1. Andante comodo

“The first movement is the most wonderful thing Mahler has written. It is the expression of an unheard of love for this earth, the longing to live in peace on earth, to enjoy nature to its deepest depths, before death comes. As it comes inexorably.”  – Alban Berg, writing his wife in 1912.

Alban Berg was a pupil of Arnold Schoenberg, leader of the Second Viennese School, whose expressionism led to the development of a new, atonal music. Mahler saw the younger Schoenberg’s efforts in the first decade of the twentieth century as an inevitable progression, and protected him from harsh critics, but was unable to adopt his most extreme musical ideas. Schoenberg and his acolytes were, in turn, lifelong Mahler advocates.

In his Ninth Symphony, we see a Mahler confronting the past/future dichotomy, with one bitterly nostalgic foot in an innocent past, and the other anxiously bracing for a violent future. Leonard Bernstein saw Mahler as a prophet, predicting the wars that would end the world as Mahler knew it. While a shade poetic, Mahler saw dramatic change on the horizon and somehow understood that he was destined to be the final flagbearer of the German symphonic tradition of the old world.  

The burden became most evident when, in 1907, he was diagnosed with a defective heart. Depressed and anxious, unable to exercise and faced with his imminent demise, his rheumatic heart disease caused an irregular heartbeat that can be heard in the opening bars of his final symphony.

The opening movement is massive in scope, setting a tone for the whole symphony, exploring the emotional extremes of peace and despair, order and chaos. The music is extreme as well: each instrument is treated as an independent operator as if the orchestra is a vast chamber ensemble, saturated with recurring melodic fragments that spin longer melodies that shapeshift organically, while abandoning a traditional melody/accompaniment hierarchy.

Opening with a primordial sparseness, the irregular toning of the harp and the fluttering of violas can be heard as Mahler’s failing heartbeat. A melody takes shape, initiated by a recurring sighing motive, “Lebewohl”, “Adeiu”, “Goodbye”, a farewell figure that transcends language barriers. If this first melody conveys the love of nature and the joy of life, bidding a fond farewell, the second is one of confrontational anger in the depressed relative minor key.

The opening is recalled, now with foreboding timpani replacing the gentle harp. This extensive development section becomes lost in a daydream, soured by fierce fanfares and harsh orchestral density. A return of the timpani, coupled with chimes, marks the grim funeral march, but shrouded in darkness as if a premonition. The recapitulation is a warm return to natural beauty. In a moment of profound compositional inspiration, winds—especially the flute and horn—layer to evoke birdsong in what Berg called “a vision of the hereafter.” In the final moments of the movement, time stands still as a descending flute floats to the ground. A final violin melody with horns and oboe bid adieu. 

II. Im Tempo eines gemächlichen Ländlers. Etwas täppisch und sehr derb

Mahler grew up in his family’s tavern in Iglau (modern Jihlava, Czech Republic), an important commercial center between Prague and Vienna. The environment exposed him to a variety of musics: the town had an amateur orchestra and opera, hosted frequent military parades, and welcomed diverse travellers who brought their own culturally-unique song and dance.

The popularity of the fast-paced waltz spread like wildfire from Vienna throughout Europe, and became the rage at balls for tuxedo and gown-clad members of high society. The waltz’s origins can be found in the rustic ländler, prevalent amongst the various groups Mahler encountered in childhood. The second movement is a farewell that is personally nostalgic, yet ominous. For Mahler, the intrusion of urban modernity threatened the rural innocence of the communities of his youth.

The movement contrasts three tempos. The first is the moderate ländler. Winds evoke a country folksiness, and the violins erupt with a simple, jubilant dance. Without warning, the faster second tempo barges in with biting dissonances that make for a garish caricature of the waltz. Even fragments of the original ländler melody appear, but fail to survive in this fast-paced environment. The juxtaposition of the two cannot be understated. For Mahler, the greedy engines of capital and industry were a menacing threat to society’s most vulnerable.

The third tempo, the slowest, appears after the waltz, and bids “Adieu” with sighing figures recalling the opening movement. The final ländler has an ominous energy, and eventually decays. Fragments of the ländler linger about as if dreaming nostalgically of a past that is gone for Mahler, and the world.

III. Rondo-Burleske: Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig

Mahler achieved the height of success in 1897 upon becoming director of Vienna’s Hofoper. In his inaugural season, he led the city’s first production of Wagner’s complete Ring cycle—a dream come true. He was also productive as a composer during his decade at the Hofoper with increasing performances and premieres, and completing his fourth through eighth symphonies.

He dramatically improved the opera’s finances and artistic standing in Europe, yet faced resistance around every corner. The growing din of antisemitism coming from politicians, critics, and audiences made him feel like an outsider, echoing a sentiment he experienced in most of his prior jobs. Exhausted, he left Vienna for the welcoming environs of the Metropolitan Opera.

Even with successes, he could not forget the stinging words of his detractors, and the third movement is a caustic rebuke of their nagging gripes. A common and painful accusation was his inability to write counterpoint. That is, the ability to navigate the complexities of multiple simultaneous independent lines. He later claimed the movement was dedicated “to my brothers in Apollo,” a sarcastic salute to his high-minded critics.

Perhaps there is no better way to prove his contrapuntal credentials than with a double fugue, a layered call-and-response process with complex rules harkening to the time of Bach. A Burleske conveys comedic intent, but the joke is for Mahler alone. With his fugue, he serves his critics a silver platter, but the content is a bitter pill.

Harsh dissonances, disjointed orchestrations, and layers of stabbing and whining melodies create a noisy scene like the nusiant voices of a mob of naysayers infecting Mahler’s psyche. He pulls away from the noise for a moment of clarity and focus with a trumpet solo that introduces a new figure that gropes at a melody, but its incipient figure becomes an obsession that is morphed into intrusive mocking. Whatever calm this section provides disappears as the brutal counterpoint floods in, careening to the final presto that reaches a feverish mania.

1. Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend

In 1901, Mahler began work on his song cycle Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children), a setting of poetry by Friedrich Rückert, who wrote his work of the same title after the death of his two children. Gustav’s wife Alma was understandably mortified by this morbid new work, having just given birth to their second child. But as Mahler’s family grew, he was afflicted with persistent thoughts of mortality of children, having lost seven siblings during childhood. He was especially devastated when his younger brother, Ernst, died in 1875, and the sorrow continued when his brother Otto took his own life in 1895. These traumas lingered in Mahler’s psychology, and themes of death pervaded his music. Alma’s superstitions came to tragic fruition when, in 1907, their first daughter, Maria, died of scarlet fever.

Mahler had his own superstitions and feared the curse of the ninth symphony that afflicted Beethoven, Schubert, and Bruckner. Thinking he could cheat death, following his eighth, he composed a symphonic song cycle Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth). But his Ninth Symphony would be his last, completing it in 1909. In 1911, he was diagnosed with bacterial endocarditis related to his defective heart valves that led to pneumonia, dying in Vienna on May 18, 1911, one year before his final finished symphony was premiered. He was buried next to his daughter Maria.

Conductor Ádám Fischer poignantly observes that the symphony “...is not about death, but about dying. Death and dying are two entirely different matters...the finale is just one sole extended act of dying, the disintegration of life.” 

The melodic fragments of the third movement are completed here with a rich, yearning melody in the strings alone, until the contrabassoon appears as a spactre. The strings fight at first, then settle into the inevitability of death with ponderous melodies that climb toward a first climax. The color of the movement changes when winds alone convey an eerie, ethereal solitude. The orchestra combines and heroically grasps for climaxes, but relents, settling into the conclusive moments of stillness. Time and space are suspended in near silence as the final threads of life dissipate into nothing.

Chaz Stuart, 2025