Throughout the 19th century, the symphony genre gained weight and importance. Composers found the symphony suitable for their lyrical themes, experiments in harmony, and individual expressions.

The orchestra itself had increased in size, and the structure of the symphony grew longer and more expansive. Because of its increasing length and complexity, composers did not write a large number of symphonies. Typically between 7 and 9 symphonies were written by a composer over their lifetime (not over 100 like Haydn).

Symphonies without a program were written throughout the Romantic era and are known as absolute music. Absolute music refers to instrumental music that is composed solely for its own intrinsic qualities and without any specific association with a text, story, program, or extramusical narrative. In other words, it is music that is intended to be appreciated and understood purely on its musical merits, without relying on external references or meanings.

Mendelssohn, Schumann, Brahms, and Tchaikovsky all wrote this type of symphony.

Music of Johannes Brahms (1833-1897)

Johannes Brahms was a German composer and pianist known for his significant contributions to the Romantic era of classical music. Born in Hamburg, he displayed musical talent from an early age and received early training in music. Brahms’ compositions spanned various genres, including symphonies, chamber music, piano works, and choral pieces.

Brahms gained recognition as a pianist and composer in his early years, and he was often compared to his predecessors, such as Beethoven. Throughout his life, Brahms had close friendships with notable figures like Robert and Clara Schumann. Brahms was known for his perfectionism and self-criticism, which led to a relatively smaller output of compositions compared to some of his contemporaries. His compositions are characterized by their intricate structures, emotional depth, and meticulous craftsmanship. Brahms’ symphonies, particularly his First Symphony, are considered among the pinnacles of Romantic orchestral writing.

 Symphony 1 

Key works in his repertoire include his four symphonies, German Requiem, Violin Concerto, Piano Concertos, Piano Quintet in F minor, and a significant collection of solo piano pieces. Brahms’ music blends both classical and Romantic elements, often characterized by rich harmonies, profound melodies, and a balance between formal structure and emotional expression.

German Requiem

The music of Johannes Brahms is often thought of as breathing new life into classical forms. For centuries, musical performances were of compositions by composers who were still alive and working. In the nineteenth century that trend changed. By the time Johannes Brahms was twenty, over half of all music performed in concerts was by composers who were no longer living; by the time he was forty, that amount increased to over two-thirds. Brahms knew and loved the music of forebears such as Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann. He wrote in the genres they had developed, including symphonies, concertos, string quartets, sonatas, and songs. To these traditional genres and forms, he brought sweeping nineteenth-century melodies, much more chromatic harmonies, and the forces of the modern symphony orchestra. He did not, however, compose symphonic poems or program music as did Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt.

Brahms himself was keenly aware of walking in Beethoven’s shadow. In the early 1870s, he wrote to conductor friend Hermann Levi, “I shall never compose a symphony.” Continuing, he reflected, “You have no idea how someone like me feels when he hears such a giant marching behind him all of the time.” Nevertheless, some six years later, after a twenty-year period of germination, he premiered his first symphony. Brahms’s music engages Romantic lyricism, rich chromaticism, thick orchestration, and rhythmic dislocation in a way that clearly goes beyond what Beethoven had done. Still, his intensely motivic and organic style, and his use of a four movement symphonic model that features sonata, variations, and ABA forms is indebted to Beethoven.

Focus Composition:

Brahms Symphony No. 1

The third movement of Brahms’s First Symphony is a case in point. It follows the ABA form, as had most moderate-tempo, dance-like third movements since the minuets of the eighteenth-century symphonies and scherzos of the early nineteenth-century symphonies. This movement uses more instruments and grants more solos to the woodwind instruments than earlier symphonies did (listen especially for the clarinet solos). The musical texture is thicker as well, even though the melody always soars above the other instruments. Finally, this movement is more graceful and songlike than any minuet or scherzo that preceded it. In this regard, it is more like the lyrical character pieces of Chopin, Mendelssohn, and the Schumanns than most movements of Beethoven’s symphonies. But, it does not have an extra-musical referent; in fact, Brahms’ music is often called “absolute” music, that is, music for the sake of music. The music might call to a listener’s mind any number of pictures or ideas, but they are of the listener’s imagination, from the listener’s interpretation of the melodies, harmonies, rhythms, and textures written by Brahms. In this way, such a movement is very different than a movement from a program symphony such as Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique.

Music of Nationalism

Political and cultural nationalism strongly influenced many creative works of the nineteenth century. We have already observed aspects of nationalism in the piano music of Chopin. Later nineteenth-century composers invested even more heavily in nationalist themes.

Nationalism, found in many genres, is marked by the use of folk songs or nationalist themes in operas or instrumental music. Nationalist composers of different countries include Russian composers such as Modest Mussorgsky, Alexander Borodin, and Nicolai Rimsky-Korsakov (members of the “Kuchka”); Bohemian composers such as Antonin Dvorak and Bedřich Smetana; Hungarian composers such as Liszt; Scandinavian composers such as Edvard Grieg and Jean Sibelius; Spanish composers such as Enrique Granados, Joaquin Turina, and Manuel de Falla; and British composers such as Ralph Vaughn Williams.

Nationalism was expressed in several ways:

• songs and dances of native people
• mythology: dramatic works based on the folklore of peasant life (Tchaikovsky’s Russian fairy-tale operas and ballets)
• celebration of a national hero, historic event, or scenic beauty of the country

Music of Bedřich Smetana

Bedřich Smetana (b. 1824-1884) was born in Litomsyl, Bohemia while under Austrian rule (now the Czech Republic). Smetana was the son of a brewer and violinist and his father’s third wife. Smetana was a talented pianist who gave public performances from the age of six. Bohemia under Austrian rule was politically very volatile. In 1848 Smetana aligned himself with those seeking independent statehood from Austria. After that revolution was crushed, Prague and the surrounding areas were brutally suppressed—especially those areas and people suspected of being sympathetic to Bohemian nationalism. In 1856, Smetana left for Sweden to accept a conductorship post. He hoped to follow in the footsteps of such music predecessors as Liszt. He thus expresses his admiration, “By the grace of God and with His help, I shall one day be a Liszt in technique and a Mozart in composition.”

As a composer, Smetana began incorporating nationalist themes, plots, and dances in his operas and symphonic poems. He founded the Czech National School after he left Sweden and was a pioneer in incorporating Czech folk tunes, rhythms, and dances into his major works. Smetana returned to Bohemia in 1861 and assumed his role as national composer. He worked to open and establish a theatre venue in Prague where performances would be performed in their native tongue. Of his eight original operas, seven are still performed in his native tongue today. One of these operas, The Bartered Bride, was and is still acclaimed. He composed several folk dances, including polkas for orchestra. These polkas incorporated the style and levity of his Bohemian culture.

Smetana – Našim děvám

Smetana also is known for composing the cycle of six symphonic poems entitled My Country. These tone poems are program music, representing the beautiful Bohemian countryside, Bohemian folk dance and song rhythms, and the pageantry of Bohemian legends. The first of these symphonic poems is called Má vlast (My Fatherland) and is symbolic program music representing his birthplace.

The second of these, Vltava, (The Moldau) is recognized as Smetana’s greatest orchestral work. Notes in the conductor’s score state:

The Moldau ”represents an exceptional expression of patriotic or nationalistic music. The musical poem reflects the pride, oppression, and hope of the Bohemian people. . . . Two springs pour forth in the shade of the Bohemian Forest, one warm and gushing, the other cold and peaceful. Their waves, gaily flowing over rocky beds, join and glisten in the rays of the morning sun. The forest brook, hastening on, becomes the river Vltava (Moldau.) Coursing through Bohemia’s valleys, it grows into a mighty stream. Through thick woods it flows, as the gay sounds of the hunt and the notes of the hunter’s horn are heard ever nearer. It flows through grass-grown pastures and lowlands where a wedding feast is being celebrated with song and dance. At night wood and water nymphs revel in its sparkling waves. Reflected on its surface are fortresses and castles—witnesses of bygone days of knightly splendor and the vanished glory of fighting times. At the St. John Rapids the stream races ahead, winding through the cataracts, heaving on a path with its foaming waves through the rocky chasm into the broad river bed— finally. Flowing on in majestic peace toward Prague—finally. Flowing on in majestic peace toward Prague and welcomed by time-honored Vysehrad (castle.) Then it vanishes far beyond the poet’s gaze.”

Smetana’s The Moldau with explanations

Smetana: Vltava (The Moldau) from Má vlast

Music of Antonín Dvořák

Dvořák’s compositions received favorable recognition abroad and reluctant recognition at home. From 1892 to 1895, Dvořák served as director of the National Conservatory in the United States. During this time his compositions added American influences to the Bohemian. He fused “old world” harmonic theory with “new world” style. Very interested in American folk music, Dvořák took as one of his pupils an African-American baritone singer named Henry T. Burleigh who was an arranger and singer of spirituals.

Harry T. Burleigh sing the spiritual “Go Down Moses,”

Dvořák’s admiration and enthusiasm for the African-American spiritual is conveyed as he stated:

“I am convinced that the future music of this country must be founded on what are called Negro melodies. These can be the foundation of a serious and original school of composition, to be developed in the United States. These beautiful and varied themes are the product of the soil. They are the folk songs of America and your composers must turn to them.”

The spirituals, along with Native American and cowboy songs, interested Dvořák and influenced his compositions for years to come. His love for this American folk music was contagious and soon spread to other American composers. Up until this point, American composers were under the heavy influence of their European counterparts. Dvořák’s influence and legacy as an educator and composer can be traced to the music of Aaron Copland and George Gershwin. Although he gained much from his time in America, Dvořák yearned for his homeland to which he returned after three years away, resisting invitations from Brahms to relocate to Vienna. Dvořák desired the more simple life of his homeland where he died in 1904, shortly after his last opera, Armida, was first performed.

During his lifetime, Dvořák wrote in various music forms, including the symphony. He composed nine symphonies in all, with his most famous being the ninth, From the New World (1893). This symphony was commissioned by the New York Philharmonic which premiered the work in New York on December 16, 1893, the same year as its completion. The symphony was partially inspired by a Czech translation of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem Hiawatha.

Timing	Performing Forces, Melody, and Texture
0:00	Brass choral with string chord transition
0:50	English horn solo (theme 1) then woodwind transition to brass chords.
3:00	Theme is passed around then returns to English horn
5:04	Flute and oboe perform theme 2 over string tremolo, then clarinet duet above pizzicato strings. String then perform theme 2 to a transition
7:21	Theme/melody 3 played by violins-very smooth and connected
8:24	Oboe, clarinet , then the flute perform yet another theme, violins, cellos and basses-Light folk dance style in nature
8:47	Trombones enter with the first theme from the first movement-then trumpets and strings overlap with other earlier themes from the work.  These style and compositional techniques create a very “western” sounding work.
9:20	English horn solo reintroduced followed by imitations in the strings (two silences) then scored reduction to a trio
9:47	Violin, viola, and cello trio. Transition in winds and strings
11:36	Opening chords without trumpets it is much darker sounding
11:59	Winds and strings pass the melodies around with ascension
12:18	Final three part chord in the double basses

Music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky

Pyotr (Peter) Ilyich Tchaikovsky (18401893) was born in Votinsk, a small mining town in Russia. He was the son of a government official and started taking piano at the age of five, though his family intended for him to have a career as a government official. His mother died of cholera when he was fourteen, a tragedy that had a profound and lasting effect on him. He attended the aristocratic school in St. Petersburg called the School of Jurisprudence and, upon completion, obtained a minor government post in the Ministry of Justice. Nevertheless, Pyotr always had a strong interest in music and yearned to study it.

At the age of twenty-three, he resigned his government post and entered the newly created Conservatory of St. Petersburg to study music. From the age of twenty-three to twenty-six, he studied intently and completed his study in three years. His primary teachers at the conservatory were Anton Rubinstein and Konstantin Zarembe, but he himself taught lessons while he studied. Upon completion, Tchaikovsky was recommended by Rubinstein, director of the school as well as teacher, to a teaching post at the new conservatory of Moscow. The young professor of harmony had full teaching responsibilities with long hours and a large class. Despite his heavy workload, his twelve years at the conservatory saw the composing of some of his most famous works, including his first symphony. At the age of twenty-nine, he completed his first opera Voyevoda, and composed the Romeo and Juliet overture. At the age of thirty-three, he started supplementing his income by writing as a music critic and also composed his second symphony, first piano concerto, and his first ballet, Swan Lake.

The reception of his music sometimes included criticism, and Tchaikovsky took criticism very personally, being prone as he was to (attacks of) depression. These bouts of depression were exacerbated by an impaired personal social life. In an effort to calm and smooth that personal life, Tchaikovsky entered into a relationship and marriage with a conservatory student named Antonina Ivanovna Miliukova in 1877. She was star-struck and had fallen immediately and rather despairingly in love with him. His pity for her soon turned into unmanageable dislike to the point that he avoided her at all costs. Once in a fit of depression and aversion, he even strolled into the icy waters of the Moscow River to avoid her. Many contemporaries believe the effort was a suicide attempt. A few days later, nearly approaching a complete mental breakdown, he sought refuge and solace fleeing to his brothers in St. Petersburg. The marriage lasted less than a month.

At this darkest hour for Tchaikovsky, a kind, wealthy benefactress who admired his music became his sponsor. Her financial support helped restore Tchaikovsky to health, freed him from his burdensome teaching responsibilities, and permitted him to focus on his compositions. His benefactor was a widowed industrialist, Nadezhda von Meck, who was dominating and emotional and who loved his music. From her secluded estate, she raised her eleven children and managed her estate and railroads. Due to the social norms of the era, she had to be very careful to make sure that her intentions in supporting the composer went towards his music and not towards the composer as a man; consequently, they never met one another other than possibly through the undirected mutual glances at a crowded concert hall or theater. They communicated through a series of letters to one another, and this distance letter-friendship soon became one of fervent attachment.

In his letters to Meck, Tchaikovsky would explain how he envisioned and wrote his music, describing it as a holistic compositional process, with his envisioning the thematic development to the instrumentation being all one thought. The secure environment she afforded Tchaikovsky enabled him to compose unrestrainedly and very creatively. In appreciation and respect for his patron, Tchaikovsky dedicated his fourth symphony to Meck. He composed that work in his mid-thirties, a decade when he premiered his opera Eugene Onegin and composed the 1812 Overture and Serenade for Strings.

Tchaikovsky’s music ultimately earned him international acclaim, leading to his receiving a lifelong subsidy from the Tsar in 1885. He overcame his shyness and started conducting appearances in concert halls throughout Europe, making his music the first of any Russian composer to be accepted and appreciated by Western music consumers. At the age of fifty, he premiered Sleeping Beauty and The Queen of Spades in St. Petersburg. A year later, in 1891, he was invited to the United States to participate in the opening ceremonies for Carnegie Hall. He also toured the United States, where he was afforded impressive hospitality. He grew to admire the American spirit, feeling awed by New York’s skyline and Broadway. He wrote that he felt more appreciated in America than in Europe.

While his composition career sometimes left him feeling dry of musical ideas, Tchaikovsky’s musical output was astonishing and included at this later stage of his life two of his greatest works: The Nutcracker and Iolanta, both of which premiered in St. Petersburg. He conducted the premiere of his sixth symphony, Pathétique, in St. Petersburg as well, but received only a lukewarm reception, partially due to his shy, lackluster personality. The persona carried over into his conducting technique that was rather reserved and subdued, leading to a less than emotion-packed performance by his orchestra. A few days after the premiere, while he was still in St. Petersburg, Tchaikovsky ignored warnings against drinking unboiled water, warnings due to the current prevalence of cholera there. He contracted the disease and died within a week at the age of fifty-three years old. Immediately upon his tragic death, the Symphonie Pathétique earned great acclaim that it has held ever since.

In the nineteenth century and still today, Tchaikovsky is among the most highly esteemed of composers. Russians have the highest regard for Tchaikovsky as a national artist. Tchaikovsky incorporated the national emotional feelings and culture—from its simple countryside to its busy cities—into his music. Along with his nationalist influences, such as Russian folk songs, Tchaikovsky enjoyed studying and incorporating German symphony, Italian opera, and French Ballet. He was comfortable with all of these disparate sources and gave all his music lavish melodies flooding with emotion.

Tchaikovsky composed a tremendously wide spectrum of music, with ten operas including Eugene Onegin, The Maid of Orleans, Queen of Spades, and Iolanthe; internationally-acclaimed ballets, including Swan Lake, The Sleeping Beauty, The Nutcracker, Snow Maiden, and Hamlet; six symphonies, three piano concertos, various overtures, chamber music, piano solos, songs, and choral works.

Timing	Performing Forces, Melody, and Texture
0:00	The Russian hymn “Spasi, Gospodi, Iyudi Tvoya” (“O Lord, Save Thy People”) is performed in the strings.
2:20	The music morphs into a more suspenseful style creating tension of possible upcoming conflict.
4:04	Snare drums set a military tone as the overtures theme is introduced. Listen how the rhythms line up clear and precise.
5:00	An energetic disjunctive style portray an attack from the French. Brief motives of La Marseillaise, the French national anthem are heard.  The energy continues to build. The tension diminishes.
7:01	A reference to a lyrical section is heard contrasting the previous war scene.
8:39	A  traditional folkdance  -tune “U vorot” (“At the gate”) from Russia is introduced into the work.
9:20	The energetic conflicting melodies are reintroduced depicting conflict.
10:55	The lyrical peaceful tune is reintroduced.
11:42	The folk dance is reintroduced.
12:03	The French Marseillaise motive appears again in the horns.The tension and energy again build.
12:30	Percussion and even real cannons are used to depict the climax of the war conflict.  This followed by a musical loss of tension through descending and broadening lines in the strings.
13:24	The Russian Hymn is heard again in victory with the accompaniment of all the church bells in celebration commemorating victory throughout Russia.
14:30	The music excels portraying a hasty French retreat
14:40	The Russian anthem with cannons/percussion overpowers the French theme,  The church bells join in again symbolic of the Russian victory.

Music of John Philip Sousa

John Philip Sousa, (b. Nov. 6, 1854-1939) was born in Washington, D.C. to a father, John Antonio Sousa, who played trombone in the U.S. Marine band, and a mother, Maria Elisabeth Trinkaus, of Bavarian descent. The young Sousa was raised in a very musical environment and began studying voice, violin, piano, flute, baritone, trombone, and alto horn when his peers were just beginning first grade. Sousa was an adventurous young man. At the young age of thirteen, he unsuccessfully tried to run away to join a circus band. Immediately after this episode, his father enlisted him in the Marines as a band apprentice in the Marine Band. There he remained until he reached the age of twenty, complementing his Marine Band training in music by studying composition and music theory with the locally highly acclaimed orchestra leader, George Felix Benkert. During these early years with the Marine Band and under the music mentorship of Benkert, Sousa composed his first piece, Moonlight on the Potomac Waltzes.

Upon his honorable discharge from the Marines in 1875, the twenty-one-year-old Sousa began performing on violin and touring. While playing violin, Sousa performed under the baton of Jacques Offenbach at the Centenary Exhibition in Philadelphia and Sousa’s music later showed Offenbach’s influence. While playing the violin in various theater orchestras, Sousa learned to conduct, a skill he would use for the remainder of his career. This period of Sousa’s career eventually led to his conducting Gilbert and Sullivan’s H. M. S. Pinafore on Broadway in New York. In 1879, while conducting in Broadway, Sousa met Jane van Middlesworth whom he married in December of that year. About a year later, Sousa assumed the leadership post of the Marine Band with the couple moving to Washington, D.C. Sousa conducted the Marine Band for the following twelve years, under the presidential administrations of Rutherford Hayes, James Garfield, Grover Cleveland, Chester Arthur, and Benjamin Harrison. Sousa composed and performed repertoire at the request of these presidents and their respective first families.

In 1886, The Gladiator, using his most recognizable music form of the march, received national recognition from military bandleaders. Two years later, he dedicated his newly composed march Semper Fidelis to the officers and men of the Marne Corps; that piece now is traditionally known as the “official” march of the Marine Corps.

The Marine Band made its first recordings under Sousa’s leadership. The phonograph had just recently been invented, and the Columbia Phonograph Company, seeking a military band to record, selected the Marine Band. They first released sixty recording cylinders and, within the decade, recorded and released for sale more than 400 different titles. These recordings made Sousa’s marches and their performance by the Marine Band among the most popular to be recorded.

Having achieved stardom, the Marine Band went on two limited but successful tours in 1891-92. After completing these tours, promoter David Blakely convinced Sousa to resign his post to organize a civilian concert band. Sousa did so, forming the New Marine Band which was a concert rather than a marching band. After receiving criticism from Washington for using the word “Marine” in the title of his civilian band, Sousa eventually dropped it from its name. The new band’s first performance was on September 26, 1892, in Stillman Music Hall in Plainfield, New Jersey. Two days prior to the concert, acclaimed bandmaster, Patrick Gilmore, died in St. Louis. Eventually, nineteen former musicians from Gilmore’s band joined Sousa’s band. The names of many of these nineteen musicians are still recognized today, including Herbert L. Clark on cornet and E. A. Lefebre on saxophone.

While conducting this new band, Sousa also continued to compose music. When vacationing in Europe with his wife in 1896, he received news that David Blakely had died. The couple immediately departed for home. During this time traveling back to the United States, Sousa wrote his most famous composition, The Stars and Stripes Forever.

From 1900 to 1910, the Sousa band toured extensively. Tours included performances in the United States, Great Britain, Europe, South Africa, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Hawaii, and the South Pacific in the Canary Islands. These performances and tours contributed to Sousa’s band’s reputation as the most admired American band of its time.

After WWI, Sousa continued to tour with his band and became a champion and advocate for music education for all children; he also testified for composer’s rights before Congress in 1927 and 1928. His success won him many titles and honorary degrees. Other successes included his serving as guest speaker and conductor for the Marine Band in Washington, D.C. in 1932, performing The Stars and Stripes Forever. Later that same year, following a rehearsal of the Ringgold Band in Reading, Pennsylvania, the seventy-seven-year-old Sousa passed away.

Sousa had composed 136 marches, many on the fly in preparation for a performance in the next town. Sousa’s best-known marches include The Stars and Stripes Forever, Washington Post, The Liberty Bell, Daughters of Texas, The Thunderer, King Cotton, and Manhattan Beach. Sousa also wrote ten operas, including El Capitan, The Queen of Hearts, The Smugglers, and Desiree, as well as a series of music suites and seventy songs.

In 1987, The Stars and Stripes Forever march was designated as the national march of the United States. Sousa became known as the “March King.”

Sousa: The Stars and Stripes Forever

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860–18 May 1911) was an Austrian late-Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer, he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.

Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life, he was briefly director of New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.

Mahler’s œuvre is relatively small; for much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler’s works are designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses, and operatic soloists. Most of his twelve symphonic scores are very large-scale works, often employing vocal soloists and choruses in addition to augmented orchestral forces. These works were often controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and popular approval; exceptions included his Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 3, and the triumphant premiere of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Some of Mahler’s immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honor the composer’s life and work.

Antecedents and Influences

Mahler was a “late Romantic,” part of an ideal that placed Austro-German classical music on a higher plane than other types, through its supposed possession of particular spiritual and philosophical significance. He was one of the last major composers of a line that includes, among others, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Wagner, Bruckner, and Brahms. From these antecedents, Mahler drew many of the features that were to characterize his music. Thus, from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony came the idea of using soloists and a choir within the symphonic genre. From Beethoven, Liszt, and (from a different musical tradition) Berlioz came the concept of writing music with an inherent narrative or “program,” and of breaking away from the traditional four-movement symphony format. The examples of Wagner and Bruckner encouraged Mahler to extend the scale of his symphonic works well beyond the previously accepted standards, to embrace an entire world of feeling.

Early critics maintained that Mahler’s adoption of many different styles to suit different expressions of feeling meant that he lacked a style of his own; Cooke on the other hand asserts that Mahler “redeemed any borrowings by imprinting his [own] personality on practically every note” to produce music of “outstanding originality.” Music critic Harold Schonberg sees the essence of Mahler’s music in the theme of struggle, in the tradition of Beethoven. However, according to Schonberg, Beethoven’s struggles were those of “an indomitable and triumphant hero,” whereas Mahler’s are those of “a psychic weakling, a complaining adolescent who . . . enjoyed his misery, wanting the whole world to see how he was suffering.” Yet, Schonberg concedes, most of the symphonies contain sections in which Mahler the “deep thinker” is transcended by the splendor of Mahler the musician.

Symphony No. 8, Symphony of a Thousand

Mahler’s Eighth Symphony is a symphony in only the loosest sense. One of his best-known works, it follows almost none of the standard conventions for a symphony. For example, it has only two movements, and it calls for multiple choirs in addition to an enormous orchestra.

Introduction

The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the “Symphony of a Thousand,” although the work is often performed with fewer than a thousand, and Mahler himself did not sanction the name. The work was composed in a single inspired burst, at Maiernigg in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. The last of Mahler’s works that premiered in his lifetime, the symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted its first performance in Munich on 12 September 1910.

The fusion of song and symphony had been a characteristic of Mahler’s early works. In his “middle” compositional period after 1901, a change of direction led him to produce three purely instrumental symphonies. The Eighth, marking the end of the middle period, returns to a combination of orchestra and voice in a symphonic context. The structure of the work is unconventional; instead of the normal framework of several movements, the piece is in two parts. Part I is based on the Latin text of a 9th-century Christian hymn for Pentecost, Veni creator spiritus (“Come, Creator Spirit”), and Part II is a setting of the words from the closing scene of Goethe’s Faust. The two parts are unified by a common idea, that of redemption through the power of love, a unity conveyed through shared musical themes.

Symphony 8 veni creator spiritus

Mahler had been convinced from the start of the work’s significance; in renouncing the pessimism that had marked much of his music, he offered the Eighth as an expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit. In the period following the composer’s death, performances were comparatively rare. However, from the mid-20th century onwards the symphony has been heard regularly in concert halls all over the world and has been recorded many times.

Listening – Part II: Closing scene from Goethe’s Faust

The second part of the symphony follows the narrative of the final stages in Goethe’s poem—the journey of Faust’s soul, rescued from the clutches of Mephistopheles, on to its final ascent into heaven. Landmann’s proposed sonata structure for the movement is based on a division, after an orchestral prelude, into five sections which he identifies musically as an exposition, three development episodes, and a finale.

Finale

The final development episode is a hymn-like tenor solo and chorus, in which Doctor Marianus calls on the penitents to “Gaze aloft.” A short orchestral passage follows, scored for an eccentric chamber group consisting of piccolo, flute, harmonium, celesta, piano, harps, and a string quartet. This acts as a transition to the finale, the Chorus Mysticus, which begins in E-flat major almost imperceptibly—Mahler’s notation here is Wie ein Hauch, “like a breath.” The sound rises in a gradual crescendo, as the solo voices alternately join or contrast with the chorus. As the climax approaches, many themes are reprised: the love theme, Gretchen’s song, the Accende from Part I. Finally, as the chorus concludes with “Eternal Womanhood draws us on high,” the off-stage brass re-enters with a final salute on the Veni creator motif, to end the symphony with a triumphant flourish.

Briscoe, James R. Historical Anthology of Music by Women. Indiana University Press, 1986. Project MUSE. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Licensing & Attributions

Adapted from “Nineteenth-Century Music and Romanticism” by Jeff Kluball and Elizabeth Kramer from Understanding Music Past and Present

Edited and additional material by Jennifer Bill

Gustav Mahler from Music 101

Elliott Jones, Santa Ana College, www.sac.edu.

Licensing & Attributions CC licensed content, Original CC licensed content, Original • Authored by Authored by: Elliott Jones.Provided by Provided by: Santa Ana College.Located at Located at:http://www.sac.edu.License License:CC BY: Attribution CC licensed content, Shared previously CC licensed content, Shared previously • Gustav Mahler.Provided by Provided by: Wikipedia.Located at Located at:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Mahler.License License:CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike