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The Second
Symphony was written in
1894, when Mahler was
orchestra leader at the City
Theatre in Hamburg. The
conception of parts of the
work however dates back to
the Leipzig period of the
First Symphony, including
the first movement
originally entitled
“Requiem”, which Mahler had
performed on the piano at
the very start of his time
in Hamburg for his revered
musical colleague Hans von
Bülow. Bülow, conductor of
the Berlin Philharmonic and
head of the Hamburg
subscription concerts, was
convinced very early of the
genius of the young Mahler
and had presented him during
a Hamburg charity
performance with a laurel
wreath inscribed “To the
Pygmalion of the Hamburg
Opera". He admired to an
extraordinary degree Mahler
the conductor, whose
performances achieved a
fascinating intermingling of
stage scene and music
through the power of his
baton, but rejected Mahler
the composer, Mahler
described in a letter the
ambivalent relationship of
the two musicians “Bülow is
in residence here and I
visit each of his concerts;
it is strange how in his
abstruse manner he ‘marks me
out’ in the body of the
public in conspicuous
fashion and at every
opportunity, At every
attractive point he plays
the coquette with me (I sit
in the front row). - From
the rostrum he hands me down
the notes to unknown works
so that I can read themas
well. - When he catches
sight of me, he
ostentatiously bows deeply
to me! Sometimes he talks to
me from his podium etc. -
Nevertheless, I have no luck
in my efforts to have one of
my works performed by him. -
When I played him my
requiem, he fell into
nervous horror and announced
that compared to my work
Tristan is a symphony by
Haydn and generally behaved
like a madman.”
After this negative
experience of December 1891,
work on the Second Symphony
flagged. Not only the daily
duties of a theatre
orchestra leader kept Mahler
from his work, but also an
inner block. “You have not
suffered anything like
this”, he wrote to Richard
Strauss a week after the
incident, “and cannot
understand that one begins
to lose faith in the work.”
Four movements were almost
fully completed, but the
spark to trigger the fifth
was missing. Just over three
years passed without Mahler
getting any further with his
Second Symphony, and in
March 1894 the tragic news
of Bülow’s death appeared in
the papers. This changed the
situation. Mahler wrote “I
had for a long time been
toying with the thought of
bringing in a choir for the
last movement, and had only
hesitated because I was
worried this would be seen
as an imitation of
Beethoven! Bülow died at
this time, and I attended
his funeral. - The mood in
which I sat there and
remembered the deceased was
entirely in the mood of the
work I had in mind. And then
the choir intoned from the
organ the ode ‘Arise’ by
Klopstock. I was as if
struck by lightning, and my
soul saw everything clearly
and distinctly.” The ode
“Arise, yes you will arise”
by Friedrich Gottlieb
Klopstock became the textual
basis for the final
movement. Three months
later, Mahler wrote with
ironic humour “I announce
here with the happy arrival
of a healthy, strong final
movement. - Father and child
are doing well under the
circumstances, although the
latter is not completely out
of danger.”
Six years after the Second
Symphony was first performed
in Berlin, Mahler wrote a
kind of programme to it
which dresses the emotional
content of the individual
movements in words. Written
at the wish of the King of
Saxony - a “superficial and
clumsy person” in the words
of Mahler to his wife Alma -
this programme only gave
“external details -
superficial elements of the
work” and was not intended
for publication. However,
Mahler gave a detailed
statement of his position
regarding the content of the
Second Symphony in a letter
to his most important critic
Max Marschalk in 1896: “I
have named the first
movement ‘Requiem’ and if
you want to know it is the
hero of my D major symphony
who is buried there and
whose life I mirror from a
higher level. The great
question is at the same
time: Why did you live? Why
did you suffer? Is this all
just a huge terrible joke? -
We must answer this question
in some way or other if we
are to continue to live -
even if we are to continue
to die! The man who has
heard this question once in
his life has to give an
answer to it, and I give
this in the last movement.
The second and third
movements are intended as an
interlude; the second
movement, a memory! A moment
of sunshine, pure and
unobscured, from the life of
this hero.
You will certainly have had
the experience of attending
the funeral of someone you
loved, and on the way home
you suddenly see the image
of a happy moment long past
which suddenly shines like
the sun into your soul and
nothing clouds it - you can
almost forget what has just
happened! That is the second
movement! - When you wake up
from this melancholy dream
and must return to the
hurlyburly of life, it can
easily happen that you find
that this ever-moving,
neverresting,
incomprehensible activity of
life is ghastly for you,
like the flowing of dancing
figures in a brightly lit
ballroom into which you look
from deepest night and from
such a distance that you
cannot hear the music! You
may suddenly and with a cry
of horror exclaim that life
has no meaning - that is the
third movement! What follows
is clear to you!”
In the Second Symphony, as
he had already done in the
First, Mahler developed
symphonic events from a
previously composed song for
an orchestra. In this third
movement he paraphrases the
song “The Fisherman’s Sermon
of Antonio of Padua”, which
uses masterful poetic and
musical humour to illustrate
the futility of human
desires. It originates from
the collection “The Boy’s
Magic Horn”,
which Mahler had set to
music whilst in Hamburg
using the edition of the
same name of “old German
folk songs” published by
Achim von Arnim and Clemens
Brentano. He makes of the
song an anxious and
disturbing, painful and
cheerful picture of human
life as it wheezes away
without meaning. The fourth
movement “Primeval Light”
follows on directly. It also
has its origin in the magic
horn collection and uses an
alto voice to provide a
childishly pious prelude to
the violent events of the
final movement.
In the Second Symphony, the
classic four-movement
symphony which Mahler had
retroactively retained in
the First is finally
discarded and at the same
time other formal
conventions are broken with:
in the concluding final
movement he uses a remote
orchestra. The traditional
face-to-face encounter
between orchestra and
audience was no longer
enough for him. The sound
should not only reach the
listener from the stage of
the concert hall, but should
be omnipresent. This goal
was not to be achieved
merely by use of a remote
orchestra; the manuscript
demanded that the trumpets
of the apocalypse “must come
from the opposite
direction.” Klopstock’s ode,
which Mahler used for the
resurrection choir of the
final movement was for him
merely a linguistic trigger,
textual material which he
could manipulate and extend
as it suited him. Mahler
rewrote the text and added
new poetry to transform the
pious and submissive text by
Klopstock, of which he had
only got to know three of
the five verses at Bülow’s
funeral, into an adjuration
which does not acknowledge
death as the irrevocable end
but instead overcomes it.
“Stop thrashing about,
prepare to live.” Death does
not extinguish life, for
resurrection is certain. All
the trials of this life on
earth have meaning, for
“what you have forged will
carry you to God.”
Mahler repeatedly emphasized
that he had had decisive
philosophic “encounters”
during the years in which
the Second Symphony was
written. He was fascinated
by the works of Friedrich
Nietzsche and also studied
the works of the great
mystics Dionysus Aeropagita,
John Scotus Eriugena and
Master Eckhart. He had
scarcely began to write the
particella for the first
movement of the Second
Symphony when he informed
his friend Löhr that he had
now realized “and actually
through a very simple
musical inspiration which I
analyzed most precisely” how
much the activity of reason
the deeds of God in us are.
The soul stands between God
and animal, God is pure
being, the Primeval One.
Mahler’s friends called him
a “God-seeker” from that
time on, and it is true that
the Second Symphony is one
of Mahler’s greatest
confessional works and to an
even greater degree
philosophical music than
anything else from his pen.
The stylistic boundaries are
extremely wide. But the
popular, genre, religious,
archaic and programmatic
elements are fused in a
unified work form which is
far from the dramatic. In
the Second Symphony the
effects such as the initial
surge upwards in the finale,
the open crescendi, the slow
waltzes, the dramatic
declamation and the roll of
drums are all open. It can
clearly be seen how tension
and expectation are created
and also that the composer
does not renounce any
effects; the size and extent
of the orchestra is only
exceeded by the Eighth
Symphony, the “Symphony of a
Thousand”. But when the
overpowering effect
gradually recedes, the
various musical pictures
which are scarcely to be
found in such range in any
other work of the period
appear individually even
more clearly. Mahler himself
said of his Second Symphony:
“That the body of learning
of humanity is extended by
it, is for me
unquestionable. It all
sounds as if it comes from
another world. And - I think
no-one can escape the
effects. - One is knocked to
the ground with clubs and
then carried to the highest
heights on angels wings.”
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