Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 1 in D major

“So! My work is finished! ... All the floodgates within me have opened as if with a single blow,” Gustav Mahler wrote to his childhood friend Friedrich Löhr in March 1888. Earlier that year, he had composed most of his First Symphony in just six weeks. Even then, the composer was certain that symphonic music would be his defining genre: “My whole being points me toward the symphony,” he stated succinctly in a letter from that time. The unmistakable Mahlerian tone is already fully developed in this work: music imbued with an idiomatic quality that transcends the purely musical, sudden shifts between emotional extremes, the juxtaposition of diverse musical idioms, tragedy and grotesquery, folk song tones and rigid musical structure.

For a long time, Mahler struggled to name the work. Originally titled “Symphonic Poem in Two Parts,” it consisted of five movements. For a performance in Hamburg in 1893, he gave the piece the subtitle “Titan”, referencing Jean Paul’s eponymous novel, and provided an elaborate programme. At that time, Mahler referred to it as a “tone poem in symphonic form,” and the movements were named as follows: “Part 1: From the Days of Youth, Flower, Fruit, and Thorn Pieces – I. Spring and No End – The introduction represents nature awakening from a long winter slumber – II. Blumine – III. With Full Sails. Part 2: The Human Comedy – IV. Stranded! (a funeral march ‘in the manner of Callot’).” Mahler later discarded this programme for the fourth performance in Berlin, and it was not included in the published version; the second movement, Blumine, was also omitted.

The intertwining of song and symphony – a hallmark of Mahler’s style – is evident from the opening movement. At its heart lies the symphonic-instrumental adaptation of the song “Ging heut’ morgen übers Feld” from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer). While the movement adheres to sonata form, this structure serves merely as an outer framework. Other important thematic elements include a melancholic melody for the cellos and a march-like motif in the horns.

The second movement serves as a slightly ironic counterpart to the “Merry Gathering of Country Folk” from Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony. Its simple, clearly articulated structure and dance-like character are reminiscent of the minuet style typical of the classical symphony.

The third movement draws on the tradition of the funeral march, a form Beethoven famously elevated to the centre of his Eroica. Mahler’s original title, “Funeral March in ‘Callot’s Manner,’” also evokes this tradition. However, the focus here is on parody and grotesquery rather than mourning. The march’s theme is a minor-key transformation of the well-known canon “Frère Jacques”, performed by bass instruments, which subverts the original’s cheerful character.

The finale is the symphony’s most substantial movement, in both structure and content as well as scale. Three key elements can be identified within the web of themes and motifs: the stark contrast between the first and second themes, thematic flashbacks to the symphony’s opening movement, and the triumphant breakthrough to the home key of D major, culminating in an exultant chorale. Mahler himself described the ending of his titan’s story as follows: “Only in death – when he has conquered himself and the wondrous echo of his youth reappears with the theme of the first movement – does he achieve victory.”