Symphony No. 4

Flutes play above sleigh bells. The violins enter with a short upward figure and continue into a tune in G major, while the lower strings play pizzicato beneath them. Mahler marks the melody Recht gemächlich, very leisurely.

At Bad Aussee in the summer of 1899, poor weather and the resort’s music kept Mahler from composing. He began the Fourth near the end of his holiday and worked fast. He finished the symphony at Maiernigg in August 1900.

The cellos play the second theme, in D major. Its long notes follow the short turns and scales of the violins. Mahler marks the melody Breit gesungen (broadly sung).

In 1892 Mahler wrote Das himmlische Leben, a song about heaven’s food and music, in piano and orchestral versions dated February and March. He considered it for the Third Symphony, then made it the finale of the Fourth, so the song was several years older than the movements that come before it.

The opening flute figure returns in the minor, combined with fragments of the violin tune. The horns play the small descending triplets with sudden force. Over a low rumble in the strings a new flute melody rises, with a hint of the song from the finale.

In 1911 Mahler wrote to Georg Göhler: “Each of the three movements is joined thematically with the last one in a most intimate and meaningful way.”

In the development the melody passes to the trumpet in the major. A dissonant chord from the orchestra cuts it off. Trumpets and horns then play military fanfares.

The first theme returns quietly in G major, with its details changed. A jubilant continuation follows, and then the broad cello tune returns.

Fragments of the first theme enter the quiet closing theme. They grow into the coda and its lively conclusion. The violin tune ends the movement.

After the horn opening, the solo violin enters with its strings tuned a whole tone above their usual pitch. Mahler marked it to sound like a fiddle, played forcefully. Muted solo viola and cello play beneath it.

Bruno Walter gave this fiddler a name: “Freund Hein Strikes Up the Dance”. Freund Hein is Death. Walter passed on the title in a letter to Ludwig Schiedermair of 5 December 1901, written at Mahler’s request.

The first trio is in F major. Oboes and clarinets take over the dance, over held horn notes and pizzicato basses. The solo violin rests.

On 11 January 1902, the day before the Vienna performance, Mahler gave the violinist Arnold Rosé a manuscript leaf of this solo. In that draft the solo violin is tuned a half-tone high. The printed score asks for a whole tone.

The first trio stays in F major to the end. Low strings play softly and horns hold pppp-bound stopped notes; Mahler marks morendo as the dynamic falls to pppp before the scherzo returns.

At rehearsal 5 (Tempo I) the scherzo returns in C minor. This time Mahler marks the solo violin leidenschaftlich (passionate). The second violins play col legno, with the wood of the bow, and the first horn is marked sehr hervortretend, very prominent.

Alma Mahler later claimed that Arnold Böcklin’s Self-⁠Portrait with Death Fiddling (1872), in which a skeleton plays into the painter’s ear, inspired this scherzo. She and Mahler had not yet met when he wrote it. He did admire Böcklin.

The woodwinds return to the trio’s dance. The trio is longer than at its first appearance, with lyrical digressions in its major-key phrases, before the music of the solo violin returns.

The trio moves to D major. The clarinets play the melody over harp arpeggios, the violins play with portamento, and a contrabassoon doubles the double basses.

The contrabassoon doubling the double basses in bars 246–⁠51 was not in Mahler’s original scoring. He added it in the proofs. The plate had no room for another staff, so the published score labels one line “Ctrfag. u. Cb. unisono”.

The opening tempo returns over pizzicato cellos and basses. Muted violins and violas play their figures at ppp, horns hold soft chords and piccolos add small ornaments.

Divided cellos play a melody in G major above a pizzicato bass line. The violas hold the harmony, and the violins and winds rest. Mahler marks the cello melody sehr gesangvoll (very songful).

Under the cellos’ melody the double basses play the same slow steps pizzicato, over and over. The Mahler Foundation describes the opening theme as “motionless and meditative with its passacaglia bass”.

The melody rises into the violins. Above it an oboe plays an independent line, marked zart, tender. The basses continue pizzicato beneath.

In 1901 Mahler described this Adagio. St Ursula presides over it with a smile, like the smile on the stone knights and prelates lying in churches with their hands joined. Its character, he wrote, is “solemn, blessed peace; serious, gentle gaiety”.

While he wrote this movement, Mahler sometimes glimpsed his own mother’s face “smiling through her tears”. It was, he recalled, the face of a woman who had been able to solve and forgive all suffering by love.

Bruno Walter proposed “Saint Ursula Laughs As Well” as a possible title for this movement, explaining that the saint’s solemn face carried a smile. He wrote the letter at Mahler’s request in December 1901.

At rehearsal 2 the tempo becomes much slower (Viel langsamer). An oboe plays the second theme in E minor, marked klagend, sehr ausdrucksvoll, with bassoon and horn accompanying. The violins then take over the tune and lead to a climax with brass.

The tempo quickens to Fliessend (flowing) over pizzicato cellos and basses. A page later Mahler marks Etwas drängend. Leidenschaftlich (somewhat pressing, passionately). Flutes, oboes, clarinets and bassoons rise to fortissimo over a rising bass.

Oboes, clarinets, horns and trumpets raise their bells (Schalltrichter auf) for the movement’s first great outburst, over a timpani roll. Etwas zurückhaltend and Wieder langsam then restore the slow tempo at once.

Clarinets and violas play the opening melody again in quicker notes, with pizzicato cellos and double basses underneath. Mahler marks the passage Anmuthig bewegt (graceful motion). It begins very moderately and gets gradually faster.

In summer 1899 Mahler rented a villa at Aussee within earshot of the bandstand; it was cold and wet. Discouraged, he picked up a book, and ideas followed. He drafted the first three movements in about ten days and left the sketches in a desk drawer until the next summer.

The lament returns in G minor, shared by oboe and cor anglais. Their lines overlap above quiet horns. The return is brief at first; the strings then take up the tune and carry it to a larger outburst.

The lament rises to a sustained fortissimo, with the strings at full force and the woodwinds playing with bells raised. Basinger calls this the tragic climax of the variation. The harmony modulates through many keys.

The music is marked Zurückhaltend, molto dim. and morendo. The instruments drop out one by one, and the timpani and strings reach pppp. Then the cellos bring back the opening tune.

The cellos play the opening tune again over pizzicato violas and basses. The metre then changes suddenly to 3/8 and the strings begin an Allegretto. The variations that follow grow faster until Mahler returns to the slow melody.

Mahler’s score says each change of tempo comes “just as suddenly and surprisingly as before” (ebenso plötzlich und überraschend wie vorhin). Three increases in speed follow. The second restores a two-beat pulse.

At Allegro molto the variation reaches full speed, with piccolo and glockenspiel above fast violins. The opening tempo of the variation then returns, ganz plötzlich.

The slow opening tempo returns for two minutes, marked Poco adagio and then Wieder a tempo (Ruhig). Divided strings play zart (tenderly) in long notes held across the bar lines.

At the first read-through of the symphony, on 12 October 1901, Mahler told Natalie Bauer-⁠Lechner that its first three movements held “the cheerfulness of a higher world, strange to us, that has something eerie and dreadful about it for us”.

After the quiet return, the music moves to E major, with running strings, harp and timpani. Horns and trumpets play a broad melody from the finale, a movement before the soprano sings it.

Mahler wrote to the critic Georg Göhler, faulting him for overlooking the symphony’s thematic connections. Each of the first three movements, he said, is joined to the last “in a most intimate and meaningful way”. The coda of this movement announces the principal motif of the finale.

The full brass has stopped. Violins divide into four parts and play high harmonics above soft winds and harp. The final marking is Gänzlich ersterbend — dying away completely.

Mahler conducted the first performance in Munich on 25 November 1901, with the soprano Margarethe Michalek. The audience had expected another titanic symphony and was baffled by the Fourth’s innocence. The performance was roundly booed.

A clarinet opens over horn, harp and muted violas and cellos. The violins and double basses rest. Mahler marked the music Sehr behaglich (very comfortable) and told the conductor to accompany the singer with extreme discretion.

The soprano begins with the pleasures of heaven, where no earthly commotion reaches. At her entry Mahler marked the part Mit kindlich heiterem Ausdruck; durchaus ohne Parodie, asking for a childlike, cheerful voice and ruling out parody. Harp and lightly plucked strings accompany her.

The tempo quickens at Fliessend (flowing) for “We lead an angelic life”. The rhythm livens further at “we dance and leap, we hop and sing”.

The sleigh bells return between verses. The second stanza moves to E minor, and the child describes the food of heaven: John leads out a lamb, Herod waits for it, and Saint Luke slaughters the ox.

The second verse has a new melody. As the text turns to the slaughter of lamb and ox, an oboe imitates a sheep’s bleat and a bass clarinet an ox’s bellow. The sleigh bells have stopped.

Another passage for bells leads to the return of the first-verse melody. In the third stanza, herbs and vegetables grow in heaven’s garden and fruit is free. Deer and hares run into the kitchen, Saint Martha is to be the cook, and the orchestral accompaniment quickens.

Mahler finished the voice-and-piano version of Das himmlische Leben on 10 February 1892 and completed the orchestral version on 12 March. Years later he built the Fourth Symphony around it as the finale.

The last sleigh-bell interruption fades. At rehearsal 12 (Tempo I, Sehr zart und geheimnisvoll bis zum Schluss), flute and cor anglais play a new melody in E major above harp triplets and muted strings, while the soprano rests. The symphony ends in E major.

On 9 November 1905 in Leipzig, Mahler recorded a piano version of this finale on the Welte-⁠Mignon reproducing piano. The Mahler Foundation lists it first among the symphony’s historical recordings.

The soprano takes up the E major tune. The text tells of heavenly music that surpasses any on earth, with eleven thousand virgins dancing and Saint Ursula laughing. The voice sings over steady triplets in the harp.

At “Sanct Ursula selbst dazu lacht” (Saint Ursula herself laughs at it), the music slows and holds a pause before the next phrase. In 1901 Mahler described the saint as presiding over the Adagio with a smile.

The poem names Cecilia and her relations as splendid court musicians, whose angelic voices bring everything to life with joy. Mahler keeps the accompaniment small. Rocking harp notes, soft strings and wind phrases surround the soprano’s final words.

After the soprano finishes, cor anglais and bass clarinet fade over low strings. The harp plays alone between the held notes. Mahler marks it sich Zeit lassen (take time) before the last chord in E major.