Mahler Foundation

The third movement, a scherzo, with alternating sections in 2/4 and 6/8 metre, quotes extensively from Mahler’s early song “Ablösung im Sommer” (Relief in Summer). In the trio section, a complete mood changes from playful to contemplative occurs with an offstage posthorn Bb (or flugelhorn Bb) solo. The reprise of the scherzo music is unusual, as it is interrupted several times by the posthorn melody. See The Post restaurant.


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A listening guide of Symphony No. 3 - 3rd Movement with Lew Smoley.

The cheerful fifth movement, “Es sungen drei Engel”, is one of Mahler’s Des Knaben Wunderhorn songs, (whose text itself is loosely based on a 17th-century church hymn, which Paul Hindemithlater used in its original form in his Symphony “Mathis der Maler”) about the redemption of sins and comfort in belief. Here, a children’s choir imitating bells and a female chorus join the alto solo.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 3 - 5th Movement with Lew Smoley.

Leisurely moving, without haste. Scherzo and Trio. The second movement is a scherzo that features a part for a solo violin whose strings are tuned a tone higher than usual. The violin depicts Freund Hein, (lit. “Friend Henry”) a figure from medieval German art; Hain (or Hein) is a traditional German personification of death, invented by poet Matthias Claudius.

Freund Hein is a skeleton who plays the fiddle and leads a Totentanz or “danse macabre”. According to Mahler’s widow, Alma, Mahler took inspiration for this movement from an 1872 painting by the Swiss artist Arnold Bocklin (1827-1901) entitled Self-Portrait with Death playing the Fiddle (violin solo). The scherzo represents his dance and the unusual tuning of the violin adds tension to its sound and contributes to the music’s ghostly character.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 4 - 2nd Movement with Lew Smoley.

Moderately, not rushed, Sonata form. Flutes and sleigh bells open the unusually restrained first movement (and used later with a melodic theme known commonly as the ‘bell theme’, which helps define sections throughout the movement) often described as possessing classical poise. As would be expected for the first movement of a symphony, the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 4 is in sonata form.

A listening guide of Symphony No. 4 - 1st Movement with Lew Smoley.

With a gently flowing movement. The tragic, or at least pessimistic, the conception of this symphonic Scherzo seems worlds away from the humour of the Wunderhorn song in which St. Anthony preaches to the fishes, who understand nothing of his sermon and look on with a glazed expression. Yet they are sister works that use identical musical material.

Two timpani strokes, dominant-tonic, unleash the Scherzo’s “senseless agitation”, an uninterrupted and intentionally monotonous double ostinato in the treble and bass. The bulk of the material in the Trio in C major is likewise borrowed from the song. At the end of the movement, the “cry of despair” alluded to in the symphony’s programme is heard in a vast B flat minor climactic tutti.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 2 - 3rd Movement with Lew Smoley.

The second movement is a series of dances, and opens with a rustic Ländler, which becomes distorted to the point that it no longer resembles a dance. It contains shades Mahler’s Symphony no.4, Movement 2: In gemächlicher Bewegung, in the distortion of a traditional dance into a bitter and sarcastic one.

Traditional chord sequences are altered into near-unrecognizable variations, turning the rustic yet gradually decaying C major introductory Ländler into a vicious whole-tone waltz, saturated with chromaticism and frenetic rhythms. Strewn amidst these sarcastic dances is a slower and calmer Ländler which reintroduces the “sighing” motif from the first movement. The movement ends with a cheeky pianissimo nod from the piccolo and contrabassoon. 

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 9 - 2nd Movement with Lew Smoley.

Symphony No. 10 was written in the summer of 1910, and was his final composition. At the time of Mahler’s death the composition was substantially complete in the form of a continuous draft; but not being fully elaborated at every point, and mostly not orchestrated, it was not performable in that state. Only the first movement is regarded as reasonably complete and performable as Mahler intended. Perhaps as a reflection of the inner turmoil he was dealing with at the time (Mahler knew he had a failing heart and his wife had committed infidelity), the 10th Symphony is arguably his most musically dissonant work.

Mahler started his work on his Tenth Symphony 07-1910 in Toblach, and ended his efforts in September the same year. He never managed to complete the orchestral draft before his premature death at the age of fifty from a streptococcal infection of the blood.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 10 - Intro with Lew Smoley

The third movement, in the form of a rondo, displays the final maturation of Mahler’s contrapuntal skills. It opens with a dissonant theme in the trumpet which is treated in the form of a double fugue. The following five-note motif introduced by strings in unison recalls of Symphony No. 5, Movement 2: Stürmisch bewegt, mit größter Vehemenz.

There are two similar fugues in the movement, of which the final is unique in that it presents the subject in subsequent fifths instead of the fifth and the octave as most fugues do. The violent contrapuntal music is leads twice by a sarcastic parody of Viennese popular music at the time, such as that of Franz Franz Lehar (1870-1948).

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 9 - 3rd Movement with Lew Smoley.

The very opening of the symphony (which is in the key of F-sharp major) maintains a connection with the final movement of the Ninth. A long, bleak Andante melody for violas alone leads to the exposition of the slow first theme in the strings. This theme is developed and another, lighter theme is exposed. The music dies away and the violas repeat the opening theme.

With slight variation, the opening adagio is repeated and developed in a growing intensity. This also soon dies away, leaving several variations upon the more light second theme. This works up to the climax: an extremely powerful variation upon the first theme. This intense restatement culminates in a terrifying dissonance. The music after this massive outburst becomes very quiet and does not suggest any resolution to the darkness of the climax.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 10 - 1st Movement with Lew Smoley

The final movement, marked zurückhaltend (“very slowly and held back”; literally, “reservedly”), opens with only strings. Commentators have noted the similarity of the opening theme in particular to the hymn tune Eventide (Abide With Me is a well-known Christian hymn composed by Henry Francis Lyte in 1847).

But most importantly it incorporates a direct quote from the Rondo-Burleske’s middle section. Here it becomes an elegy. After several impassioned climaxes the movement becomes increasingly fragmented and the coda ends quietly.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 9 - 4th Movement with Lew Smoley