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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 November 2020
This article examines Mahler’s Fourth Symphony and its role in what the composer called his ‘perfectly self-contained tetralogy’. Previous explanations for this phrase include the first four symphonies’ shared song quotations and ideological content, but the dramas of ancient Dionysian festivals present a better model: three serious tragedies and a comic satyr play, a performance grouping also known as a ‘tetralogy’. Following Mahler’s first three symphonies (his ‘Trilogie der Leidenschaft’), the Fourth Symphony – originally entitled ‘Humoreske’ – is compared to a light-hearted satyr play, featuring abrupt juxtapositions of moods and a setting of the humorous song ‘Das himmlische Leben’. Praise for the redemptive effects of this ancient tragicomic juxtaposition plays an important role in Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy, and the importance of humour especially shaped the philosopher’s later writings, many of which Mahler knew from his time as a student in Vienna. This new reading not only provides a better explanation for Mahler’s comment, but also illustrates Nietzsche’s influence on the composer’s sense of drama.
I would like to thank Christina Tarnopolsky, in whose 2012 course on Plato’s Laws at McGill University (Department of Political Science) the idea of this article developed. I also wish to thank Peter Franklin, Steven Huebner and Morten Solvik for their comments on various drafts, as well as the editors of and reviewers for this journal. Translations from German are my own unless otherwise stated.
1 ‘Eine durchaus in sich geschlossene Tetralogie’. See Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler (Leipzig: E. P. Tal & Co., 1923), rev. as Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. Herbert Killian with notes and commentary by Knud Martner (Hamburg: Karl Dieter Wagner, 1984), 164; trans. Dika Newlin in Bauer-Lechner, Recollections of Gustav Mahler (London: Faber & Faber, 1980), 154.
2 Mitchell, Donald, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1975), 311.Google Scholar
3 Floros, Constantin, ‘Fundamentals of “Tetralogy”’, Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1993), 21–3.Google Scholar
4 Ibid., 21–2.
5 According to Ernst Krenek, Mahler’s high-school education was based on a ‘public school’ standard curriculum, ‘with an emphasis on the classical languages’. Mahler’s high-school transcript shows courses in Mosaic Religion, German and Greek, among others. See Mitchell, Donald, Gustav Mahler: The Early Years (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1980), 24.Google Scholar
6 Aristotle’s word katharsis, or catharsis, is used interchangeably with purgation, purification and clarification in Eugene Garver’s glossary to Samuel H. Butcher’s translation of the Poetics. Catharsis comes from the Greek kathairein, meaning ‘to purify, purge’ and from katharos, meaning ‘pure, clear of dirt, clean, spotless; open, free; clear of shame or guilt; purified’. See Aristotle, Poetics and Rhetoric, trans. Samuel H. Butcher (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2005), 506.
7 Aristotle, Poetics, 1449b24–32; trans. Butcher, in Poetics and Rhetoric, 1–91 (p. 17).
8 McGrath, William, ‘Mahler and the Vienna Nietzsche Society’, Nietzsche and Jewish Culture, ed. Golomb, Jacob (London and New York: Routledge, 1997), 218–32.Google Scholar
9 ‘Als unserem vorleuchtenden und hinreissenden Beispiele’. Siegfried Lipiner and others, letter to Nietzsche, 15 October 1877. Nietzsche, Briefwechsel: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, Abteilung II, vi/2: Briefe an Friedrich Nietzsche, Januar 1875–Dezember 1879 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1980), 737 (letter 1,000); trans. William McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974), 70.
10 McGrath, ‘Mahler and the Vienna Nietzsche Society’, 228.
11 McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics, 137.
12 Ibid. This reading is expanded more fully ibid., 120–62.
13 See Mahler, letter to Bruno Walter, 2 July 1896. Selected Letters of Gustav Mahler, ed. Knud Martner, trans. Eithne Wilkins, Ernst Kaiser and Bill Hopkins (London: Faber & Faber, 1979), 188–9. He also said to Bauer-Lechner in the summer of 1895 that the first movement was ‘humorous throughout’ (‘durchaus humoristisch’). Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. Killian, 35; Bauer-Lechner, Recollections, trans. Newlin, 41. The nature of the Third Symphony’s humour may have changed over the course of its composition, however. The letter to Walter was written while the composer was still, by his own account, sketching the work, and Bauer-Lechner also recalls that after the completion of the symphony, a year before his tetralogy comment, Mahler described humour in the Scherzo movement in the following way: ‘In this piece it is as if Nature herself were pulling faces and putting out her tongue. There is such a gruesome, Panic humor in it that one is more likely to be overcome by horror than laughter’ (‘Dieses Stück ist wirklich, als ob die ganze Natur Fratzen schnitte und die Zunge herausstreckte. Aber es steckt ein so schauerlicher panischer Humor darin, daß einen mehr das Entsetzen als das Lachen dabei überkommt’). Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. Killian, 136; Bauer-Lechner, Recollections, trans. Newlin, 129.
14 ‘Der Inhalt all dieser Stücke ist, der Hauptsache nach, ein so tief schmerzlicher, daß Mahler selbst sagte, es müsse einer ganz zerschmettert sein, der dies gehört habe.’ Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. Killian, 46; Bauer-Lechner, Recollections, trans. Newlin, 50.
15 de La Grange, Henry-Louis, Mahler, i (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday & Co., 1973), 746 Google Scholar, quoting from Kornel Ábrányi’s review of Mahler’s First Symphony, which may no longer be extant. At the time of the première, the work was (according to Ábrányi, as reported by La Grange) entitled ‘Symphonic Poem in Two Parts’.
16 ‘So brachte man ihm seinen “Titan” mit dem Jean Paul’schen in Verbindung. Er hatte aber einfach einen kraftvoll-heldenhaften Menschen im Sinne, sein Leben und Leiden, Ringen und Unterliegen gegen das Geschick.’ Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. Killian, 173; Bauer-Lechner, Recollections, trans. Newlin, 157.
17 Mahler, letter to Max Marschalk, 26 March 1896. Selected Letters of Gustav Mahler, ed. Martner, 180.
18 For discussions of the relationship between Lipiner’s translation and Mahler’s symphonic poem, see Franklin, Peter, ‘“Funeral Rites”: Mahler and Mickiewicz’, Music and Letters, 55 (1974), 203–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Hefling, Stephen, ‘Mahler’s “Todtenfeier” and the Problem of Program Music’, 19th-Century Music, 12 (1988–9), 27–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
19 For a complete transcription and translation of this handwritten programme, see Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years, 183–4.
20 ‘Sie ist mein Bestes und Reifstes! Mit ihr schließe ich meine “Trilogie der Leidenschaft”!’ Mahler, letter to Annie Mincieux, May 1896. Gustav Mahler: Unbekannte Briefe, ed. Herta Blaukopf (Vienna and Hamburg: Paul Zsolnay, 1983), 126; trans. Mahler’s Unknown Letters, ed. Blaukopf (London: Gollancz, 1986), 122.
21 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Poetische Werke, 22 vols. plus supplement (Berlin and Weimar: Aufbau Verlag, 1960–78), i: Kunsthistorisches Schriften und Übersetzungen (1960), 497–502.
22 Franklin, Peter, Mahler: Symphony no. 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 41.Google Scholar
23 ‘Es ist die letzte Stufe der Differenzierung: Gott! Oder wenn Sie wollen, der Übermensch.’ Mahler, letter to Annie Mincieux, early November 1896. Gustav Mahler: Unbekannte Briefe, ed. Blaukopf, 127; trans. Mahler’s Unknown Letters, ed. Blaukopf, 123.
24 See Barham, Jeremy, ‘Mahler the Thinker: The Books of the Alma Mahler–Werfel Collection’, Perspectives on Gustav Mahler, ed. Barham (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 37–152.Google Scholar
25 ‘M. las in den Ferien 99. Schiller–Goethe Briefwechsel, Eckermann Gespräche mit Goethe, Lipiner’s “Adam” und die “Bacchen” von Euripides, Franz von Assisi von Paul Sabastien; einen Band Goethe “Kunst” und die “Wahlverwandschaften”’ (‘During the summer holidays of 1899, Mahler was reading the Schiller–Goethe correspondence, Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe, Lipiner’s Adam and The Bacchae by Euripides, Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabastien, a volume of Goethe’s Art and Antiquity and his Elective Affinities’). Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Mahleriana manuscript, Paris, Médiathèque Musicale, Mahler Collection, vols. 22–3, p. 183.
26 In this play, Odysseus must retrieve Philoctetes, a soldier he left behind after he was injured, in order to win the Trojan War. Trickery is involved on the part of Odysseus and his companion Neoptolemus to convince Philoctetes to come along. Even after Philoctetes realizes he has been tricked, he agrees in the end to accompany the two men to Troy in order to help win the war for the Greeks.
27 Oedipus at Colonus ends with the death of Oedipus, a tragedy for his daughters Antigone and Ismene, but one that also allows Antigone to return to Thebes and to protect her country from future harm.
28 Although Liszt and Sibelius both wrote symphonies with choral parts in the intervening years between Beethoven and Mahler, their contributions were distinctly programmatic and were given programmatic names rather than the title ‘symphony’ and a number.
29 Here I refer to the text of ‘Es sungen drei Engel’ in which Peter, as a representative of mankind, bemoans his unworthiness.
30 McGrath, ‘Mahler and the Vienna Nietzsche Society’, 228.
31 Bonds, Mark Evan, After Beethoven (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 176.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
32 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Modern Library Edition, 2000), 1–144 (pp. 39−40).
33 For discussions of symphonic space, see Laura Dolp, ‘Sonoristic Space in Mahler’s First Symphony’ (Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, 2005), and Peattie, Thomas, ‘The Expansion of Symphonic Space in Mahler’s First Symphony’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 136 (2011), 73–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For an excellent exploration of Mahler’s use of voice, see Johnson, Julian, Mahler’s Voices: Expression and Irony in the Songs and Symphonies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For discussions of Mahler’s programmes, see, for example, Hefling, ‘Mahler’s “Todtenfeier”’; Carolyn Abbate, ‘Mahler’s Deafness: Opera and the Scene of Narration in Todtenfeier’, Unsung Voices: Opera and Musical Narrative in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 119–55; Peter Franklin, ‘A Stranger’s Story: Programmes, Politics, and Mahler’s Third Symphony’, The Mahler Companion, ed. Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 171–86; and Vera Micznik, ‘“Ways of Telling” in Mahler’s Music: The Third Symphony as Narrative Text’, Perspectives on Gustav Mahler, ed. Barham, 295–323. Raymond Knapp’s Symphonic Metamorphoses: Subjectivity and Alienation in Mahler’s Re-cycled Songs and Symphonies (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2003) provides an invaluable examination of Mahler’s song self-quotation.
34 Storey, Ian C. and Allan, Arlene, A Guide to Ancient Greek Drama (Chichester: John Wiley & Sons, 2014), 156.Google Scholar
35 I am grateful to Mark Griffith for this insight. Only one complete satyr play, The Cyclops, is extant.
36 Even the work of scholars such as Northrop Frye, whose theory of archetypes attempts to place the works of the Western canon into four categories (Comedy, Romance, Irony/Satire and Tragedy), has overlooked the satyr play. The equivalence of the satyr play with Frye’s archetype of satire is a false etymology. The word for satire comes from the Latin satur meaning ‘full, rich’, not from the Greek satyr. It was, furthermore, the Romans who invented what is considered to be satire in Frye’s system. See Hooley, Daniel M., Roman Satire (Oxford: Wiley, 2007).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
37 Storey and Allan, A Guide to Ancient Greek Drama, 159.
38 Griffith, Mark, Greek Satyr Play: Five Studies (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2015), 23.Google Scholar
39 Shaw, Carl A., Satyric Play: The Evolution of Greek Comedy and Satyr Drama (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
40 For a thorough discussion about the literature on satyr play and the various possibilities for its social function, see Griffith, Greek Satyr Play.
41 Ibid., 22.
42 Ibid., 23.
43 Griffith, Greek Satyr Play, 23.
44 Certainly Mahler would not have known better than classical scholars who have contributed to this debate about the difference between comedy and satyr play, but essentially it is the formulation of three serious narratives of overcoming followed by a light-hearted symphony – what the composer himself called a ‘Humoreske’ – on a similar topic that evokes the tetralogies of ancient Greece. Given the modern scholarship on the differences between comedy and satyr play, which are based largely on tone and topic, Mahler’s Fourth can nonetheless be productively considered in terms of satyr play without a definitive dichotomy of the genres.
45 Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Kaufmann, 60.
46 Nietzsche’s discussion here of the ‘satyr chorus’ is key to his evaluation of the tetralogy. Whether he is talking about the chorus out of which Attic tragedy grew or about the chorus of the genre of satyr play makes no difference. He is referring to the spirit of the satyr chorus which is extant only in satyr play. The fullest vestige of the power of this chorus is in the satyr play itself, and any power he ascribes to it must be considered in terms of the satyr play. See, for example, Loeb, Paul S., The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Shaw, Satyric Play; and Christina Tarnopolsky, ‘Satyr-Play, Sarcasm, and Suffering in Plato’s Republic and Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy’. I am grateful to Christina Tarnopolsky for providing me with a copy of her article in advance of publication.
47 ‘Und dabei nicht begriff (was übrigens die wenigsten begreifen), daβ der Humor hier nur für das Höchste einsetzen muβ, das anders nicht mehr auszudrüchen ist.’ Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. Killian, 57; Bauer-Lechner, Recollections, trans. Newlin, 60.
48 For a detailed discussion of the group’s genesis and the work of each of its members from a cultural historical perspective, see McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics.
49 See Rudolf Ardelt, Friedrich Adler: Probleme einer Persönlichkeitsentwicklung um die Jahrhundertwende (Vienna: Österreichische Bundesverlag, 1984), 33.
50 Fink, Eugen, Nietzsches Philosophie (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1973; repr. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2003), 102Google Scholar; Kathleen Higgins, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra (Plymouth: Lexington Books, 1987), 273 n. 2; Gary Shapiro, Nietzschean Narratives (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989), 97–102; Alexander Nehemas, Nietzsche: Life as Literature (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 181; Nietzsche, Friedrich, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, ed. Del Caro, Adrian and Pippin, Robert B., trans. Del Caro (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), viii, xxxiii.Google Scholar
51 Loeb, The Death of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, 92–3.
52 Nietzsche, Friedrich, ‘Part IV, On Higher Men’, Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None, trans. Kaufmann, Walter (New York: Viking Press, 1966), 286–96 (pp. 294–6).Google Scholar
53 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage Books, 1974), 37. Quoted in Micznik, ‘“Ways of Telling” in Mahler’s Music’, 305.
54 Gunter, Pete A., ‘Nietzschean Laughter’, Sewanee Review, 76 (1968), 493–506 (p. 493).Google Scholar
55 In Beyond Good and Evil, Nietzsche speaks of the satyr play as ‘merely an epilogue farce’. This might be read as a contradiction of the redemptive emphasis he places on the satyr play – and the philosopher frequently contradicts himself: it is a hallmark of his style. However, I think the satyr play can have both farcical elements and playful ones without contradiction. Additionally, the excerpt describes the satyr play as unmasking indignant and humourless philosophers. This might be read not as derogatory, but as the powerful and redemptive experience described in The Birth of Tragedy. See Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche, ed. and trans. Kaufmann, 179–435 (p. 227).
56 Bekker, Paul, Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1921), 358.Google Scholar
57 Knapp, Symphonic Metamorphoses, 20–1.
58 Griffith, Greek Satyr Play, 46.
59 Ibid., 88.
60 Knapp, Raymond, ‘Suffering Children: Perspectives on Innocence and Vulnerability in Mahler’s Fourth Symphony’, 19th-Century Music, 22 (1998–9), 233–67 (pp. 233–4)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Knapp also gives a nice summary of the literature that has dealt with the topic of innocence and childhood in Mahler’s Fourth.
61 Schmierer, Elisabeth, ‘Mahler’s Concept of Humor and its Use in the Wunderhorn Lieder’, News about Mahler Research, 62 (2011), 56–72 (p. 57).Google Scholar
62 Siegbert Salomon Prawer, ‘Hoffmann: Where the Fantastic Meets the Everyday’, The Times Literary Supplement, 21 May 1970, quoted in Mitchell, Gustav Mahler: The Wunderhorn Years, 236.
63 The dialogic facet of Mahler’s style has been discussed by various musicologists. In his dissertation ‘Mahler’s Third Symphony and the Philosophy of Gustav Fechner: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Criticism, Analysis and Interpretation’ (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Surrey, 1996), 180–214, Jeremy Barham considers Mahler’s music in terms of what he calls ‘Fechnerian “cognitive contrast”’ in the third movement of the Third Symphony. More recently, Julian Johnson has suggested that Mahler’s music is built on a simultaneous dialectic between the genuine and the artificial. See Johnson, Mahler’s Voices, 134–51.
64 Adorno, Theodor, Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy (1960), trans. Jephcott, Edmund (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 6–7.Google Scholar
65 Durchbruch is a dynamic quality where new musical material interrupts the momentum, seeming to break into the music from without or to break out beyond itself from within. Suspension is defined by the moments when the music lacks a forward movement, most often appearing as ‘sedimented episodes’. During a suspension’s temporary delay of forward momentum, new musical material is explored. Once a suspension ends, the music resumes where it left off. Erfüllung is likened to the B material (Abgesang) following the repeated A material of the traditional Stollen. This material is related but new, completing the preceding repeated statement in an unexpected way.
66 Adorno, Mahler, 52.
67 Bonds, After Beethoven, 187.
68 Ibid., 177.
69 The article ‘Scherzo’ in The Oxford Dictionary of Music, <https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (accessed 4 April 2020), notes that, as a movement type, ‘generally it is the 3rd (or 2nd) movement of a symphony or string quartet’. In his article ‘Scherzo’ in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (accessed 4 April 2020), Hugh Macdonald writes that the third movement is the ‘more traditional (but by no means invariable)’ place for the Scherzo to be found.
70 James L. Zychowicz’s structural chart of the second movement provides a useful adumbration of the alternation between thematic areas, key areas and Scherzo and Trio. See Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 14.
71 Bruno Walter quotes Mahler’s description of the movement in a letter to Ludwig Schiedermair dated 6 December 1901. Bruno Walter: Briefe, 1894–1962, ed. Lotte Walter Lindt (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer, 1969), 52.
72 Henry-Louis de La Grange, Gustav Mahler, ii: Vienna: The Years of Challenge, 1897–1904 (rev edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 764.
73 Notes to Levine Conducts Mahler: Symphony no. 4 in G (RCA ARL1-0895, 1975). Like Knapp, I have not found any other source for this description.
74 Knapp, ‘Suffering Children’, 257.
75 See, for example, Henry A. Lea, Gustav Mahler: Man on the Margin (Bonn: Bouvier Verlag Herbert Grundmann, 1985), and Floros, Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies.
76 See Mosco Carner, ‘Ländler’, Grove Music Online, <http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com> (accessed 4 April 2020). Carner further notes that Ländler were frequently performed as part of court entertainment in which members of the imperial family appeared in peasant dress and performed the traditional dance.
77 Previous examples can be found, for example, in Beethoven’s Symphony no. 7 and Cello Sonata no. 3.
78 Hardison, Osborne B. Jr, and Golden, Leon, Horace for Students of Literature: The ‘Ars poetica’ and its Tradition (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1995), 64 Google Scholar. It is a comical rendering of the serious tale of Odysseus’ capture by the one-eyed giant Polyphemus which is described in Homer’s Odyssey. The rendering of a monstrous character who has captured our hero and, as a drunken buffoon, threatens his survival is characteristic of the collision of serious and comic elements in the satyr play genre.
79 ‘Es geht eine göttlich heitere und tief traurige Melodie durch das Ganze, daβ ihr dabei nur lachen und weinen werdet.’ Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. Killian, 163; trans. Bauer-Lechner, Recollections, trans. Newlin, 152.
80 Sisman, Elaine R., ‘Tradition and Transformation in the Alternating Variations of Haydn and Beethoven’, Acta musicologica, 62 (1990), 152–82.Google Scholar
81 According to Sisman, the form of these movements is nearly always ABA1B1A2B2 (with the exception of Symphony no. 53, whose form is ABA1B1A2A3). See ibid., 181. By comparison, the form of Mahler’s movement is ABA1B1A2 followed by a coda. See Table 2.3 in Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, 15.
82 For example, the basis for the joke of Haydn’s String Quartet in E♭ major, op. 33 no. 2, is the composer’s play with form, which does not adhere to audience expectations as established by tradition.
83 Mahler, letter to Georg Goehler, 8 February 1911. Selected Letters of Gustav Mahler, ed. Martner, 371–2.
84 Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, 65.
85 Knapp, Symphonic Metamorphoses, 20–1.
86 Bonds, After Beethoven, 178.
87 ‘Was für eine Schelmerei verbunden mit dem tiefsten Mystizismus, steckt darin! Es ist alles auf den Kopf gestellt.’ Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. Killian, 185.
88 Bonds has also noted this bizarre juxtaposition and its seeming textual disconnection. ‘On more than one occasion, words and music seem utterly unsuited to one another, at least on a conventional level. Why, for example, is there such a note of urgency at the words “Gut Äpfel, gut’ Birn’ und gut’ Trauben! Die Gärtner, die Alles erlauben!” [Good apples, good pears, and good grapes! The gardeners grant everything] (m. 91–94)?’ Bonds, After Beethoven, 190.
89 Ibid., 182. Bonds is comparing the structure and content of Mahler’s Fourth with those of Beethoven’s Ninth, both pieces ending with a choral representation of heaven. Yet the fact that ‘Das himmlische Leben’ was composed long before the rest of the Fourth and its appearance in the symphony is as an almost unaltered presentation of the Wunderhorn song makes the comparison with the finale of Beethoven’s Ninth tenuous. The chronology of composition shows that the song, as it appears in the symphony, was not written as a reinvention of the ‘Ode to Joy’ chorus, but rather as part of the Wunderhorn song cycle.
90 Bonds, After Beethoven, 191. Bonds cites a letter from Bruno Walter to Ludwig Schiedermair dated 5 December 1901, in which Mahler describes the third movement of the Fourth Symphony as containing ‘deep, painful contrasts as well as an exaltation of cheerfulness’ (‘tief schmerzliche Kontraste und eine Steigerung der Heiterkeit’). Bonds incorrectly lists the date as 3 December 1901. For the full letter, see Rudolph Stephan, Gustav Mahler: IV. Symphonie G-Dur (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1966), 33–5.
91 Barham, ‘Mahler’s Third Symphony and the Philosophy of Gustav Fechner’, 178.
92 Mahler, letter to Max Marschalk, 20 March 1896. Selected Letters of Gustav Mahler, ed. Martner, 178. See Gustav Mahler: Unbekannte Briefe, ed. Blaukopf, 147.
93 Zoltan Roman, ‘Connotative Irony in Mahler’s Todtenmarsch in “Callots Manier”’, Musical Quarterly, 59 (1973), 207–22; Constantin Floros, ‘Tragische Ironie und Ambivalenz bei Mahler’, Gustav Mahler, ed. Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn, Musik-Konzepte Sonderband (Munich: Text & Kritik, 1989), 213–20.
94 Johnson, Mahler’s Voices, 134–51.
95 ‘Das vierte Sinfonie ist ein Abschlußwerk. Sie ist es in dreifacher Hinsicht: in Bezug auf die musikalische Form, in Bezug auf den poetisch gedanklichen Stoff, in Bezug auf die Weltanschauung des schaffenden Künstlers.’ Bekker, Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien, 165.
96 ‘Daß Alles für Freuden erwacht’. Ibid. Bonds (After Beethoven, 198) translates this as ‘that all awakens through joy’.
97 ‘War Mahler ans Ende dieser Welt gelangt […] So hatte Mahler in seiner Sehnsucht, seiner Glaubensdrang, seinem tiefen metaphysischen Bedürfnis durch den Weg zum Jenseits gefunden. Was auf diesem Wege zu erringen war, hatte er errungen: die beglückende Gewißheit der unverlierbaren Kraft, der göttlichen Liebe, der himmlischen Herrlichkeit.’ Bekker, Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien, 167.
98 Whether the philosopher would actually use the word ‘joy’ to characterize this outcome is, I believe, merely an issue of semantics.