Mahler’s First Symphony was written between 1884–88. It is noteworthy that not long before this Mahler had written his vocal cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen. It is autobiographical – Mahler was, as we know, a “travelling” musician in whom people immediately recognised not an apprentice but a master. His First Symphony is equally autobiographical, and in it Mahler broke the themes of the vocal cycle. It would be pointless to think that the name Titan, which Mahler gave it at the first performance, reflects its programme content. The composer used the title of his favourite book by Jean Paul purely to share with the romantic writer his enthusiastic pantheism, his love of nature and, at the same time, his inherent and scathing irony and his torturous search for his own “self”.
The first movement, grandiose in terms of scale, “draws the dawn awakening of nature, emerging from silence, from the early morning frozen sounds: birdsong, the fanfares of a hunting horn, calls that blend together in an indistinct, growing rumble…” (Inna Barsova). The second movement – a Scherzo – is a full-blooded life-affirming version of a folk dance, muscular and rough in the outer sections and gracious in the middle. The third movement – Funeral March in the Manner of Callot – is a grotesque musical interpretation of the famous engraving Die Beerdigung des Jägers by the artist Moritz von Schwindt. The funeral procession of animals burying the hunter is a token of the hypocrisy lies and poorly disguised sanctimony that reign in life.
The finale forms the dramatic heart of the symphony. The titanic struggle concludes with a magnificent confirmation of the theme of nature from the first movement. This is both a symbol of the integrity of mankind, renewed and revived together with nature, and a brilliant detail of the composition that relates the architectural perfection of the composition of the symphony as a whole.
Iosif Raiskin
