

and you will also hear the sound of the ox.

[BASS, HORN AND CLARINET—2ND BAR OF #6]

Well, to go on with the poem, she says:

We can eat everything we want from the heavenly garden;

Bowls full of asparagus, beans, and apples, and pears, and grapes.

If you want venison, a deer comes running down the street;

If you want a hasenpfeffer, a rabbit comes running down the street.

If you want seafood, all the fishes come happily swimming by

Where St. Peter is standing ready with his net and his bait to catch them.

The cook, of course, is St. Martha.

As for music, there is no music on earth that compares to our music in heaven.

St. Cecelia and all her relatives are marvelous musicians;

The angels' voices cheer up our spirits

And everything lives for joy—everything is joy.

Isn't that a lovely dream? And when you hear the gentle, innocent music that goes with it, I think

you'll understand right away what I meant by Mahler's search for childlike purity. Now here is

the soprano, Reri Grist, to sing it with us now.

[ORCH: Symphony no. 4]

All right. What do we know about this great composer Mahler so far? We have talked about

three of his great inner battles: the fight between the conductor and the composer; the fight

between the happy young nature lover and the tragic, tormented grown up; and, finally, the fight

between the smart grown-up and the innocent child. But there are still more battles going on in

this double Mahler.

He was even divided geographically between belonging to the East and belonging to the West.

Imagine, even those two forces are at war in him. You see, he was born in a country called

Bohemia, which we now call Czechoslovakia, and that country is smack in the center of Europe,

between the West and the East. So that Mahler carried in him memories of both sides: The songs,

and the history, the manners and customs and ways of thinking and feeling of both East and

West.

Now the Western side of him naturally drew him to Western musical styles, so that his music

shows the influence of Mozart, and Schubert, and Wagner—all the great German and Austrian

composers.

But his Eastern side drew him to other musical ideas, like gypsy, and Slavic, and Jewish ideas

(which are also based on Eastern folk music), and even as far East as Chinese musical ideas. He

loved Chinese poetry, Chinese philosophy, and the sounds of Chinese music. And his own music

shows it. Right in the middle of this same Fourth Symphony, with all its German Mozartean and

Schubertian sounds, suddenly comes this peculiar Chinese tune:

[ORCH: 4TH SYMPHONY, 1ST MOVEMENT, FLUTES ONLY, 2 AFTER #10 TO 10

AFTER #10]

Imagine that absolutely primitive Chinese tune in the middle of a big Austrian symphony. And

the strangest thing is that when Mahler, after writing eight big Austrian symphonies, came to

write his greatest and best known work, The Song of the Earth, he based that whole long piece

on—of course—Chinese ideas. The Song of the Earth is a big symphony which is sung from

beginning to end by two voices that take turns. We're going to hear part of it now, a song for the

tenor soloist called Youth. The words of this song are based on an old Chinese poem, which

describes a beautiful scene of young Chinese friends sitting in a garden summerhouse made of

green and white porcelain, very pretty, drinking and chatting in their silk robes, while in the

brook outside you can see the whole picture reflected upside down in the water—the friends, the

summerhouse, the garden, and the bridge—all upside down. And the music is a bit upside down,

too, the music of a European reflected in an Oriental pool of water. That's the double Mahler

again—half real, half reflection. And that's one of the reasons that the music sounds so original.

Here is the tenor, William Lewis, to sing this charming song Youth for us now.

[ORCH: Das Lied von der Erde: VON DER JUGEND]

By now you must have noticed something very special about all these symphonies of Mahler:

The fact that so many of them use voices in addition to the orchestra. Out of his nine symphonies

Mahler used voices in four of them—that's almost half: And in two of the nine, in fact, he used

whole choruses. His greatest symphony, called The Song of the Earth, part of which you have

just heard, is sung from beginning to end. It's really a song symphony. You see, Mahler was as

much a composer for the voice as he was for orchestra. And that makes us think right away: Why

didn't he write operas? What a natural thing for him to have done with that deep feeling he had

for the human singing voice. But he didn't write operas, never one, and there again we see that

split in Mahler: Here is a natural operatic composer who never wrote an opera. He just kept

writing symphonies that sound operatic. For instance, just listen to this duet section from his

Second Symphony—it's almost exactly like listening to opera.

[ORCH., SOPRANO AND ALTO: 2ND SYMPHONY, 5TH MOVEMENT, #44 WITH

UPBEATS, TO #46, DOWNBEAT]

You see, that's really operatic. Mahler was really in love with the human voice. He was always

writing songs, in fact, and many of his own songs he used in his symphonies, even without a

voice singing. Like the songs in a collection called The Boy's Magic Horn—which is a series of

sort of folk songs about childhood and childlike dreams. Remember that important side of

Mahler, the childlike side? You must never forget it: because as we said, it is the main secret of

his music. It also explains why he loved folk music so much, which is, after all, part of

childhood.

Take this particular song from the Boy's Magic Horn which is called St. Anthony's Sermon to the

Fish. It's a humorous song. You might almost call it a comic song, because it tells about how the

fish came to listened to St. Anthony's sermon—including the crabs and the turtles—and then at

the end they all just swam away happily being just as silly and naughty as they had been before

they heard the sermon. We're going to hear part of this song first as a song, then afterwards we'll

hear the same music used without singing in a symphony. Here is Miss Helen Raab to sing St.

Anthony's Sermon to the Fish.

[ORCH. AND CONTRALTO: THE BOY'S MAGIC HORN— ST. ANTHONY'S SERMON TO

THE FISH]

And now let's see how Mahler takes that same song and makes a movement of a symphony out

of it, not the whole movement of course. The orchestra now will sound much bigger now,

because it's on its own; there won't be a singer. The music is bigger too, more developed, more

symphonic. You remember the program we did last year about development and what makes

music symphonic? Well, if you do remember it, you'll understand how that little comic song we

just heard has developed into a great symphonic scherzo. Listen to this part from it.

[2ND SYMPHONY—SCHERZO]

And so it goes on and on, for a much longer time. But what a difference between this and the

singing version we heard before! See in this music also, we can see again the double Mahler, in

still another way, and that is the double way he has of treating the orchestra: the little way and

the big way. I'm sure you heard it. Most people think of Mahler as a composer for big monster-

orchestras, which is true, as far as it goes. He did use the biggest orchestral assemblies in history,

and so we come to expect sounds like this one we just heard:

[ORCH: 2ND SYMPHONY, 3RD MOVEMENT, #39, WITH UPBEAT TO 4 BEFORE #40,

DOWNBEAT]

But just as often as not, he does exactly the opposite and makes wonderful new sounds with just

a few instruments, like chamber music. Like this passage we just heard a bit earlier:

[ORCH: 2ND SYMPHONY, 3RD MOVEMENT, 11 BEFORE #39 TO 3 BEFORE #39,

DOWNBEAT, NO OBOE]

Now that music shows us something, that Mahler was a real master of chamber music sounds.

And yet he never wrote chamber music—not a quartet or trio or a violin sonata or anything.

That's another strange example of that tug of war that was always in him. Just as the operatic

Mahler never wrote operas, so the chamber Mahler never wrote chamber music. A double man,

you see? But there still remains one more split, and perhaps it's the biggest split of all: that on

one hand Mahler was the end of the whole romantic nineteenth-century tradition of composing,

the last of that line beginning with Mozart and running through Beethoven and Schubert and

Wagner, and at the same time he was the beginning of modern music, of what we call the music

of our time. Imagine being the end of something and the beginning of something else, all at

once! But he was. In the various pieces of his that we've played today, you have heard bits that

sound like Mozart, like Schubert, or Bach, or Wagner. But you've also heard many bits that seem

to prophesy the coming of new composers, like Schoenberg and Webern, Copland and Britten,

and even Shostakovich, very much Shostakovich, in fact. So now we're going to perform for you

a piece of Mahler that does both things, that reminds you of the old German music, and at the

same time gives you very strong hints of the new music that is to come. What we're going to do

is play you the last part of the last song of his great symphony, The Song of the Earth, part of

which we heard before, which is one of the most beautiful endings any piece of music has ever

had.

Now certain people were amazed when I told them I was going to play this for you today. They

said, "What? You're going to play that long, slow, highbrow music for young people? You're

crazy—they'll get restless and noisy. They won't understand it. It's just too highbrow. And it

doesn't even end with a bang-up finish. It dies away quietly. Nobody will clap."

Well, I know my young people, and I'm not afraid to play this music for you. I know you'll

understand it, and even love it, because you already know more about Mahler than most people

do, and you'll understand also all the doublenesses, those fights in him, all those things we've

talked about today. They're all in this music. It has very heavy orchestration and very light

chamber-music orchestration. It's very German-sounding, but it also has some Slavic- and

Jewish-sounding phrases. It gets very complicated and then gets childishly simple, even has bird

calls in it. It sounds sometimes like opera, and sometimes like a simple folk song. And it's very

Chinese. Especially in the orchestration, which uses harps, and mandolin, and celeste, and all

things calculated to make a delicate oriental sound. Now just one more word before our

contralto, Helen Raab, sings it for you. I want to tell you sort of what it's about. This last song is

called The Farewell and comes from an old Chinese poem describing a person who is saying

farewell to the world. But at the very end of the poem the singer says: "This beautiful world

blooms again, every spring, over and over, forever." That means the promise of everlasting life at

the end of life.

But it means something else too: It is like Mahler's own personal farewell to the old romantic

kind of German music, as if he knows it's all over, and now he must begin a new kind of music,

which he begins right then and there. And it comes out sounding very original. But at the same

time he doesn't want to say goodbye to the old music; he loves all that Wagner and Schubert so

much. So he says goodbye sadly, unwillingly, so that at the end of the piece, when the singer

says the German word ewig, meaning forever, she sings it again over and over as if not wishing

to let go of this beauty.

[SING: Das Lied von der Erde]

And then again, and again,

[SING: Das Lied von der Erde]

so that finally the music dies out on this word, without seeming to end at all. It's almost like

magic, this marvelous ending. You really have the feeling that it goes on and on, forever, even

after it's stopped. And if this magic stillness at the end makes you feel like not clapping, then just

don't. I'll understand.

[ORCH. AND CONTRALTO: THE SONG OF THE EARTH—THE FAREWELL]

END