Program Notes: March 2, 2003
Long before Mahler officially converted to Christianity so that he could assume the lofty position of Director of the Hofoper in Imperial Vienna (1897), his symphonies spoke eloquently of his conflicted position, caught between his Jewish heritage and Germanic culture. Indeed, all of his first four symphonies may be understood as evolving a version of Christianity, either from lifeless nature (as in the Third Symphony) or through a process of conversion. The conversion scenario of the First Symphony (premiered 1889) is particularly vivid, moving from the relative innocence of the first two movements (subtitled "Days of Youth") through a strangely rendered crisis in the funereal third movement, only to plunge headlong into a fiery "Inferno" in the finale, from which rescue--in the form of a brass chorale redolent of Handel's "Halleluiah Chorus"--follows episodes of prayer and persevering struggle. If, as more explicitly in the finales of his next three symphonies, Mahler is here giving us a taste of heavenly redemption, the third movement remains caught in earthly concerns, obliquely and even comically rendered. Mahler subtitled this movement "Stranded! A funeral march in the manner of Callot," and claimed it was inspired by a famous woodcut in which forest creatures carry the huntsman to his grave in a mock-serious procession. More obviously, the movement bases its funeral march on a minor-mode version of "Are You Sleeping" (in German either "Bruder Martin" or "Bruder Jacob") and includes episodes of klezmer-like music. Behind the incongruities of this elaborate joke lies a grimly serious scenario of inversion. "Are You Sleeping," besides being a children's song particularly inappropriate for a funeral, is also distinctly Catholic ("morning bells"), and taunts those left out of the service (either the Protestant Martin or the Jewish Jacob). But in Mahler's movement, the forest creatures, marked as Jewish through their klezmer music, invert that taunt, carrying the oppressive (and Catholic) "hunter" to his grave with a mocking minor-mode form of the nursery tune. At least part of all four movements are based directly in song; the second movement, a peasant dance subtitled "With full sails," is based on a youthful folk-like song of Mahler's, while the first movement, with its emergence into "Spring and No End," is based on the second of his "Songs of a Wayfarer."
Schubert's "Unfinished" Symphony was written (and abandoned) shortly before his first bout with syphilis in early 1823, the decease that would eventually claim him at the age of 31. Interpretations have been many for the beguiling poetry of these two movements, set in the highly unusual symphonic keys of B minor and E major, respectively, and alternating between angst and radiant serenity. The debate still rages regarding the nature of Schubert's sexual activities, which were deemed excessive by some of those who knew him, and were probably homosexual, although many refuse to accept the copious evidence regarding the latter. But either side might legitimately claim that the indulgences of the "Unfinished," both happy and gloomy, derive from Schubert's sensual nature. For decades, this work went unheard, held for ransom by its owners who tried to use it as a bargaining chip to get their own music performed; it was finally premiered in 1865, and quickly took its place among his most beloved works.
Eric Stokes's Distant Drummer (premiered 1981) takes as its inspiration Thoreau's famous admonishment: "Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away." Stokes, a Minnesota-based composer who died in 1999, consistently found ways to be innovative and provocative without losing his ability to communicate vividly to his audience, who have always seemed willing to join him in what he termed "the ineluctable dance of sound-spelled Life." The Santa Monica Symphony performed his haunting "Ghost Bus to Eldorado" in 1997.
--- Raymond Knapp
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