The Second Symphony, the “Resurrection,” shows this pattern extremely clearly. Its first movement, marked “Todtenfeier” (funeral rites), is unusually long and poses Mahler’s preoccupying question. The force of the challenge is so great as to seem unanswerable—and Mahler famously had difficulties in going on. For over a year,55 he was unsure whether this movement could be incorporated into a symphony or whether it would simply stand alone as a “tone poem.” Even after he had completed the three middle movements, he faced the problem of finding an adequate counterpoint to the opening “Todtenfeier.”56 Hearing at a memorial service a setting of a poem by Klopstock, his “Resurrection Ode,” Mahler discovered his ending.57 The final movement opens stormily, recapitulating some of the anguish of the first, before the extraordinary moment when the chorus barely breathes—the marking is triple piano—the word Auferstehen (Resurrection).
Characteristically, Mahler did not simply set the words written by someone else but added his own text. The added words are commands to believe, to believe that one will not be entirely lost, that one’s life has not been in vain, and the more agitated setting of these words makes it evident that Mahler has not entirely settled his own doubts. If this ending brings affirmation, it is not because of the reminder that we may hope for a literal resurrection, one assured by the truth of Christianity—that would be too simple for the struggle that continues to pervade both words and music, too easy for the recollection of the pain, still present as it is being transcended. In his accessible introduction to Mahler, the great musicologist Deryck Cooke raises the important question of whether a symphonic answer to the questions that haunted Mahler can speak to those who do not share the religious beliefs apparently presupposed:
But for the many of us who cannot answer this challenge by invoking the Christian belief in immortality, what significance can there be in the culmination of the symphony—the part which presents the ostensible “message” of the work?
Strangely enough, it does have great significance for us, since a hearing of it comes as a tremendous emotional experience. Yet the reason is clear. Music cannot express intellectual concepts, but only feelings; and what we all respond to is the feelings of faith and inspiration in the music, whether or not we are convinced by the concepts in the text which were the objects of these feelings. Mahler’s affirmations are ultimately of faith and inspiration in life itself, whether they arose, as in the Second, Third and Eighth Symphonies from the religious beliefs he held at the time, or as in The Song of the Earth and the unfinished Tenth, from his realistic coming to terms with mortality when his religious beliefs failed him.58
There are many insights here. Cooke is entirely correct, I believe, in recognizing the impact of this finale on the many listeners who have no truck with any literal afterlife, and the last sentence quoted recognizes the multifaceted character of Mahler’s attempts at affirmation. Cooke errs, however, in attributing to Mahler a belief in the literal truth of the words he set—for any such simple faith is at odds with the composer’s own struggles, at odds with the depths plumbed in the earlier movements of the symphony (and recapitulated at moments in the finale), and hardly concordant with mundane facts about his life.
If Mahler believed in the literal truth of the Christian resurrection, the question raised by the Todtenfeier would have an easy answer—the memorial service for Bülow would hardly have been needed for its revelation. At that stage, he was not even nominally a Christian. Born into a Jewish family,59 he found his career handicapped by his ethnic origins.60 Although he occasionally claimed that he had converted to Christianity in 1891—three years before writing the Finale of the Second Symphony—he was baptized only in 1897. His reasons seem to have been purely pragmatic: his sights were set on the directorship of the Imperial and Royal Opera in Vienna, and there was no hope for a conductor, however talented, identified as a Jew.61 Indeed, Mahler confessed to his friend Ludwig Karpath that he had converted out of “self-preservation” and that doing so “cost [him] a great deal.”62
The biographical details are concordant with the more generalized spirituality, severed from any tie to Christian doctrine, the more abstract affirmation of life that can be heard in the Finale of the Second Symphony. Consolation comes in the slow crescendo of the chorus, from the first bare breath to its final declaration. This upward movement itself, not the doctrine of the words, reveals how the harshness and bitterness of the earlier music can provide elements out of which human voices can themselves rise to affirmation. Out of the arresting dissonances but organically connected with them comes a stately crescendo that makes its own resolve. Mahler borrowed from Klopstock not an eloquent expression of true and comforting doctrine but the possibility of a gesture. The gesture is not grounded in any prior and independent source of consolation—the religious truth that we shall all live again—but rather produces consolation through the fact that it can be made.
In similar fashion, Kindertotenlieder ends with a superficially religious promise. As with the Second Symphony, this poignant song cycle can be heard as constituted by two framing movements—the opening desolation of the terrible loss, the final fury of the storm and the singer’s protest, resolving into the redemptive coda—separated by three movements that recall episodes from the children’s lives.63 Many hearers (and critics) would take the pattern to be omnipresent in Mahler’s major works: a question posed or challenge made, episodic exploration, attempted resolution. To insist on that form, however, would be to lose sight of other important connections—Kindertotenlieder shows alternating patterns of darkness and light, as the bleak first movement gives way to illusory hopes, hopes dashed in the third song and revived in the fourth, while the fifth and last moves from despair to the closing consolation.64 The children have been rescued by God and rest, as if in their mother’s house (Mahler originally substituted Schoss [womb] for Haus [house], but it would have destroyed the rhyme scheme).65 In the fifth and final song, the storm dies away, and the sun (hailed—bitterly—at the end of the opening movement) shines through as the music resolves into a major key and a radiant and serene coda.
Only a naive hearing could take this for literal truth. The vision of the children alive in heaven would be of a piece with the wistful yearnings that they are enduring parts of the cosmos, stars (Song 2), or the illusory hopes that there will be a reunion with them on the mountaintops (Song 4). The first and third songs show why such longings arise and how unrealistic they are. The sun will continue to rise, but the disturbing conclusion of the vocal line in Song 1, an upward interval of a tone and two repeated accented notes, makes plain how hard it is to affirm the “joyous light of the world” (Freudenlicht der Welt).66 The long arching line of Song 3 (marked “Schwer. Dumpf.”—heavy, dull, muffed, hollow), repeated twice, brings out the range and depth of grief caused by knowledge that the dead little girl is irreplaceable. Yet from the tempestuous anguish of Song 5 emerges the possibility for the singer of living on, the possibility of accepting death. The fury abates, and the Christian allusions serve only as overtones for conjuring a resigned peace, an attitude more abstract than the faith that they are literally living somewhere else—among the stars, on the mountaintops, in a Christian heaven. As with the Second Symphony, the act of affirmation endorses itself.
FIGURE 3.2. Kindertotenlieder 1: close.
Even a work that appears initially to be different in character reveals Mahler’s preoccupation with the struggle for affirmation. From the opening sleigh bells to the evocation of a child’s vision of heaven in the last movement, where the whimsical assignment of the saints to household duties is matched by the buoyancy of the lines and the sunny orchestration, the Fourth Symphony seems free of any serious engagement with the prospect of death. In the context of its predecessors and successors, I hear it differently, as taking an ironic stance to the earnest exhortation to faith that closes the Second. It is as if Mahler were distancing himself from his previous gestures of affirmation and from the evocations of shado
ws to which those gestures have responded, questioning whether the problem of finding value in admittedly transitory things might be mocked for its over-seriousness. The symphony can be heard as yet another way of dealing with the preoccupation so evident in earlier as well as later works. Instead of struggling toward affirmation, one can propose instead that such affirmation is entirely unnecessary and that the prior efforts have been unsatisfactory, even naive—faux naïveté exposes the credulity of judging that the “philosophical problem” must be taken seriously.67
This mode of wrestling with the preoccupation—through an attempt at ironic rejection of it—is, like the more direct attempts of its predecessors and successors, unstable. Mahler discovered that any way of fighting his way through to affirmation could only be temporary. Each of the major works brings a moment of resolution,68 but, in its wake, there are new joys to be celebrated, new shadows cast upon them, and the task begins again, prompted by a different stage of life and a different fund of experiences. Like Mann’s central figure, Mahler’s life is centered on the production of a sequence of masterpieces whose composition will vindicate the value of his existence and whose central theme is the problem of vindicating value. The vindications of the past never seem adequate to the shadows that fall on the present, and even the effort to solve the problem once and for all by denying the need for vindication cannot succeed. The radiant parody of the invocation of heaven, an invocation as otiose as it is earnest, does not capture an ironic mood Mahler can maintain. After the Fourth comes another symphony, one whose first movement is marked, appropriately, “Funeral March.”
5
According to a story, one good enough to be apocryphal, a Hollywood producer who attended Visconti’s film was so impressed with the score that he wanted the name of “this Mahler guy’s” agent. The producer’s admiration was probably caused by the skilful repetition of one of Mahler’s most beautiful—and now most familiar—themes,69 the melody sounded by the first violins in the opening measures of the Adagietto, the fourth movement of the Fifth Symphony. This opening material is heard as the film begins, and, after several scenes in which no music accompanies the events displayed, parts of the Adagietto, all featuring the opening theme, often parts that intensify its emotional force, are played again and again. Because the Adagietto is heard in so many of the later scenes, it might appear that Visconti is overusing it, but this, in my judgment, is one of the film’s major successes. The melody, with its sequence of initially ascending steps—two whole-tone steps, a repeated note on the first beat of the measure, resolving to the tonic a half-step higher, followed by an upward fourth, a descending half-tone, again a repeated note, and an incomplete resolution on the super-tonic—conveys a sense of longing unfulfilled, making it brilliantly suited to the action, outer and inner, of the film and of the original novella.70
According to a famous (notorious?) piece of testimony offered by Mahler’s friend, the conductor Willem Mengelberg, the Adagietto was a love letter sent by the composer during his whirlwind courtship of Alma. Mengelberg reports that “instead of a letter, he sent her this manuscript without further explanation. She understood and wrote back that he should come!!! Both have told me this!”71 Yet if it was a love letter, it was a curious one, not simply in virtue of its being a “song without words” but also because of its musical resonances.
FIGURE 3.3. Mahler, Adagietto, opening theme.
FIGURE 3.4A. Opening of Kindertotenlieder 2.
FIGURE 3.4B. Opening of Rückertlied.
As Mahler scholars have noted, there are close affinities between the Adagietto and the themes of two other Mahler works: the second of the Kindertotenlieder and the most well known of the Rückert-Lieder (“Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen,” “I have almost lost touch with the world”).72 Critical judgment often results from careful analysis of the score, attention to details of melodic line, shifts in key, harmonic structure, and the like. Before taking up the substantive issue of the affinities between the Adagietto and other works, it will be useful to recognize a different mode of considering (and writing about) music.
Analytic consideration of, and commentary on, music (or poetry, or painting) proceeds from a theoretical perspective to identify theoretically important elements in the structure of the work considered. Good theory supplies tools for understanding the forms present in different works, for appreciating connections among works, and for understanding the historical development of a genre. By contrast, synthetic consideration of music (or other arts) can be undertaken prior to the adoption of any theory, through the juxtaposition of different works that are taken to be importantly connected. The synthesis may be internal to an art form, or a genre, or even to an individual composer, in relating works of the same type—pieces of music, or, more narrowly, songs, or, even more narrowly, Mahler songs. Alternatively, the synthesis may be external in some respects: perhaps by relating a Mahler song to a Schubert Lied or to a Wagner opera, perhaps by relating a symphonic movement to a song, or, in the more radical case, by connecting music to poetry, to visual art, or to philosophy. The broader conception of philosophy defended above (section 2 of chapter 1), a conception this book attempts to exemplify, builds synthetic complexes that are radically external, suggesting affinities among works of art, music, and literature and philosophical themes, even juxtaposing quite diverse art forms to ideas from different philosophers.
To say that synthetic consideration or commentary is prior to theory is to suppose that some judgment about the connection can be made without delving into the structures recognized from any previously adopted theoretical perspective. Those judgments are reached by using our eyes and ears, by reflecting on the thoughts and feelings that arise in us. In principle, they are corrigible by theory, for, if we had reason to count a theoretical perspective as a valuable one, its delineation of a commonality where we had perceived none, or of marked differences where we had judged affinity, would rightly lead us to question our judgment—perhaps our seeing or hearing was too casual, our feeling too shallow, our thought confused or jejune. Ultimately, however, there is no basis for evaluating theory apart from the reactions underlying synthetic consideration and commentary: theoretical perspectives are assessed by their power to illuminate and deepen the synthetic connections reflectively endorsed, so that some significant fraction of them are vindicated and made comprehensible.73 Synthetic commentary on music (or poetry, or painting) consists in proposing connections for reflection: it operates in the manner attributed to Nancy Cartwright (see section 2 of chapter 1)—“Consider this!”
Back now to the particular example of current concern: the affinities of the Adagietto to other musical works. Analysis of the scores of the Rückert song, of the second of the Kindertotenlieder, and of the Adagietto itself will disclose various shared features—perhaps most evidently the slow ascending sequences that lead to partially resolved suspensions—but prior to any such analysis, and to my mind more immediate and powerful, is the affinity felt by any attentive listener and, particularly, by anyone who has performed any of these works.74 There is a common tenderness, a wistfulness, and, especially in the Kindertotenlieder song and the Adagietto, a sense of yearning. “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” differs, however, from the other two, in that the movement of longing reaches a conclusive resolution: the singer is at peace, and the peace is ultimately expressed in the final cadence, in serene renunciation of the world and the expression of tranquil love in song. “Nun seh’ ich wohl,” however, yearns for reunion with the lost children; its ascending phrases seem to reach for them, with gentle hope (the opening phrase, especially as repeated at “Ihr wolltet mir”) or more desperately and tempestuously (“was dir nur Augen”). Instead of a convincing resolution, the longing ends in the singer’s strange incomplete cadence, marked subito piano, on “Sterne” (descending, e-c-g), after which the orchestra repeats the first notes of the opening (“yearning”) phrase, to a suspension only partially resolved. Desire falls short of its obje
ctive, reaching at most the illusion of fulfillment, and if the listener needed further confirmation of its failure, it is only necessary to hear the first measures of the movement—Schwer, dumpf—that follows.
The Adagietto shares this lack of resolution—indeed, there is not even the illusion of fulfillment. Mahler deploys the same musical material, again and again, intensifying it but never really developing it. In its entirety, the original from which Visconti drew, the fourth movement of the Fifth Symphony, is cyclic rather than directional.75 (Für Elise, which Visconti’s film has Tadzio sound out in Aschenbach’s presence, might be heard as similarly cyclic, a simpler and more immature version of the Adagietto, the adolescent’s counterpart to Aschenbach’s dominant music). The opening theme, repeated so many times in the film score, yearns for a close it never attains, and in its intensified recapitulation it becomes the embodiment of desire (Sehnsucht) and thus a fitting accompaniment for Aschenbach’s unsatisfied longings and for his directionless wanderings around Venice in pursuit of Tadzio.
Another musical connection deserves note. All three pieces—the Rückert-Lied, the second of the Kindertotenlieder, and the Adagietto—are offspring of Tristan. The longings they embody are there already in the opening measures of the Prelude and in the impassioned phrases that convey the lovers’ demand for a union of impossible completeness. Like the Rückert song, albeit on a vastly protracted scale, Tristan has a direction, a movement toward fulfillment and resolution, not in the peace of retreat from the world but in the close of the Liebestod—it would be an exaggeration to regard the music-drama as a five-hour search for orgasm eventually attained in death, but there is something to the idea.76 Mahler was not shy about acknowledging his debt to Wagner: the Adagietto quotes the “gaze” motif from Tristan.77 If the score was a “love letter to Alma,” evocations of Tristan—like allusions to renunciation of the world—seem to veer in dangerous directions: to offer a love that can be satisfied only in death may not be the best way to woo. Tristan, however, eventually achieves its end, pressing toward a climax both musical and sexual, in the closing Liebestod. The Adagietto, an indefinitely orbiting counterpart to the music of Wagner’s opera, reaches no such climax.
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