Date of composition: 1899-1901
Duration: 54 minutes
Each of Gustav Mahler's ten symphonies forms a world of its own and yet is connected to all the others in various ways - in terms of genesis, thematic-motivic or programmatic. The composer once explained that in the first movement of the Second Symphony, none other than the hero of the First Symphony is laid to rest. In the Second Symphony, the path of the human soul from death to resurrection is traced; in the Third, it is embedded in the cycles of nature. The song Das himmlische Leben, based on a poem from the song collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, migrated from the conception of the Third Symphony into the final form of the Fourth, whose finale it forms. Mahler himself described his first four symphonies as a “thoroughly self-contained tetralogy”.
Compared to the two preceding monumental contributions to the genre, the Fourth Symphony, premiered in 1901, is significantly shorter and more streamlined in its orchestration. Above all, however, its four-movement structure seems to tie in directly with the classical-romantic tradition. However, there had never been an orchestral song as a finale in the history of the genre. And while a classical symphony leads up to the last movement, Mahler developed his work from behind, so to speak: he developed the Fourth Symphony from the song Das himmlische Leben, which he had already composed in 1892. There are numerous thematic cross-references in the symphony, for example the jolly, noisy jingle motif with which the Fourth Symphony begins and which appears in the last movement between the verses.
During the conception phase, Mahler described the work as a “symphonic humoresque”. He was not aiming for comedy and wit, but saw himself in the Romantic tradition of irony, where moods and thoughts could turn into their opposite at any time due to ambivalence in meaning. The musical material used in the first movement may seem cheerful and unproblematic at first glance. However, the music quickly reaches the brink of chaos due to the impenetrable entanglement of the motifs.
Mahler described the scherzo of the second movement as “mystical, confused and uncanny, making your hair stand on end”, in which a solo violin tuned a whole tone higher plays a garish and coarse dance of death. However, in the following Adagio and through the incomparable beauty of his calm singing, it becomes clear that “nothing was meant to be so evil”.
A similar contrast characterizes the last movement, which retrospectively proves to be the
thematic nucleus of the entire work. At the end of each verse is a short chorale melody, followed by drastic variations on the bell motif from the first movement. Although the soprano's naïve rhapsodizing about the unlimited culinary delights in heaven is undoubtedly “not meant to be evil”, this vision is not free of cruelty. “We lead a lovely little lamb to death” and an ox is slaughtered ‘without a single thought or care’, i.e. mercilessly. Will the music fade away into the bliss of heavenly life at the quiet end of the work or will its astonishing casualness release the audience into uncertainty? In any case, the last performance instruction in Gustav Mahler's Fourth Symphony is “Morendo” (first dying).