"ORCHESTRAL EXPLOSION"-The Orchestral Works of Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss 1889-1899.
Increasingly passionate emphasis upon the expressive values of sound in order to convey the consciousness of spiritual conditions inevitably brought around a tonal break-through to the unconscious; and it is against this background that the subsequent development of German expressionism should be considered.
The tone-poems of Richard Strauss from Don Juan to Ein Heldenleben and first three symphonies of Gustav Mahler, all written between 1889 and 1899 represent the climax and the end point of avant-garde (or progressive) orchestral writing in the nineteenth century. Throughout the century there had been a string of avant-garde composers, Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt, each of whom had progressively enlarged the orchestral resources required and the scale of formal structures used, had increased the degree of chromaticism and dissonance and developed the use of programs as the basis for symphonic writing. The extremes to which these features were pushed in the works of Strauss and Mahler caused a violent reaction in the early twentieth century. They had gone too far. However, Mahler and Strauss had started an intensely personal, subjective and auto-biographical approach to writing that was to flourish in the form of expressionism during the twentieth century.
The concept of a programmatic symphony had been born with Beethoven’s Eroica, however it was Hector Berlioz who pioneered the concept of using a symphony to tell an explicit story in works such as Symphony Fantastique and The Damnation of Faust. Franz Liszt had continued the idea with his series of symphonic-poems, written between 1848 and 1882, concentrating on painting atmospheres and characters rather than progressive narratives. Both Mahler and Strauss’s early compositions (Symphony No. 1 and Don Juan respectively) are clearly an extension of this trend. Don Juan (1889) was intended to be a character portrait and philosophical examination of the hero, a fantasia, free in form and development- the quotations from the poem (referring to three extracts from Lenau’s poem that headed the original score) are enough to show the mood and the purpose of the composer.In the exuberant and grandiose opening theme he recreates Don Juan’s cavalier character, contrasting this with two love scenes and a cold and comfortless ending in order two convey three aspects of the Don Juan legend.
Similarly Mahler’s Symphony No. 1, premiered in 1889 as a Symphonic Poem in Two Parts, uses the music to describe a series of characters of typically Mahlerian seriousness, for instance the first movement describes Nature’s awakening from the long sleep of winter, while the third is The Hunter’s Funeral Procession. The program in this case, however, can be best seen as a series of attempts to put into a few words the world of ideas, emotions and association that lay behind the musical choices Mahler made as he composed. Both pieces were criticised (despite public enthusiasm for the Strauss and abhorrence of the Mahler) for being too explicitly programatic and visual, to the extent that one could hear an orchestral imitation of a flock of sheep bleating in Don Juan and cuckoo calls and marching bands in Symphony No. 1. In reaction to this Strauss commented, to me the poetic program is no more than the basis of form and the origin of the purely musical development of my feelings- not, as you believe, a musical description of certain events of life. From this one can reply to the anti-programatic comment that the truly new stands perfect, free and upright by itself, and steps boldly out into the world; it needs no preliminary explanation as a crutch by expressing Mahler’s view, that all music since Beethoven had some kind of an inner program, but that music had no worth if the listener needed to know what the program was. Strauss’s comment also reflects the changes that were occurring in his style, the musical development of his feelings.
During the ten year period between Don Juan (1889) and Ein Heldenleben (1899) of Strauss and Symphony No. 1 (1889) and Symphony No. 3 (1898, premiered 1902) of Mahler, a distinct trend can be noticed in the nature of the program used, it gradually freed itself of exterior or pictorial associations and became increasingly interiorised- autobiographical.This trend can be seen as a link between late romanticism and the expressionism of the early twentieth century. The idea that the artist should be the subject of a composition can be seen throughout the progressive strand of the romantic period, however this is taken to new heights in the two later works, which also focus on the composer’s philosophical view of himself. Ein Heldenleben ("A Hero’s Life", 1899) was intentionally and explicitly an autobiography by Strauss. At the time this was seen as the height of grotesqueness, however a closer examination of the work reveals that Strauss was not as self-important as it may appear. ‘I’m the only composer nowadays’ he wrote in 1916, ‘with some real humour and a sense of fun and a marked gift for parody’. Indeed the exaggerations of character used in describing himself and his critics as they engage in a battle finally won by soaring quotations from all of Strauss’s main works, can only be seen as self-parody despite of the brilliance and grandeur of the compositional and orchestral fireworks employed.
Contrary to this Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 is a very serious examination of Mahler’s personal world. The program progresses from captive life- struggling for release from the clutches of lifeless, rigid Nature in the first movement, through what the flowers, the beasts, man (night), the angels (morning bells) and finally love tell him, thus trying to recreate his universe in all its levels through the symphony. The most quoted comment of Mahler, the symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything also reflects this increasing desire to record the composer’s subjective and highly personal perception rather than the older and more objective ideals such as beauty, excitement and abstract emotion.
A feature of the music of both Strauss and Mahler is the virtuosity of their orchestration, requiring incredible resources both in terms of the size of orchestra (often quadruple woodwinds, up to eight horns and six trumpets and a battery of percussion) and the level of virtuosity required from the instrumentalists. Good God in what way have we sinned that you should have sent us this scourge commented the first horn player for the premiere of Don Juan, a remark justified by the difficulty of the part. It is very important to note, however, that both composers, blessed with the conductor’s intimate knowledge of the orchestra and its instruments (both worked primarily as conductors during this period) wrote perfectly idiomatically for each instrument. I advise all my young colleagues to go into the tuning room of the orchestra and to study what the musicians are playing there, when they feel unobserved. In this way one can learn what the instruments can do in reality wrote Strauss. This shows in another way the divergence from the more traditional approach to abstract instrumental music as expressed by Beethoven, Do you mean that I think of your miserable violin if the spirit speaks to me.
As with the use of programs, the augmentation of the orchestra is an extension of the progressive strand of the Romantic Period, following in the footsteps of Beethoven , Berlioz and Wagner. It seems that these composers felt that the attempt to express the sublime ought to be effected with the grandest possible artistic gesture, that composition was the turbulent struggle for the highest artistic expression. This correlates with Strauss’s view that over the nineteenth century orchestras had been divided into two types, the symphonic orchestras, which continued the classical tradition ie Brahms, Schumann etc and dramatic orchestras, which had their origin in Berlioz and their fulfilment in Wagner. The dramatic orchestras required the extra resources in order to create a balance, where each section of the orchestra could hold its own with any other section or combination of sections of the orchestra (hence a shift away from the classical string-based orchestra) and also to increase the palate of possible colours and associations. Thus the E clarinet was included in the orchestra to enable marching band effects such as those that cross the funeral march in Mahler’s Symphony No. 1 and the cheeky, hysterical squeaks in Strauss’s Till Eulenspeigel. Also in Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 eight horns are required in the first movement to enable their recurring theme to be heard in equal counterpoint to the rest of the orchestra.
Despite the louder excesses that an enlarged orchestra tends to encourage, much of the work of both Strauss and Mahler is in fact often scored with restraint and delicacy. This can be seen in Ein Heldenleben, where the entire second movement and in Symphony No. 3 where significant parts of the first movement are dominated by a solo violin. The louder passages are also handled with skill, spacing the pitches and instrumental groups so that the overall orchestral sound never becomes cluttered. In fact the larger orchestra facilitated a clarity of motivic texture and a delicacy and precision of effect which was simply not possible with a smaller orchestra. Nevertheless, one of the main criticisms of both composers at the time was overstepping artistic moderation. Felix Weingartner expressed his criticism of Strauss’s tone-poems, to write for a thousand trombones and two thousand kettledrums: only a frightful noise will result, rather he wants a more classical simplicity, frank and robust sincerity. Strauss and Mahler represent the end of the Romantic orchestral tradition of progressive enlargement, the twentieth century seeing a reaction to their grandest possible artistic gestures14. Stravinsky, speaking in 1916, as he turned away from orchestral composition, claimed that such orchestral opulence confused the audience as to what was essence and what padding. Thus the full blown orchestras gave way to smaller ensembles and terser expression. By the twentieth century, however, the classical and early romantic ideas on what were proper instrumental groups had been broken down and the way paved for more unusual instrumental groups.
The works of Mahler and Strauss have several compositional features in common, all related to the origin of their orchestral use and their experience as conductors. The influence of the Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt group clearly manifests itself in the use of leitmotifs (or idee fixe of Berlioz), thematic transformations, extreme chromaticism and the experimental use of formal structures. Leitmotif use, taken from Wagner, can be seen clearly in Ein Heldenleben (and indeed all the tone-poems), where each character has a specific theme across all six movements and the interactions between characters are expressed through the interaction of these themes. In the first movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 thematic transformations are seen as the cries of lifeless, rigid Nature, heard in the opening horn theme are transformed into a lively march. The chromaticism used tends to progress from that of Wagner, for instance throughout Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra there is an ambiguity between C major/minor and B minor. Mahler also innovated progressive tonality, where a movement ends in a different key to that which it started in. The innovation of formal structures stemmed from the view, as expressed by Strauss, that in Beethoven’s epigones and especially in Brahms, sonata form had become an empty shell….New ideas must search for new forms. Essentially the form was dictated by the program used. I am a musician first and last, for whom all programs are merely the stimulus to the creation of new forms wrote Strauss. The tendency was towards longer, freer forms based around communicating a sense of the narrative and drama of the program, however vestiges of the old survived, for instance the overall structure of Ein Heldenleben is an immense sonata-form and Mahler’s first three symphonies all contain a waltz as the second movement.
We cannot fall back upon the device of classifying Mahler (or Strauss) as one of the conductor-composers who have drifted into composition through the urge to display their vast memories as experienced conductors. The innovations that Mahler and Strauss employed and that continued to have significance throughout the twentieth century were largely to do with the way in which the above mentioned ideas were combined, along with several other influences to make a unified whole. The increasing influence of the Bach revival can be seen in the extraordinary polyphony of Mahler’s works as they progress. Particularly in the Third Symphony Mahler employs his view that in true polyphony, the themes run quite independently in parallel, each from its own source to its own particular goal, as strongly contrasted to one another as possible. Thus Mahler foreshadows the type of polyphony that was to dominate the twentieth century. The imitation of natural environments by including natural sounds and popular musical styles is another feature of Mahler’s work, the ironic or poetic or dramatic employment of everyday musical materials to recreate the disjointed polyphony of the human environment. This can be seen to continue with realists such as Ives.
It is no accident that Strauss and Mahler continued the Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and Liszt tradition in almost every aspect of their orchestral writing. At the start of the nineteenth century the predominant aesthetic philosopher was Schopenhaur, with his view that the abstract nature of instrumental writing made it the highest art form. While much of the conservative public still held this view by the 1890’s (hence the basis of much of the criticism of Mahler and Strauss), the newer philosophies of Wagner and Nietzsche had started to take root. Nietzsche in particular had a view that mankind was permanently evolving towards higher forms in his works and himself. Both Strauss and Mahler had studied philosophy while at university and became increasingly influenced by the writings of Wagner and Nietzsche between 1889 and 1899 (to the extent that Strauss’s second last tone-poem, Also Sprach Zarathustra, was based on Nietzsche’s book of the same name and the original title of Mahler’s Third Symphony was The Joyful Science after the earlier Nietzsche book of the same name). In keeping with Nietzsche’s view of forward development, both composers viewed themselves as the latest step in the progressive evolution of the orchestra towards greater, all encompassing forms, the supreme expressive medium. It is also interesting to note how the two composers approached the same writings, in the same genre, quite differently. Strauss was slightly tongue-in-cheek in his approach, adding touches such as making The Dance of the Superman in Also Sprach Zarathustra a Viennese waltz, while Mahler, in his Third Symphony tries to recreate the entire world as Nietzsche describes it.
The other dominant intellectual figure of the time, Sigmund Freud (Mahler actually had an interview with Freud several years later), also shows his influence in the trend across the 1890’s for Mahler and Strauss’s works to become more and more a reflection of their own psychology. Hence the trend towards German expressionism. Freud’s theory that the human psychology is best expressed through dream-states and the free association of ideas can be seen in the way the rigid traditional forms were discarded in favour of a free, narrative flow of ideas.
Thus the works of Mahler and Strauss between 1889 and 1899 represent the culmination of orchestral writing in the romantic period. The evolution of the size of orchestra, the length of the work and the subject matter dealt with had progressed too far for subsequent composers. It was in this heightened, exaggerated genre, however, that the subsequent developments of the twentieth century had their origin.
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