1. Nor, really, is the situation so very different in the First Symphony, in which the cultural conflict of the funeral march detailed above gives way, in the finale (and again only after a purging orchestral scream; hear Ex. 20) to an overt embrace of
    Ex. 20: Mahler, Symphony I, mvt 4

    Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
    Sir Georg Solti
    © 1984 Decca 430 805-2
    Ex. 21: Mahler, Symphony I, mvt. 3 (mm. 83–112)

    Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
    Sir Georg Solti
    © 1984 Decca 430 805-2
    Christianity. Indeed, there is no better passage in Mahler to illustrate a parodistic application of the “absolute” music topic as it has been outlined here, nor to see it so indelibly stamped as Germanic, than in the “Bruder Martin” canon that opens the movement. In striking fashion, as well, that movement offers both an extended escape from the conflict that governs the movement more broadly, and a telling demonstration of the absorptive capacity of the “absolute” music topic. In the funeral march, as in the Scherzo of the Second Symphony, Mahler reserves a trio-like section for his most intensely subjective moment, offering a momentary escape from the cultural situation altogether in the form of an extended quotation from the final song of his Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, “Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz” (hear Ex. 21).38 The canonic droning and ominous D-minor character of the previous material subsides, and we are enveloped in a place of respite, with optimistic ascending melodic contours in G major. Opposing neither side of the already-stated conflict of the funeral march, the passage seems a moment apart from that conflict, independent even of perplexing issues regarding which of the projected antagonists—hunter or hunted, Catholic or Jew—is to be regarded most sympathetically.


  2. The first movement of the symphony also quotes a Gesellen song, “Ging heut’ Morgen übers Feld,” the second in the cycle; significantly, the two songs frame the cycle’s psychological chronology, in that “Ging heut’ Morgen” confronts the present with a lost youthful exuberance and “Die zwei blauen Augen” ends with a projection of a future blissfully free from the pains of the present (i.e., within the sleep of death). “Die zwei blauen Augen” is oddly configured as a song, comprising three stages of decidedly different character, each in its own key and with its own characteristic motivic basis. Mahler sets these three stages with some degree of irony: while only the last stage overtly embraces death as an alternative, it is also the only one to offer sustained comfort, while the earlier stages, each in its turn, projects a funereal tone with a distinctive, obsessive motive derived from the general topic of funeral march.

  3. Notably, these motives—repeated-note dotted figures and the slow, steady beat of the timpani, respectively (hear Ex. 22)—are precisely those that most clearly mark the “Bruder Martin” canon as funereal. But there is a crucial difference in how they are treated in the symphonic movement, for the dotted figure has there been given an oddly nuanced secondary role, entering originally as part of a stately counterpoint to the ongoing “Bruder Martin” canon that then develops an untowardly festive lilt along the way, as noted (see and hear Ex. 10 again). The ambivalent relationship between this counterpoint and the main theme is never adequately resolved; while all its central elements derive audibly from the “Bruder Martin” tune as Mahler presents it, including the dotted figure itself and the upper-fourth lick (which literally doubles the tympani strokes), it dances rather than marches, and seems to have more affinity with the klezmer-like music
    Ex. 23: Mahler, Symphony I,
    mvt. 3

    Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
    Sir Georg Solti
    © 1984 Decca 430 805-2
    to come than with the Catholic “Bruder Martin” tune. Yet, in the conclusion of the movement, during the last bars of the funeral march proper, remnants of this tune are at least equal partners with, and seemingly fused to, “Bruder Martin,” the victim of the assimilative power of the “absolute music” topic (hear Ex. 23).


  4. Thus, however mocking the countermelody may be, it shadows the funeral march too closely to avoid getting caught up in its obsessively absolutist flow. In fact, its absorption into the march becomes so complete that, from the moment the counterpoint enters, its association with the funeral-march topic gradually becomes closer even than the “Bruder Martin” tune itself; unlike the latter, the dotted-figure counterpoint plays out, intact, with every recurrence of the topic. Even during the fragmented conclusion of the movement, the dotted-figure tune gets a full hearing; indeed, its mockery is by then so muted that it can simply substitute for the “Bruder Martin” tune, which, aside from the harp’s playing of the cadential bar in diminution, is not heard at all.39 Perhaps this can be construed as the triumph of the dance lick over the funeral march; given the more basic presence of the funeral-march topic, however, it seems more the reverse.40

  5. The sense of subjectivity in the quoted episode stems from its separation from previously established realities, as in the song, but here the separation is based on memory rather than on the projection of an oblivious future within the dreamless sleep of death. Thus, the serenity of the opening part of the quotation, which clearly could not have come from anything we have heard thus far in the movement, betokens the intimacy and familiarity of a remembered past rather than a projected future. Then, in the second part of the quotation, with its sagging chromatic lines and “farewell” horn calls, the temporal status of this serenity—its pastness—is clarified, as is its relationship to the larger funereal setting. At the end of the quotation, when the dotted figure is recalled, it is inflected with a tone of mockery more pronounced than in the song, a foretaste of the return to the objective present and the funeral-march rhythms that immediately follow. Despite these critical differences, the song continues to “speak” in all of this, for serenity, pastness, intense subjectivity, leave-taking, even the exteriority of the dotted figure, are all present in some form during the third stage of the song, if sometimes in a kind of instrumental counterpoint to the words.

  6. Structurally, too, Mahler exploits relationships already given in the song, but applies them toward somewhat different ends in the funeral movement. Built into the stages of the song is an implicit circularity, as the recollection of the fundamental motive from the first stage at the end of each of the later stages makes feasible (if only abstractly) all possible orderings of the three sections. In the song, this potential circularity is suggested for the sake of denying it; neither the “progressive” key scheme nor the psychological journey is in any way circular. Thus, the middle, more march-like section wrests us from the moribund first stage by shifting harmonically to a modally ambivalent flat-VI. The march topic here is both funereal and—in part because of the energizing harmonic shift at the opening, in part through the words—a manifestation of a journey undertaken with a sense of resignation and, perhaps, penitence (hear Ex. 22 again). The recollection of the dotted figure at the end of the march already points to something left behind, and the subsequent stage confirms this as it settles into a comforting, major-mode subdominant specifically as an alternative to harmonic and psychological return.

  7. Mahler borrows the latter move, to the major subdominant from the minor tonic, for the opening of the song-quotation in the funeral-march movement, converting what was a transport to a comforting oblivion into an escape to subjectivity and memory. At the end, however, he exploits the potential for circularity by borrowing, from the end of the first stage in the song, the move from dotted figure to timpani strokes, which enter in the flat-VI. Within the movement, this represents a structural thematic return, to be expected after a trio-like episode, but unexpectedly a half step removed from the tonic—just as, in the song, the concluding key is F minor after an opening in E minor.41 But here there is a much greater impact, since the tympani strokes in the funeral-march movement have been more centrally installed as a marker of harmonic stability, fully in line with the traditional symphonic deployment of tympani to reinforce the tonic. Within the extended narrative of the trio, however, the move makes perfect sense, as a reaction of the subjective presence to the mocking entry of the dotted figure. Oddly, then, and for the first time in the movement, the funeral march is thus invested with a disconcerting subjectivity on its return, as if the observed funeral procession has now been joined, with the incremental rise in pitch registering as a correspondingly heightened sense of reality.42 Odd, too, is how readily the absolute-music topic seems thus to acquiesce to the established subjectivity of the trio; the lack of protest may be taken as either a token of irresistible strength on the part of the trio’s subjectivity, or the continued weakened state of the funeral-march topic after the klezmer-like episode, or both. Or, perhaps, its oblivious detachment—programmatically, the self-absorbed lack of concern of the mourners for the world beyond the funeral march—now extends to the matter of its own key (hear Ex. 21 again).

  8. For the remainder of the movement, the subjective element invests briefly first in one side of the conflict and then the other. As the E-flat-minor section winds down, the tympani drop out and the violins take us back to D minor, playing col legno as a group but with interspersed solos in what is clearly a gesture of withdrawal (hear Ex. 24).
    Ex. 24: Mahler, Symphony I,
    mvt. 3

    Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
    Sir Georg Solti
    © 1984 Decca 430 805-2
    Almost immediately, the klezmer-like music enters in direct opposition to the “Bruder Martin” canon, brutally imposing a faster tempo and more raucous sensibility on the sedate funeral march (hear Ex. 11 again). The implicit violence of the passage makes it a clear precursor for the outcry late in the Scherzo of the Second Symphony; as in the later movement (and this is also true for a similar moment in the Scherzo of the Third Symphony; hear Ex. 25), however, the violence that results from the confrontation makes it clear that reconciliation is impossible.43
    Ex. 25: Mahler, Symphony III, mvt. 3

    Chicago Symphony Orchestra,
    Sir Georg Solti
    © 1984 Decca 430 805-2
    Yet this is not the only drama of the movement. As the music slows to the original march tempo, we hear a distinct echo of the song-quotation within one of the closing phrases of the klezmer episode (see and hear Ex. 26). Although the phrase does not depart musically from the earlier episode (notwithstanding a somewhat different instrumental profile), the similar melodic contour within a suddenly more intimate environment involving unusual string textures (solo violin duet; violins doubled by cellos) enforces the connection; in addition, the brief splash of the Neapolitan (E-flat) serves as a striking marker of difference against the pedal D-A, recalling the key of the subjectively inflected version of the funeral march just heard. Within this brief moment of enhanced subjectivity, with its easy blending of klezmer elements with the “Bruder Martin” canon so soon after their recently demonstrated incompatibility, and with its easy resolution of the dissonant tonality of E-flat back into the D minor of the funeral march, we may find psychological closure for the movement. Significantly, the resolution this passage provides is wholly subjective, however, leaving the uneasy worldly tensions to play out to an indecisive conclusion, and leaving it to the finale, as noted, to achieve a more satisfying (and specifically Christian) closure.

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Kassabian:
Ubiquitous Listening

Draughon and Knapp:
Mahler and the Crisis of Jewish Identity

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Allen Forte

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