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7/23/2019 Mahler in a New Key Genre and the Resurrection Finale
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Mahler in a New Key: Genre and the "Resurrection" FinaleAuthor(s): Thomas BaumanSource: The Journal of Musicology, Vol. 23, No. 3 (Summer, 2006), pp. 468-485Published by: University of California PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4138379
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7/23/2019 Mahler in a New Key Genre and the Resurrection Finale
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468
Mahler
in
a
New
Key:
Genre and the
"Resurrection"
Finale
THOMAS
BAUMAN
In
1847,
when Berlioz
published
the
piano-vocal
score of his
"symphonie
dramatique"
Romeo
etJuliette,
he
began
his
pref-
ace with
the remark
"No one can
possibly
mistake the
genre
of this
work."'
For
Berlioz,
this was
as
good
as
saying
that he was
certain
peo-
ple
very likely
would
mistake it.
By insisting
that his new work be heard
as
essentially
symphonic,
he lent
implicit
credibility
to the belief
that
generic
misapprehension
courts aesthetic confusion.
In
English,
Berlioz's words
have a familiar
ring,
especially
to those
acquainted
with
E. D. Hirsch's
Validity
in
Interpretation.
Through
a
rigid
calculus that sets
meaning
equal
to authorial intent, Hirsch had derived
the notion
of an
"intrinsic
genre,"
defined
as "that sense
of
the whole
by
means
of which an
interpreter
can
correctly
understand
any part
in
its
determinacy."
A
reader who
responds
with
a
generic
sense
other
than the one the
author intended
has substituted an
extrinsic
genre
for
an
intrinsic one.
"An extrinsic
genre
is a
wrong guess,
an
intrinsic
genre
a
correct one."2
The idea that
a musical listener
might
make a similar
generic
mis-
take echoes
in
much
current critical
writing
about
g9th-century
instru-
mental
music,
especially
if a
category
like the
symphony
is understood
broadly-in
the
spirit,
say,
of
Tzvetan Todorov's
definition of
genre
'
"On ne
se
meprendra
pas
sans
doute sur le
genre
de cet
ouvrage."
The next
sen-
tence will also
be
important
in our discussion:
"Bien
que
les voix
y
soient
employees,
ce
n'est
ni
un
opera
de
concert,
ni une
cantate,
mais
une
symphonie
avec
chururs."
E. D.
Hirsch,
Validity
n
Interpretation
New
Haven: Yale Univ.
Press,
1967),
86,
88-89.
The
journal
of
Musicologv,
VOl.
23,
Issue
3,
PP-
468-485,
ISSN
0277-9269, electronic
ISSN
1533-8347.
?
2oo6
by
the
Regents
of
the
University
of California.
All
rights
reserved. Please
direct all
requests
for
permission
to
photocopy
or
reproduce
article content
through
the
University
of California Press's
Rights
and
Permissions
website,
at
http://www.ucpress.edu/journals/rights.htm.
-
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BAUMAN
(literary,
musical,
or
otherwise)
as
a "codification of discursive
proper-
ties.":
In
order to
uphold
the
exemplary
status tradition had
conferred
on
the instrumental
canon
of
the
so-called common
practice period,
critics
and
analysts
have
sought
in
one
way
or
another
to
normalize the
potentially entropic process
of
decoding
a
musical
artwork's
discursive
properties.
Their
preferred
tactic has been
to
assign
this
task to a
"com-
petent
listener." The
most
serious
problem
with
this
construct is not its
fictive
ontological
status
nor the
circularity
that
justifying "competence"
necessarily
entails,
but rather
the
imputation
that the
genres,
forms,
or
conventions involved
in
the aesthetic
responses
of
any
listener,
compe-
tent or
otherwise,
are
immanent
in
the work.
If
genres
are not work-immanent but
context-sensitive, one cannot
assume that a
composer
and a
listener
separated
from each
other
in
time or
space
share an identical
generic
conception
of a
work even
if
both use the same label to
name that
conception.
The
early
reception
history
of Berlioz's Romeo
et
Juliette
offers an
example
of
nominal
generic agreement
masking
fundamental
differences
of
apprehension.
The
same
year
that Berlioz's
score
appeared,
the Berlin critic
Adolf
Bernhard Marx
dealt
it a
glancing
critical blow
in
an
essay
on
sym-
phonies
that
incorporate
choral
music.,
He
agreed readily
enough
with
Berlioz that despite its choral commentaries, Rom'o et.uliette was just
what the
composer
claimed
it to
be,
a work
conceived in
essentially
symphonic
terms. At the same
time,
the
"very necessary"
explanatory
choral
portions notwithstanding,
Marx
still
found that as a
symphony
the
work
was
just
as
"peculiar"
and
"unintelligible"
as
the
composer's
wholly
instrumental
compositions.
Marx,
as one
might expect,
was
measuring
Berlioz's choral
sym-
phony chiefly
against
Beethoven's Ninth. But
he
was
also
projecting
it
onto
a
wider
Central
European
cultural-institutional
world,
one not
only swept up in the flood-tide of German symphonic music but also
comfortable
enough
with
the
Romantic
metaphysics
of
instrumental
music to consider it
universally binding.
Berlioz's Parisian
world was
very
different.
Symphonic production
had
dropped
sharply
from
pre-
Revolutionary years,
concerts still consisted
mainly
of
vocal music and
overtures,
and
the
Opera
and
Opera
Comique
lorded
it over
public
musical life.5 Each man called
Romeo
et
Juliette
a
"symphony
with cho-
:
Tzvetan
Todorov,
"The
Origin
of
Genres,"
New
Literary
History
8
(1976/77):
162.
It will be relevant
for
our
subsequent
discussion of Adorno's
"material
categories"
to
remark that Todorov includes among a work's discursive properties both functional
(syntactic-semantic)
and material
(pragmatic-verbal) aspects (163).
4
Adolf
Bernhard
Marx,
"Ueber
die
Form der
Symphonie-Cantate.
Auf
Anlass
von
Beethoven's
neunter
Symphonie,"
Allgemeine
musikalische
Zeitung49
(1847): 489-51
1.
5
Barry
S. Brook calculates that between
1778
and
1789
there were
223 symphonies
and
symphonies-concertantes
written
in
France
(about
22
per
year);
in
the
years 1790
to
469
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470
THE
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ruses,"
but
each meant
something
different. Berlioz's
preface
an-
nounced to
his
countrymen
that
although
his
new work
included
cho-
ruses, it was nonetheless a symphony; Marx's translation for his German
readers
said,
in
effect,
that
although
the
work
was
a
symphony,
it
nonetheless
included
choruses.6
Marx
preferred
another
designation
to
"choral
symphony,"
as
the
title he chose
for
his
essay
makes
clear: "On
the
Form of
the
Symphony-
Cantata,
with
Reference
to Beethoven's Ninth
Symphony."
How is
it,
he
asks,
that
this
great
work,
or
any
work
in
the
same
genre,
can
combine
instrumental
and
vocal music
yet
still retain
the
name and
character
of
a
symphony?
With Berlioz
marginalized,
there
were
few choral
sym-
phonies besides Beethoven's for Marx to talk about in 1847. The desig-
nation
"symphony-cantata"
he borrowed from
Mendelssohn,
who
had
used it for
his
"Lobgesang" Symphony
in
1840,
the
first work
in
the
German tradition
to be
modeled
directly
on
the
Ninth. But Marx
is
nearly
as dismissive
of
Mendelssohn as he is
of
Berlioz,
and he
even
banishes Beethoven's
own
Choral
Fantasy
from
the discussion
as
noth-
ing
more than
a
pale prelude
to the Ninth.
Today,
19th-century
studies cannot
proceed
with
such
dispatch.
Berlioz is no
longer
unintelligible.
Further,
after Marx's
essay
appeared,
the repertory of "symphony-cantatas" was significantly enlarged by the
likes
of Liszt
and,
above
all,
Mahler. Yet
despite
the
wider
scope
for
re-
flection
provided
by
later
works,
the
fundamental
question
touched on
by
Marx
remains the
same:
How,
if at
all,
does this
exceptional genre
reconcile the claims
of
instrumental
and
vocal
music?
This is
precisely
the
question
raised
by
Carl
Dahlhaus
in
his
analysis
of
the last
movement
of
Mahler's
Second,
which
appeared
in his
1970
study Analyse
und
Werturteil.7
Although
he
nowhere cites
Marx's
essay
(a
late work that
appears
to
be little known to
scholars),
Dahlhaus shares
several of its important premises, all of them originally designed by
18oo
this
dropped
to
82
(7-5
per year),
and in the
30 years
from
18o0
to
183o
it dwin-
dled
to
only
58
(or
less than
2
per year).
La
Symphonie francaise
dans la
seconde
moitie
du
XVIIPsiecle,
2
vols.
(Paris:
Institut de
musicologie
de
l'Universite de
Paris,
1962),
1:
468.
Wolfgang D6mling
observes
that Berlioz's most
productive
and successful
years,
from
1832
to
1842,
were
also the
years
of
triumph
for
Meyerbeer
at the
Opera
and Liszt and
Chopin
in
Parisian
salons and
concert halls.
Hector
Berlioz: Die
symphonisch-dramatischen
Werke
(Stuttgart: Philipp
Reclam,
1979).
6
The cultural
distance
separating
these two
interpretations
of Berlioz's
expression
"symphonie
avec
chaeurs"
is
only
widened
by
the fact
that Marx had not
even
heard
Romdo tJuliettebut was relying for his brief remarks (which are relegated to a back-page
footnote)
on the
testimony
of a
third
party.
7
Carl
Dahlhaus,
Analyse
und
Werturteil,
Musikpadagogik,
Forschung
und
Lehre,
vol.
8
(Mainz:
B. Schott's
S6hne,
1970).
References are to the
English
translation
by
Sieg-
mund
Levarie,
Analysis
and
Value
judgment, Monographs
in
Musicology,
no.
i
(New
York:
Pendragon
Press,
1983).
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BAUMAN
Marx
for
his discussion of
the
Ninth: the
necessity
of
treating
the vocal
portion
as the
goal
of
the instrumental
part,
the
countervailing
need
to
fashion the latter as something more than a mere introduction, and the
overriding problem
of
unity
that
this
creates
for
the
composer.
One
might
think that
in
such an
analysis,
appeals
would
be
made to
the
example
of
the
Ninth
at
every
turn. But Dahlhaus refuses to
do
so,
for he does not
believe that tradition authorizes
such a
comparison.
Instead,
the
symphony-cantata
represents
a
"genre
of
exceptions,"
a
disparate
collection
of
"single, historically
isolated,
and not
mutually
conditioned mediators between
symphony
and cantata"
(p.
79)-
What
might
it
be about
the
symphony-cantata
as a
genre
(if
that
is indeed
what it is) that led Dahlhaus to deny the historical legitimacy of affini-
ties
among
the artworks it
comprehends?
His
analysis
of
Mahler's Sec-
ond
suggests
one
answer-the
postulate
that
members
of
a
genre
must
be
governed
by
formal
norms in
order
for
us to relate them
in
a mean-
ingful way.
There
is
something
a little
suspect
about
looking
for norms
when
you
have
defined the
object
of
study
as a
"genre
of
exceptions,"
at least
to intellects trained
in
Anglo-American
empirical
traditions. Dahlhaus
appears by
contrast
to
delight
in
the
challenge
that
contradiction and
paradox offer to dialectical response, so much so that he at times cre-
ates
oppositions
without even
noticing.
Is
it
possible
to reconcile
the
notion
of
a
"genre
of
exceptions"
with
Dahlhaus's demand for
formal
norms?
Possibly
not,
but
his
genial
definition
of
this
problematic
cate-
gory
undeniably
touches
on
something
at the
very
heart of the
aesthetic
and historical
significance
of
Mahler's Second. Yet
in
order to skirt
the
impasse
Dahlhaus
faced,
we
need
to
question critically
the
adequacy
of
formal
analysis
both
to
Mahler's
symphony
and
to
its
genre.
In a
well
known
essay
on the finale
of Schumann's Second
Sym-
phony, published in 1984, Anthony Newcomb offered a provocative
challenge
to the
descriptive
formalism
regnant
at the time.
In
sympa-
thetic
response
to Schumann's
strong literary
bent,
Newcomb's
reading
of the finale
hypostatizes
its
themes,
so that
he can trace
their
evolution
across the
movement
as
if
they
were characters
in
a
narrative,
or
in
his
words,
in
an
archetypal plot:
an
ingenious gambit,
and
certainly
an im-
provement
on
a strained
reading
of the
movement as a "deformed"
rondo.8
Surprisingly,
however,
Newcomb still
insists on
construing
the
8
The term alludes to the concept of "sonata deformation" introduced into the dis-
course on the
fin-de-siecle
problematic
of
formal
disintegration
by
James
Hepokoski
in
his
essay "Fiery-Pulsed
Libertine
or Domestic
Hero? Strauss's Don
Juan
Reinvestigated,"
in
RichardStrauss:New
Perspectives
n the
Composer
nd His
Work,
d.
Bryan
Gilliam
(Durham:
Duke Univ.
Press,
1992), 135-75.
It
seems to me that
Mahler's
Second must
be located
well
beyond
the
point
at
which,
in
Richard Taruskin's
words,
"'deformation'
no
longer
471
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archetypical plot
he
reads into Schumann's finale
in
formal terms:
"The
archetype
is communicated
and elaborated
by,
among
other
things, the musical form of the individual work.",)
In
essence, one kind
of formalism
(archetypal
plot)
has been substituted for another
(musi-
cal
genre).
As a
result,
the
autobiographical
dimension of the finale
that Newcomb also
acknowledges
and elaborates
("the
struggle
in
the
symphony
from
suffering
to
healing
and
redemption"
[p.
237])
ap-
pears
as little more than
a
metaformal
supplement.
The
interpretation
of the
finale of Mahler's Second that
I
offer
here differs in
one funda-
mental
respect
from Newcomb's
interpretation
of the finale of
Schu-
mann's Second. It
argues
that Mahler's
long
search
for a
finale to
the
Second does not merely supplement whatever formal construction we
may place
on it
(be
it music-technical
or
programmatic),
but instead is
itself
the
movement's
generative
formal
principle.
This is not the
way
Dahlhaus
saw
things.
In his formal
approach
to
Mahler's
finale,
he
seems
to
flout the
symphony's patent generic prob-
lems
by opting
for an all-too-familiar abstract
thematic
analysis
in
which
a trained listener's
expectations
are deeded inalienable
rights
in
experi-
encing
the work:
"In
the
finale of a
symphony,"
he
declares,
"the traits
of sonata
form,
even when
weakly
delineated,
stand out
conspicuously
because sonata form is the scheme expected by the hearer" (p.
82).
Im-
mediately
one senses trouble.
For
how
can
"weakly
delineated" traits
"stand out
conspicuously,"
even
if
we are
expecting
them? On
the con-
trary,
their weakness will
tend to
problematize
expectation
itself.
In
what sort
of
formal
framework do we
in fact
experience
these at-
tenuated delineations?
Like
virtually
all
analysts
Dahlhaus
recognizes
in
Mahler's finale an
instrumental
portion
consisting
of an
introduction,
exposition,
and
development,
followed
by
a
choral conclusion that
in his
words
"fulfills the formal function
of
a
recapitulation" (p.
81).
But because this section takes the form of a cantata, it must make some
kind of assertion of formal
independence
in
addition
to
fulfilling
its
re-
capitulatory
duties. It does
so,
he
claims,
through
a redistribution of
thematic
emphasis.
Whereas
the
principal
themes
from the
exposition
are
simply
restated,
ideas
presented
earlier
in
fragmentary
form are
now
elaborated
into true
themes. He cites two
instances
(mm.
27-39
and
78-84).
Both
these
fragmentary
passages
are
indeed
expanded
in
the
choral conclusion
(mm.
536-59
and
493-511),
but this is the work
serves
to account for difference"
but instead strives to save
appearances
for
an ever more
desperate
and ineffectual
allegiance
to formalism.
"Speed
Bumps,"
z9th-Century
Music
29
(2oo5/2oo6):
200.
.
Anthony
Newcomb,
"Once More 'Between Absolute
and
Program
Music': Schu-
mann's
Second
Symphony,"
z9th-Century
Music
7 (1983/84):
234.
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BAUMAN
of the orchestra: The
passages
in the choral section are
instrumental
in-
terludes
that do not involve the chorus or soloists at all. So a
fundamen-
tal question remains unanswered: Why is the concluding section vocal
rather than instrumental? When the introduction
of
vocal music
into
the
symphony
is
justified by appealing
to instrumental models and in-
strumental
passages,
a connection has been missed
somewhere. We
have,
it would
appear,
come full
circle,
to the
question
first
put
to the
symphony-cantata
by
Marx.
An
ardent
Hegelian writing
before
Schopenhauer
came into
vogue,
Marx
adopted
the same
ranking
of vocal and instrumental music
that
Wagner
was to insist on four
years
later in
Oper
und
Drama,
although
for different reasons.,' Marx directs our attention to the words that
Beethoven
himself wrote for the first
appearance
of the human voice in
the
finale of the Ninth:
"O
Freunde,
nicht
diese
Tone."
They
tell
us,
he
declares,
that the content
of the instrumental and vocal
parts
will be
not
only
different
but
in
opposition
to each other. And the
superior
mode of discourse
in
this
opposition
is
vocal
music. It is
the more hu-
man of the
two,
he
explains,
since
man's own voice
is its
chief instru-
ment. In
consequence,
it can move us
more
deeply
and
directly.
Instru-
mental music is not
only
less
precise
but also
less
striking.
When
they
are used together, the instrumental must naturally cede ultimate con-
trol to the vocal.
Marx is well
known
as one of the architects of the
i9th
century's
conception
of sonata
form.
Yet his role
in
this
regard
is
frequently
mis-
understood. He entertained a
deep suspicion
of
abstract,
generalized
schemata and insisted
again
and
again
in
his
writings
on the
insepara-
bility
of
form and
content.
Not
surprisingly,
this article of faith
crops
up
in
his
discussion
of Beethoven's
Ninth: "The form of an
artwork,"
he
writes,
"is
nothing
other than the
expression,
the
externalization,
the
taking-shape of its content." "Form," he continues, "is determined, or
rather
generated-created-by
the
Idea,
by
the
[artwork's]
content"
(col.
492).
"The
Idea"-die
Idee--is
a
concept
Marx
developed quite
early
in
his critical career
to
designate
the
spiritual
content of a
work
of
art
in
its
totality."
In
Marx's
philosophy
of
music,
the Idea
bridges
one
of the
Is
Wagner's
ambivalence toward the
pronouncements
he made
in
Oper
und Drama
after he felt the
impact
of
Schopenhauer's thought
is
a central
theme
of
Dahlhaus's
Die
Idee der absoluten Musik (Kassel: Barenreiter, 1978) and of Carolyn Abbate's "Opera as
Symphony,
a
Wagnerian Myth,"
in
Analyzing Opera:
Verdiand
Wagner,
d.
Carolyn
Abbate
and
Roger
Parker
(Berkeley:
Univ.
of California
Press,
1989),
92-124.
1
For a discussion of Marx's
application
of
the term to Beethoven's
earlier
sym-
phonies,
see Scott
Burnham, "Criticism, Faith,
and the Idee: A. B. Marx's
Early
Reception
of
Beethoven,"
19th-Century
Music
13
(1989/90):
183-92.
473
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most treacherous chasms
threatening
aesthetics,
for it
offers simultane-
ous
guarantees
of
both
unity
and
individuality.
The
specific examples
Marx explores are the very obverse of Dahlhaus's formal norms-
unabashedly
extramusical and arrived at
by
hermeneutic
leaps
of criti-
cal intuition.
In
the
case of Beethoven's
Ninth,
the
Idea he identifies
is "a
purely personal
one."
By
virtue of his
growing
deafness,
Marx ex-
plains,
Beethoven had become "the
poet
of the
instrumental
world,"
a
productive
but
alienating
role that
engendered
a
"thirst
for
commu-
nion" with
his
fellow
man. In the choral
conclusion of
the Ninth he
at
last created
in art
what was
denied him in
diurnal
existence: brother-
hood and
community.
In order to establish this Idea's unifying power, alongside its unde-
niable
individuality,
Marx
points
to features
from
the earlier move-
ments that lie
under its
governance, including
syncopations,
elided
cadences,
and
voices that
disappear
into one
another. It is somewhat
surprising
that he
does not also draw attention to
the
crushing
disso-
nance that
opens
the
finale,
a feature German
critics have called
Beethoven's
"Schreckensakkord,"
or chord of
terror.
Dahlhaus did well
to
ignore
this
resounding
dissonance,
given
his
unwillingness
to enter-
tain the notion
of
historical
mediation
among
symphony-cantatas.
Oth-
erwise he could scarcely have avoided observing the astonishing fidelity
with
which Mahler
reincarnated Beethoven's
Schreckensakkord,
and at
precisely
the same
point.
In
each
symphony
the
penultimate
movement
ends
meditatively
in
a
major key,
only
to be
jarred
from its
reverie
when
the dominant
of
the
finale,
a
grating half-step
below,
is thrust under-
neath it.
An
even
deeper
parallel
between the two
movements lies beneath
the surface of
these harsh sonorities.
If
the choral
conclusion of a
sym-
phony
is not to
be a mere
afterthought-as
is
clearly
the case with the
setting of the Chorus Mysticus that Liszt added to his Faust Symphony
-then the instrumental
portion
of the finale
must be
made
to
sound
introductory.
Beethoven's
finale,
to be
sure,
begins
with
a
recitative-like
instrumental
section that is
unambiguously
an
introduction. And
Dahlhaus
astutely
sensed that even the massive
sonata-like instrumental
portion
of
Mahler's finale
ultimately
performs
a
similar
introductory
function.
But
by
itself
this
parallel
seems less than
compelling,
since
formally
the two movements differ
widely
from each
other. A
deeper affinity
is
to be sought beyond formalism, in a common rhetoric that deploys
an
introductory
instrumental canvas first to
thematize and then to sub-
vert conventional
symphonic
discourse as an
adequate expressive
medium.
Beethoven's famous
strategy
is
thoroughgoing
and none too
subtle:
Emissaries from the earlier movements are received and as
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quickly
dismissed
by
the
basses and
cellos;
all
this takes
place
in
the lan-
guage
of
recitative-already
an
excursion into
vocality,
or at least to
its
threshold, before the Word itself becomes manifest when the baritone
first intones Beethoven's
text.'2
Mahler's
finale,
by
contrast,
sets out as
if
it
were bent on
laying
be-
fore
us
a full-scale instrumental
design.
But
somewhere
along
the
way
the discursive
modes of
the
German
symphonic
tradition become ei-
ther
stymied
or
exhausted,
and
they disintegrate
in a final
collapse
that
given
the movement's dimensions and ambitions
amounts to a
formal
and
expressive
catastrophe
of the first order.
The formalist
explication
of this
process
that Dahlhaus offers de-
picts an indecisive structure, one that shapes material instrumentally
and
yet
also
prefigures
a more
adequate
vocal elaboration of the same
material.
He
was
especially
bothered
by
the
exposition's
ABA
structure,
which seems to
preclude
the
developmental
elaboration that
thematic
dualism invites. But there
may
be more
going
on here than
calculated
inadequacy
of
thematic structure.
Throughout
the
exposition-and
for
that matter
throughout
the entire instrumental
portion
of Mahler's finale
-there is
nothing
that even
vaguely
corresponds
to a transition sec-
tion.
Shapes
move
in
and
out
of
focus,
unsponsored
and
unconnected.
And yet the ordering of events is far from arbitrary, for each of the ex-
position's
three sections describes the same closed rhetorical
shape:
thematic
presentation,
followed
by
a broad
expanse
involving
either de-
velopment
or a static
pedal
point,
then a
concluding disintegration
or
collapse.
The
pattern
of
discrete,
juxtaposed segments
in the finale's
exposi-
tion
finds continued
application
in the
massive
development
section.
Dahlhaus,
unable to reconcile this central
complex
with the traditional
notion of
development,
complained
that here the
programmatic
com-
pletely overwhelms the formal. Having proleptically decided that the
ensuing
choral
section will
serve as
the formal
recapitulation,
Dahlhaus
was
ill
prepared
to see or hear
this
section
as
a
patchwork
in
which both
development
and
recapitulation
occur
in
indecisive alternation.
(At
least
one statement
of
each theme takes
place
in
the
tonic,
a
recapitula-
tory
convention all the more
striking
in
that it
no
longer compelled
ob-
servance
even
by
composers
far
more conservative than
Mahler.)
, Stephen Hinton offers a different and more frankly retrospective interpretation
of Beethoven's
strategy: "Might
the vocal recitative
represent
an
attempt
on Beethoven's
part,
if
not to 'take
back'
the
symphony,
then at
least
to issue
a
disclaimer,
however
cryp-
tic or
ironic?" The disclaimer involves the
potential
for
abuse of the "collective
optimism"
celebrated
in
the choral
portion
to follow.
"Not
'Which' Tones? The Crux of Beethoven's
Ninth,"
I9th-Century
Music
22
(1998/99):
77.
475
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The
strategy
of
interweaving
development
and
recapitulation
effec-
tively
exhausts the material of the
movement without
satisfying any
of
the underlying formal demands of the instrumental tradition that
formed the
symphony's
point
of
departure.
Catherine
Coppola
has
made
a
good
case
for the
positive
moment
of a
similar
phenomenon,
to
which
she
has
given
the
label
"organized discontinuity,"
in
the case
of
the fantasia
in
the
later
18th
and
19th
centuries.'13
But
a
similar subver-
sion
of
formal coherence in a
symphonic
finale
can
scarcely
avoid
ap-
pearing negative, especially
when
parsed
in terms
of theme and
key,
the
traditional elements
in
the
formalist's arsenal. The
positive
moment
that sublates the
negativity
of
deliberate
formal
inadequacy
in
Mahler's
finale involves two far more elemental parameters that are normally
taken
for
granted: homogeneous
time
and hierarchic
unity.
One of the
strongest
compositional
affinities between Mahler and
Ives,
in the words of
Robert
Morgan,
is
"the
effect
of
hearing
music
from different directions
and
spatial
distances."'4
Morgan
mentions
a
passage
from the
development
of the
"Resurrection" finale
by way
of
illustration. It occurs
just
prior
to the central
section's
final,
pathologi-
cal
collapse,
where
offstage
trumpets
and
percussion
are
superimposed
on the
twisting,
minor-mode
theme
later connected
textually
with
the
notion of Faith (mm. 340-57). Mahler's own footnote to the conductor
at this
spot speaks
of
"isolated sounds of
a
barely
audible
music,
carried
on
the
wind"
(vom
Wind vereinzelnd
herfiber
getragene
Klange
einer
kaum
vernehmbaren
Musik).
Yet
key
and
meter
suggest
an additional
effect
of this
passage,
a
heterogeneous,
layered
experience
of
time.
The
implications
of a
breakdown
of
time as a
linear,
homogeneous
medium
for
the mechanics of
symphonic
discourse are not to be under-
estimated.
For
homogeneous
time
represents
one
of
the
unspoken
postulates
of
the
causal, hierarchic,
goal-oriented thinking
that
have
tended to dominate Western thought-and certainly most of our histor-
ical and theoretical
thinking
about
tonal
music.'5
The
modernity
that
links
Mahler
with
Ives
manifests itself
not
just
in
a new attitude
toward
time
in
Mahler's
symphonies
but also
a new attitude toward
the
ways
we
are invited to connect musical events in
order to form
unified structures.
Arno
Forchert
has
written about the
problem
posed by
the
way
events
are
organized
in
the music of
Mahler
(and Strauss)
in
terms
of a
3
Catherine
Coppola,
"The
Elusive
Fantasy:
Genre,
Form,
and
Program
in
Tchaikovsky's
Francesca da Rimini," 19th-Century Music
22
(1998/99):
172.
14
Robert
Morgan,
"Ives and
Mahler:
Mutual
Responses
at
the
End of
an
Era,"
r9th-
Century
Music
2
(1978/79): 78.
15
On
linear time as the
empowering agent
of
causality,
progress, teleology,
and
even the
possibility
of a
universal
history,
see
Siegfried
Kracauer,
History:
The
Last
Things
Before
the Last
(New
York: Oxford
Univ.
Press,
1969).
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"dissolution
of
traditional formal
categories
in
music around
19oo.00"
Mahler's
music,
he
notes,
places primary emphasis
not on the
tradi-
tional, unifying
role of motive and
key but
on the
potential
for
dissimi-
larity
and disunion
in
other
parameters.
The
way
these
parameters
articulate
time,
he
continues,
precludes
a
reduction to traditional
sonata-like
principles
or schemata. He
suggests
instead that Mahler
"composed
in
alternating
shapes" (p.
87),
a
tendency particularly
marked
in
the later
symphonies.
The
problem
is
subtler,
he
adds,
in
the
early
and middle
symphonies,
since the
technique "appears
almost as a
metaformal
principle
above traditional formal models"
(p.
89).
But
the
effect on overall
organization
is
the same: Form no
longer
means
orga-
nizing a whole
in
time
but
articulating the passage of time itself.
Forchert's
ideas
were
developed
in
response
to a radical alternative
to
traditional formal
analysis
of
Mahler's music
proposed
by
Theodor
Adorno.'7
While Forchert's
own
"alternating shapes"
bear some com-
parison
to Adorno's so-called "material
categories,"
including
suspen-
sion,
fulfillment,
breakthrough,
and
collapse,'
he insists
that,
at least
in Mahler's
music,
Adorno's
categories
are not
yet
purely
"material"
but
still
"functional,"
although
no
longer
in
terms of a
unified
whole. But
exactly
what kind
of
unity
is it that
Forchert
misses in
Mahler's music?
It is subordinating, hierarchic unity, the kind also demanded by Dahl-
haus's
formal
norms,
with their insistence that aesthetic
experience
be
informed
by
the
functional
relationship
of
a work's
parts
to a
coherent
whole.
The succession
of
events
in
the "Resurrection" finale
suggests
a
uni-
fying
relationship
of
a less restrictive
kind,
one that
does
accommodate
Adorno's "material
categories."
It
could be described
as
more or less
equivalent
to the
grammatical
notion
of
parataxis-a
non-hierarchic
coordination
of
units-as
opposed
to
hypotaxis,
or
the
subordinating
of linguistic units.',) The recurring pattern of statement, expanse, and
'"
Arno
Forchert,
"Zur
Aufl6sung
traditioneller
Formkategorien
in der Musik
um
19oo:
Probleme
formaler
Organisation
bei
Mahler
und
Strauss,"
Archiv
fiur Musikwis-
senschaft
32
(1975): 85-98.
'7
Theodor
Adorno,
Mahler:
Eine
musikalische
Physiognomik
(Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp,
1963).
Trans. Edmund
Jephcott
as
Mahler:
A Musical
Physizgnomy (Chicago:
Univ. of
Chicago
Press,
1992).
'
See Erwin
Ratz,
"Zum
Formproblem
bei Gustav
Mahler:
Eine
Analyse
des ersten
Satzes der Neunten
Symphonie,"
Die
Musikforschung
8
(1955):
169-77.
Ratz's
description
of the conclusion
of
the
development
section in the first movement of the
Ninth
as "a ter-
rifying collapse" (ein furchtbarer Zusammenbruch) applies without qualification to the
same
spot
in
the finale
of
the Second
(176).
".
See
Hans
Meyer,
"Musik und
Literatur,"
in Arnold
Schiinberg,
Ernst
Bloch,
Otto
Klem-
perer,
Erwin
Ratz,
Hans
Mayer,
Dieter
Schnebel,
Theodor W
Adorno
iiber
Gustav Mahler
(Tiibin-
gen:
Rainer
Wunderlich,
1966),
142-56.
For
Mayer
the
paratactic
element
in
Mahler
in-
volves
the
relationship
not
only
of text to
music
but
also text
to
text.
Major
instances of
477
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collapse
(carried
on,
as
mentioned,
without
mediating
transitions)
cre-
ates a sense of
paratactic
kinship
among
successive
segments
in
the
finale's exposition and development. These are the very sections where
Dahlhaus's
formal
norms fail most
conspicuously,
insofar as it
is here
that
by
tradition
their
explanatory powers
ought
to be
greatest.
Indeed,
func-
tionally
speaking
it would seem
that,
given
the
strong negative implica-
tions of the
statement-expanse-collapse
pattern
as a
formal
strategy,
fail-
ure is
virtually
hard-wired into
Mahler's
exposition
and
development.
Not so
the
sections
surrounding
them,
the
introduction
and
the
choral
conclusion.
The
introduction
begins
not with statement
but
with
collapse-Mahler's
version of
Beethoven's Schreckensakkord. What
emerges out of its residue is a special kind of expanse: a static, dysfunc-
tional
pedal point
that
Monika Lichtenfeld has called a
"Klangfldiche,"
or
sound-plane,
a form
of
compositional
standstill "in
which
expecta-
tion
of what is to
come
and remembrance
of
things
past interpenetrate,
as
befits the
beginning
of
a
finale.'"2()
This
sort of
expanse,
the
equiva-
lent of Adorno's material
category
"suspension,"
differs
fundamentally
from the kind
that
succeeds the thematic statements
and restatements
of the
exposition
and
development
sections. The
very
term
"introduc-
tion" is little more than a convenience
in
Mahler's
finale,
where
the
ret-
rospective moment is especially marked: The Schreckensakkord itself
he borrowed
directly, key
and
all,
from
earlier in
the
symphony,
near
the close
of
the Scherzo.
Further,
despite
the
fact that a C
pedal
persists
throughout
the introduction's
61
measures,
it carries
only
the barest
vestige
of
the
traditional function of
preparatory
dominant. At its
close,
a series of
ungrammatical
harmonies not
only
expunges
the last traces
of dominant
preparation
but also offers a foretaste of
the
layering
tech-
nique exploited
more
fully
in
the
development
(mm.
53-61).
As
a
re-
sult,
we move into
the
Dies irae theme
of the
exposition
with
a
paratac-
tic sense of succession without subordination.
Since the
opening
Schreckensakkord and the
ensuing pedal
point
no
longer
stand
in
hypotactic
subordination
to
the
following exposi-
tion,
their
later
return does not
automatically signal
preparation
for
a
recapitulation.
And when
in
fact these
same
elements are recalled in
toto
at the end
of the
development
section,
they
function
not
as a new
beginning
but as
a
climax: the final element
in an
extended
passage
of
increasingly desperate
harmonic-motivic contortion
(mm.
379-447)-
the latter include the "almost absurd idea" of coupling the medieval hymn "Veni creator
spiritus"
with
the
closing
scene of Goethe's Faust
II in
the
Eighth
and the
"strange panthe-
istic
amalgam
of
Klopstock
and
Gustav Mahler" in
the choral
conclusion of the Second.
211
Monika
Lichtenfeld,
"Zur
Klangflichentechnik
bei
Mahler,"
in
Mahler
-
eine Her-
ausforderung:
Ein
Symposion,
ed. Peter Ruzicka
(Wiesbaden:
Breitkopf
&
Hdirtel,
1977),
121-34-
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Here the
expanse
following
the Schreckensakkord
suspends
time
itself
as harmonic motion and motivic
development
come to
a
standstill. Its
horn calls and oboe triplets are eventually joined by passages for flute
and
piccolo
that Mahler marks "like
a bird call."
As Lichtenfeld has ob-
served,
in Mahler's
Klangfliichen
there is
always
the
suggestion
of
scenes
from
Nature-a
Nature, however,
that is not
"natural" but
rather
the
negative
of
artifice,
of
"the
busyness
of
motivic-thematic
development,
metric
pulse,
and harmonic
progression"
(pp.
133-34).
An
equally
in-
triguing
feature
of this climactic
passage
is its shift of
tonal
domain:
The Schreckensakkord
and
pedal
are now anchored to an
extensive
C#
in
place
of
the
C
heard
at the
beginning
of
the
finale. Even in terms of
tonality, then, there is no sense that what is to come out of this moment
of
suspended
animation will be a return
to
what has
gone
before.
It is difficult to do
justice
to what
happens
next within the modes of
discourse offered
by
any
traditional
system
of formal
analysis.
With
the
entrance
of
the chorus
comes a
mysterious
sense of
metamorphosis:
Somehow the work has
undergone
a
change
of
state. Dahlhaus's articu-
lation
of the formal
problem
this
juncture posed
for
his
own
analysis
cannot
help
sounding
pedestrian:
"If
one does not view the march as a
development,
then the
formal
importance
of the vocal
part
is
certainly
diminished [from what it would be] in a situation in which the recapit-
ulation
emerges
as the
goal
and result
of
the
development"
(p.
82).
Goals
are almost
by
definition conscious and
future-directed;
they
are
achieved
by
gaining
control over events and time.
At
this
point,
how-
ever,
the
discourse seems
to have lost control
over both.
In
trying
to
read
the choral conclusion as
functional
recapitulation,
Dahlhaus
avoided
any
mention of its tonal
structure-wisely
so,
since it
mounts
the most
vigorous campaign
of
all
against
traditional
recapitu-
latory expectations. Why
does the chorus
begin
in
the remote
key
of
G6
major, and to what end does it carry us through a succession of other
keys,
equally
unfamiliar,
to
the
staggering
apotheosis
in
E6
major?
Eb
major-this
is
a brave new world. It is not the
opening key
of the
symphony,
either
major
or
minor,
nor
is it even close to the
F
minor of
the
finale's
exposition,
not
to mention the
initial
Gk
of the
choral con-
clusion.
As far as I
know,
the finale of the
"Resurrection"
represents
the
first time that a
symphony
dared forsake overall
unity
of
key.
The ana-
lyst
Graham
George
threw
up
his hands in
despair
in
trying
to make
sense of its
unique
tonal
plan.2
He found no
precedent, support,
or
reason for G6, and he was constrained to rummage all the way back to
21 Graham
George, Tonality
and Musical Structure
New
York:
Praeger, 1970),
192-
94-
479
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an
E6
minor
episode
in
the first
movement's
development
in
order to
explain
EL
major
as
the
key
of the
finale's
apotheosis.
The
relationship
is tenuous at best, especially given that Mahler abandoned preliminary
plans
to
put
the
"song"
theme
of
the first
movement's
exposition
in
E6
major
and
settled instead on E
major.
A more
broadly
constituted tonal
sense
may
be at work here.
To
be-
gin
with,
the chorus is not the
symphony's
first
encounter with
vocality.
In "Urlicht" the solo alto had
already
prefigured-in
the dim
light
of
the folk-medieval
poetry
of Des
Knaben
Wunderhorn-the human
need
for belief
that
is addressed
much
more
explicitly
in the
choral finale.
Simultaneously,
she had
linked
DM
o the
poem's
intimations
of
immor-
tality, creating a point of tonal and emotional stability from which the
instrumental
portion
of the finale
departs
and to
which
it
returns.
The hushed entrance of the
chorus, then,
would seem to resolve
the
D6
of
"Urlicht" to
Gb
major.
But
again,
as in
the finale's introduc-
tory
Klangfldche
on
C,
traditional dominant-to-tonic
hypotaxis
is effaced
through
a
suspension
of
temporal continuity. Only
in
the choral con-
clusion
does
the
finale
begin
to
coordinate events in a
way
that at last
reconciles the
paralyzing parataxis
of the
instrumental
portion
with a
sense
of
integrated, purposeful
succession.
Klopstock's
first two
stanzas,
both in GL, are laid out in a vast antecedent-consequence paragraph
composed
of
two
statement-expanse
structures.
Then,
with the first
words
of Mahler's own added
text,
a
series
of
episodes
restructures and
redirects motivic material from
both "Urlicht" and the
instrumental
portion
of the finale. Each
episode
ends on an
open
cadence
that
her-
alds
a
tonal
region
a
perfect
fifth
above that
of
the concluded
episode.
Both theme and
key,
in
other
words,
have
broken
free
from
circularity
and
collapse
into a
new,
open-ended spatio-temporal
order.
To call this new order a
recapitulation
denies both its
singularity
and its essential modernity. For it is not the old functional-or better,
symphonic-role
of
tonality
that
is
restored
but
a new
synthesis
of the
functional with the material that carries
us,
as
Mahler's
own
text
puts
it,
toward
a
new and hitherto
unsuspected
end: "zum
Licht,
zu
dem kein
Aug'
gedrungen"
(to
the
light
to which no
eye
has
penetrated).
Yet
Dahlhaus,
even as
he
confronted the
latent tension between the con-
ception
of the
symphony-cantata
as a
genre
of
exceptions
and the ade-
quacy
of traditional
formal
analysis,
could not
in
the
end tear
himself
away
from the familiar
categories
of
functional
analysis,
and
so
sought
to accommodate the work's novelty and aesthetic significance within
the
very
tradition it
subverts.
Marx,
who had first raised the
genre
issue,
offered
a
different
path
to
understanding
with his
notion
of
the
generative
Idea,
which medi-
ates not
only
form and
content
but
also
individuality
and
unity.
But
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where
does one
begin
to
look for
the Idea that
generates
the
excep-
tional form
of the
"Resurrection" finale?
As
Marx's own
interpretation
of Beethoven's
Ninth
illustrates,
the Idea can
all too
easily degenerate
into
programmatic exegesis
as an
alternative to
ineffectual
formal
analysis.
Although
Mahler himself
provided
several
programs
as an aid
to the
Second's earliest
audiences,
these
documents are best
dismissed
with
Mahler's own words
about
them
to
Alma:
They
are "a crutch for
a
cripple"
that lead to
"a
flattening
and
coarsening,
and in
the
long
run
to
such distortion
that the
work,
and still
more its
creator,
is
utterly
unrecognizable."22
"...
and still more
its creator."
Mahler
seems to be
suggesting,
even
as
he
denies his
own hermeneutic
narratives, that to perceive his sym-
phony
in its
fullness is to
perceive
not
simply
the
composer's
intentions
but the
composer
himself.
The
reciprocal
relationship
of
artistic cre-
ation and
life-experience
is
a
frequent
theme
in
Mahler's
letters,
espe-
cially
those of the mid
189os
that deal
with the
Second. "So it
always
is
with
me,"
he
wrote to Arthur
Seidl,
"only
when
I
experience
do
I
com-
pose; only
when I
compose
do I
experience "2"
Mahler
was never
pre-
cise
in
defining
the boundaries of
art and
experience,
since to him
they
were
inseparable.
And never
were
they
more
inseparable
companions
than in the
creation of the
Second.
The
history
of
the
symphony's genesis
is
well
known. The first
movement was
composed
at
Leipzig
in
1888,
at the
time of the First
Symphony.
For
several
years
Mahler tried to
envisage
what
could
follow
it
in
a
symphonic plan,
granting
it a
provisional
self-sufficient
existence
as the tone
poem
Todtenfeier.
He sketched
and
completed
movements
2
and
3
in
the summer of
1893
at
Steinbach
and was
planning
a vocal
finale,
busily
sifting through
"all
human
literature,
including
the
Bible,"
but
without
finding
a
suitable text.
Early
in
1894
Hans
von
Billow,
who
had
played
a
markedly ambivalent role in Mahler's career, died at
Cairo.
Mahler himself
described to
Seidl the
impact
of the
"Aufer-
steh'n"
chorale
setting, sung by
a
boys'
choir at
the
conductor's funeral
at
Hamburg:
"Like a
bolt of
lightning
it hit
me and
everything
stood
perfectly
clear and
distinct
before
my
soul.
This is the
bolt the creator
waits
for,
this is
'holy
conception' "24
And
he added:
"What
I
experienced
then,
I
now had to
create
in
tones."
Is
the choral
conclusion,
then,
some
kind of mirror
image
of
the
chorale and its
message,
transferred into his
finale like
the
missing
'-
Alma
Mahler,
Gustav
Mahler:
Memories
and
Letters,
trans. Basil
Creighton,
ed. Don-
ald
Mitchell,
3rd
ed.
enlarged
(Seattle:
Univ. of
Washington
Press,
1975), 217-18.
3
Gustav
Mahler
Briefe,
879-1911,
ed. Alma
Maria Mahler
(Berlin,
1924),
229.
24
Ibid.
481
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piece
of
a
puzzle?
This is
substantially
Theodor Reik's
position,
pre-
sented in
a
psychoanalytic
interpretation
of
the finale.25
Reik
stresses
Mahler's antipathy toward Billow himself, who had covered his ears in
disgust
when
Mahler had
played Todtenfeier
for him in
1892.
Subcon-
sciously,
Mahler
longed
to
complete
the
symphony
to
spite
Billow
and
fell
prey
to a "death wish." The
fulfillment of this wish with the
conduc-
tor's death
triggered
an emotional
certitude
in
Mahler
that
the
sym-
phony
itself would
also
achieve
fulfillment,
and the
Klopstock
chorale
revealed
to him the vehicle for
this fulfillment.
Reik's
explanation suggests kinship
with Marx's
equally
biographi-
cal
interpretation
of
Beethoven's Ninth. But even if
we
could
bring
our-
selves to identify with Mahler's purported "death wish," it falls woefully
short when
we
try
to use
it
to take the musical
measure
of the
finale it-
self,
for the state
of
emotional certitude its
fulfillment
supposedly
en-
gendered
tells
us
scarcely anything
about
the
movement's
expressive
content.
Instead,
Reik's
portrait
presents
a
psychological curiosity
with
only
limited
application
even to the
narrow issue of
compositional
process.
The
life
experience
Reik's
scenario
sought
to read into the finished
work can
be
analyzed
from a
different
perspective.
Consider first the
expressionwith which Mahlersought to capturehis moment of revela-
tion,
one that
betokens the
very
opposite
of
death-"die
heilige
Emp-
fdingnis," oly
conception.
What was received
("empfangen")?Surely
not
merely
the
text,
or
even its
message.
It
is
absurd
to
imagine
that
in
his
search
for a
fitting
text Mahler had never encountered
Klopstock's
poem
or
its
like,
still
less that
he
was
unacquainted
with the doctrine
of
Resurrection
or
had never considered
it as a
counterpoise
to a first
movement
that
he
had at
one
time called "Funeral Rites."
And
anyway,
Klopstock's
poem
and
the
doctrine
of
Resurrection do
not
by
them-
selves play a determinative role in his setting. Most of the text after
Klopstock's
first two
quatrains
Mahler
wrote himself.
His added verses
have little
to do with
Christian
theology;
rather,
they
offer
an
extended
gloss
on
the
theme
of
redemption through struggle,
to
which he
re-
turned when
he set
the
close of Faust
II in
the
Eighth,
and which
ap-
pears again
and
again
in
Wagner's
operas
and
music
dramas.
Earlier we
considered the
join
between
symphony
and cantata
in
the "Resurrection"
finale as a
change
of state. An
interesting parallel
to
this
idea
in Mahler's musical
heritage
lay very
close at
hand: the
awakening of Brfinnhilde in Siegfried, now no longer a Valkyrie but a
mortal woman.
Constantin Floros
and
others have
pointed
out
that the
25
Theodor
Reik,
The
Haunting
Melody:
Psychoanalytic
Experiences
n
Life
and
Music,
part
3
(New
York:
Farrar,
Straus and
Young,
1953).
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principal
motive
developed
in
the choral
section
of
Mahler's finale
(mm.
550-59)
is
lifted
almost
directly
from
her
Friedenmusik,
sung
to
the words
"Ewig
war
ich, ewig
bin ich."26 If
we
adopt Marx's view of
vocal
music
as more human
than
instrumental
music,
then-like
Brfinnhilde-Mahler's
symphony
also
takes
on mortal form
with the
first words of
the chorus.
But this
presents
us with
a
seeming paradox:
The
symphony
resorts
to the
discourse
of
mortals
just
when it
begins
to
speak
about
immortal-
ity.
A
brief
detour back to
Beethoven's Ninth
offers an
instructive con-
trast. Its
finale had faced no
such
paradox,
since there the
chorus and
soloists,
even in
addressing
the
Goddess,
are
concerned at
every
turn
not with divine but
with human Joy, as Marx rightly observed. Further,
recall
Schiller's exhortation
that
Joy
use her
magic
to
reunite
what
cus-
tom has
severed
("Deine
Zauber binden wieder
/
Was die Mode
streng
geteilt").27
Given the
generic
issue the Ninth
confronted for the first
time,
this
appeal goes
out
not
only
to
factious mankind but
to instru-
mental and
vocal
expression
as
well.
Even
in terms of
musical
genre,
that
is,
Beethoven's
symphony
reunites what custom had
severed.
The
paradox
in
Mahler's Second-its
invocation
of the
human to
express
the
divine-can be
resolved
in the
spirit
of
Beethoven's reunit-
ing of severed modes of musical discourse if we acknowledge a final
level of
parataxis,
one that
deals with
genre
itself. For
only
in
homoge-
neous,
linear time is Mahler's
symphony-cantata
an either-or
proposi-
tion;
in
the
new
temporal
order
of its own
creating,
however,
there is
no need to
decide which
mode
of
discourse is subordinate to
the other.
The
rhetorical
impasse
at
the end
of
the instrumental
portion
of the
finale is
not
a turn of events
in a
generic
turf
war but a far
more
press-
ing compositional
impasse
precipitated
by
a
crisis
in
the
very
creation
of the work
itself. That
impasse
was overcome
only through
a moment
of metamorphosis in the creative process-experienced by Mahler him-
self but also
embodied
in
the
change
of state
the finale
undergoes
with
the entrance of the chorus. In
this moment
art and
experience,
genesis
and
revelation,
merge
to
engender
a
new,
self-begotten
music.
6
Constantin
Floros,
Gustav
Mahler,vol.
2:
Mahler
und die
Symphonik
es
i9.
Jahrhun-
derts in
neuerDeutung
(Wiesbaden:
Breitkopf
&
Hdirtel,
1977), 259-60.
The
motive occurs
frequently throughout
Mahler's
oeuvre,
nearly always
in
a context
closely
associated with
eternity
or
life after death. Its
recurrences
were
first
catalogued by
Philip
Barford,
"Mahler: A Thematic Archetype," Music Review 21 (1960): 297-316. See also Floros, Gus-
tav
Mahler,
2:
408,
and
Henry-Louis
de
la
Grange,
"Music about Music in
Mahler: Remi-
niscences,
Allusions,
or
Quotations?"
in
Mahler Studies,
ed.
Stephen
E.
Hefling
(Cam-
bridge:
Cambridge
Univ.
Press,
1997):
143-44-
27
This
is
the
text as
Beethoven set
it;
Schiller's
original poem
reads
"Wasder Mode
Schwert
geteilt."
483
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But doesn't this
simply
substitute one
quandary
for
another? For
how
can
anyone
but the
composer
have
access
to the
lived,
aesthetic
experience of both the work and its creation? To return to Mahler's let-
ter
that
relates his
experiences
at
Bflow's
funeral: "The mood in
which
I
sat
and
pondered
on the
departed
was
utterly
in
the
spirit
of
what
I
was
working
on at the time."
Mahler's world was that of his
unborn com-
position; inception
and
reception
are mediated from
within,
so that the
voice
heard
in
the finale is at once his own and the work's
own.
Fittingly,
we
actually
hear
this voice
emerge-by degrees,
section
by
section-as
we
ascend from GL to the
closing
peroration
in
Eb
with
which the
work
completes
itself.
In
the
spacious
G?
section at the
end
of
each of
Klop-
stock's quatrains, the solo soprano seems to break free from the chorus
(mm.
481-93).
This is an
unusual treatment of the solo
voice
in
a
choral
work,
but it
signals
what is about to
happen
textually:
Mahler's
own words take
the
place
of
Klopstock's.
With Mahler's
first
line,
"O
glaube,
mein
Herz, o
glaube,"
Klopstock's cenotaphic
"mein
Staub" is
transformed
into the
composer's
own
living
"mein Herz." The
rest
of
Klopstock's
text had elaborated the
essentially
passive
part played by
the soul
in his
vision
of
Resurrection and had
introduced
explicitly
the
figure
of
Jesus
as Intercessor. Mahler's
text,
when
it first
touches on
EK,
sets forth a very different, Faustian vision: "With wings that I have
won for
myself
I
shall soar
up,"
a sentiment
more
appropriate
to the
Athenian craftsman Daedalus
than to one of
the Elect
going
to his or
her reward.
At the
end of
Mahler's
text,
Klopstock's
initial
lines-and with
them the
portentous
moment at which the
composer
first
heard them
-are
paraphrased
and
personalized.
Interlaced with
echoes
of
Brfinn-
hilde's
Friedenmusik
in the
brass,
the
choral
peroration merges
state-
ment and
expanse
in a
key
that
symbolizes
"the
light
to
which no
eye
has penetrated." The approach to the colossal, final cadence in
E,
sets
in
relief the newness
of
the
symphony's
final
resting place
by swerving
momentarily
toward its earlier tonal
centers,
flanking
Eb
on either
side
(C,
Dk,
Gk,
F).
Each statement of Mahler's
words-"was du
geschlagen"
(what
you
have
created)-is
punctuated
at the
syllable "schlag" by
a
stroke
from
the
orchestra's
registral
extremes,
bass drum and
triangle,
in a final
onomatopoeic-autoreferential
union of vocal and
instrumen-
tal. The either-or
of
the
symphony-cantata
dissolves,
for the
music no
longer
simply
expresses
or
adorns the text's
meaning:
Here the text
points to the very music with which it is fused (mm. 720-26).
Mahler later admitted that he himself did not
know how he
had
achieved
the final
intensification,
the
Steigerung,
of
the "Resurrection"
finale.
His
confession
in one
sense
couples
the
symphony's redemptive
apotheosis,
that most Romantic of
solutions,
with
the
Ig9th-century
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ideal
of the
composer
as
unconscious vessel. But his words
can
also
sug-
gest
the
modernist
notion of the
self-fashioned work that
thematizes
its
own invention.
2
The instrumental portion of the finale ends in self-
imposed aporia,
created
out
of a
deliberately
inadequate
formalism
that exhausts
symphonic
discourse
as a
system
of
generalized expecta-
tions,
as
genre.
The choral
conclusion,
cast adrift from
external
expec-
tation
(and
from
the formalist's
gaze),
is left to set its
own course.
In
the
struggle
toward
self-completion
the
symphony
found
its
Marxian
Idea-the
psychotherapeutic
reenactment of its own
genesis.
Mahler
himself seems
to have
sensed
something
of
the work's
aesthetic
indebt-
edness
to its
own birth
pangs.
On
17
December
1895,
four
days
after
the first complete performance of the Second Symphony at Berlin, he
wrote
in a
letter to the
critic
Max Marschalk: "That
afterwards
I often
see an actual
event
dramatically
enacted before me
at various
single
parts
is
easy
to
comprehend
from the nature of the music.
The
parallel
between life and music
goes
perhaps deeper
and further
than can
as
yet
be
pursued."29
Northwestern
University
ABSTRACT
Like other
symphonic
works that combine instrumental and vocal
resources,
Mahler's
"Resurrection"
symphony
seems
to
pose
a
genre
puzzle, especially
to those who
have
tried to
subject
its
choral finale to
formal
exegesis.
Carl Dahlhaus
dodged
the
difficulty
of
categorization
in his
analysis
by
declaring
it
and
all
other
examples
of
the
"symphony-
cantata" as
members of an
intractable
"genre
of
exceptions."
Approaching
the
work
along
an
alternative,
metaformal
exegetical
pathway foregrounds
instead the
reciprocal relationship
of
artistic
cre-
ation
and
life-experience,
and
leads
ultimately
to the
conclusion that
in
this work Mahler reconciled instrumental and vocal discursive modes
through
the finale's reenactment of its own
genesis.
8
I
borrow this
expression
from
Paul de Man's introduction to
Hans Robert
Jauss,
Towardan
Aesthetic
of Reception,
rans.
Timothy
Bahti
(Minneapolis:
Univ. of Minnesota
Press,
1982),
xxiv.
.2Gustav
Mahler
Briefe,
8o.
485
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