Mahler Symphony No. 5, Part 1

There is a thread of musical theory called Schenkerian analysis,
based on the work of Heinrich Schenker.  Schenker believed
that musical works could be boiled down to their fundamental
structures and harmonies.  Entire works could be described
with single chords.  If Schenker had applied his analysis to
Mahler’s 5th symphony, he might have played just two chords for
you: a C# minor chord, and then a D Major chord.  The reason
why?  Over the course of 70 minutes, Mahler takes the
listener on a wild journey, starting in C# minor with a lonely
military trumpet, and then ending in a glorious D Major coda that
might be the most unambiguously sunny thing Mahler ever wrote:


But of course, how we get there is the most fascinating part of
this monumental symphony.  Today, on Part I, I’m going to
take you through Part I of the symphony, which encompasses the
first two movements.  Next week, we’ll take a look at Parts
2 and 3 together, which take up the final three movements of the
piece.  Part I of the piece represents both a shift in
Mahler’s music, and a nostalgic remembrance.  As always with
Mahler, there are multiple meanings to every phrase.  The
opening of the symphony, which sounds so unusual, is itself based
on a seemingly random moment of the 4th symphony.  The
funeral march that dominates the first movement is based at least
partly on a piece he was writing at the same time, the
Kindertotenlieder, or Songs on the Death of Children.  And
the second movement, one of the most unusual and complicated
movements Mahler had ever written up to this point, quotes a
motive from Schubert’s Death and the Maiden string quartet.
 Clearly, death, a specter that always haunted Mahler, is
alive and well in Part 1 of the symphony.  The first two
movements of the symphony might be a perfect distillation of
Mahler; they are passionate, wild, intense, but also tightly
scored, precisely structured, and full of that constant push and
pull between the past, the present, and the modern, that makes
Mahler’s music both a product of its time, but also music that is
always relevant to us. Join us!