Symphony No. 6 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 6 in A minor by Gustav Mahler is a symphony in four movements, composed in 1903 and 1904, with revisions from 1906. It is sometimes nicknamed the Tragic ("Tragische"), though the origin of the name is unclear.[1]
Symphony No. 6
1903–1904: Maiernigg
- 1906 C. F. Kahnt (original edition)
- 1906 C. F. Kahnt (revised edition)
F. Charles Adler, Vienna Symphony, 1952
77–85 minutes
4
27 May 1906
Introduction[edit]
Mahler conducted the work's first performance at the Saalbau concert hall in Essen on 27 May 1906. Mahler composed the symphony at an exceptionally happy time in his life, as he had married Alma Schindler in 1902, and during the course of the work's composition his second daughter was born. This contrasts with the tragic, even nihilistic, ending of No. 6. Both Alban Berg and Anton Webern praised the work when they first heard it. In a 1908 letter to Webern, Berg said in his opinion there was just one "sixth symphony", despite that of Beethoven.[2]
Nickname of Tragische[edit]
The status of the symphony's nickname is problematic.[1] Mahler did not title the symphony when he composed it, or at its first performance or first publication. When he allowed Richard Specht to analyse the work and Alexander von Zemlinsky to arrange the symphony, he did not authorize any sort of nickname for the symphony. He had, as well, decisively rejected and disavowed the titles (and programmes) of his earlier symphonies by 1900. Only the words "Sechste Sinfonie" appeared on the programme for the performance in Munich on November 8, 1906.[3]: 59 Nor does the word Tragische appear on any of the scores that C. F. Kahnt published (first edition, 1906; revised edition, 1906), in Specht's officially approved Thematische Führer ('thematic guide')[3]: 50 or on Zemlinsky's piano duet transcription (1906).[3]: 57 By contrast, in his Gustav Mahler memoir, Bruno Walter claimed that "Mahler called [the work] his Tragic Symphony". Additionally, the programme for the first Vienna performance (January 4, 1907) refers to the work as "Sechste Sinfonie (Tragische)".
Controversy exists over the order of the two middle movements. Mahler conceived the work as having the scherzo second and the slow movement third, a somewhat unclassical arrangement adumbrated in such earlier large-scale symphonies as Beethoven's No. 9, Bruckner's No. 8 and (unfinished) No. 9, and Mahler's own four-movement No. 1 and No. 4. It was in this arrangement that the symphony was completed (in 1904) and published (in March 1906); and it was with a conducting score in which the scherzo preceded the slow movement that Mahler began rehearsals for the work's first performance, as noted by Mahler biographer Henry-Louis de La Grange:
Alfred Roller, a close collaborator and colleague of Mahler's in Vienna, communicated in a 2 May 1906 letter to his fiancée Mileva Stojsavljevic, on the Mahlers' reaction to the 1 May 1906 orchestral rehearsal of the work in Vienna, in its original movement order:
During those later May 1906 rehearsals in Essen, however, Mahler decided that the slow movement should precede the scherzo. Klaus Pringsheim, another colleague of Mahler's at the Hofoper, reminisced in a 1920 article on the situation at the Essen rehearsals, on Mahler's state of mind at the time:
Mahler instructed his publishers Christian Friedrich Kahnt to prepare a "second edition" of the work with the movements in that order, and meanwhile to insert errata slips indicating the change of order into all unsold copies of the existing edition. Mahler conducted the 27 May 1906 public premiere, and his other two subsequent performances of the Sixth Symphony, in November 1906 (Munich) and 4 January 1907 (Vienna) with his revised order of the inner movements. In the period immediately after Mahler's death, scholars such as Paul Bekker, Ernst Decsey, Richard Specht, and Paul Stefan published studies with reference to the Sixth Symphony in Mahler's second edition with the Andante/Scherzo order.[12]
One of the first occasions after Mahler's death where the conductor reverted to the original movement order is in 1919/1920, after an inquiry in the autumn of 1919 from Willem Mengelberg to Alma Mahler in preparation for the May 1920 Mahler Festival in Amsterdam of the complete symphonies, regarding the order of the inner movements of the Sixth Symphony. In a telegram dated 1 October 1919, Alma responded to Mengelberg:[12]
Mengelberg, who had been in close touch with Mahler until the latter's death, and had conducted the symphony in the "Andante/Scherzo" arrangement up to 1916, then switched to the "Scherzo/Andante" order. In his own copy of the score, he wrote on the first page:[12]
Other conductors, such as Oskar Fried, continued to perform (and eventually record) the work as 'Andante/Scherzo', per the second edition, right up to the early 1960s. Exceptions included two performances in Vienna on 14 December 1930 and 23 May 1933, conducted by Anton Webern, who utilised the Scherzo/Andante order of the inner movements. Anna Mahler, Mahler's daughter, attended both of these performances.[16] De La Grange commented on Webern's choice of the Scherzo/Andante order:
In 1963, a new critical edition of the Sixth Symphony appeared, under the auspices of the Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft (IGMG) and its president, Erwin Ratz, a pupil of Webern,[16] an edition which restored Mahler's original order of the inner movements. Ratz, however, did not offer documented support, such as Alma Mahler's 1919 telegram, for his assertion that Mahler "changed his mind a second time" at some point before his death. In his analysis of the Sixth Symphony, Norman Del Mar argued for the Andante/Scherzo order of the inner movements,[3]: 43 [17] and criticised the Ratz edition for its lack of documentary evidence to justify the Scherzo/Andante order. In contrast, scholars such as Theodor W. Adorno, Henry-Louis de La Grange, Hans-Peter Jülg and Karl Heinz Füssl have argued for the original order as more appropriate, expostulating on the overall tonal scheme and the various relationships between the keys in the final three movements. Füssl, in particular, noted that Ratz made his decision under historical circumstances where the history of the different autographs and versions was not completely known at the time.[12] Füssl has also noted the following features of the Scherzo/Andante order:[18]
The 1968 Eulenberg Edition of the Sixth Symphony, edited by Hans Redlich, restores most of Mahler's original orchestration and utilises the original order of Scherzo/Andante for the order of the middle movements.[13] The most recent IGMG critical edition of the Sixth Symphony was published in 2010, under the general editorship of Reinhold Kubik, and uses the Andante/Scherzo order for the middle movements.[13] Kubik had previously declared in 2004:
This statement has been criticised, in the manner of earlier criticism of Ratz, on several levels:
British composer David Matthews was a former adherent of the Andante/Scherzo order,[6] but has since changed his mind and now argues for Scherzo/Andante as the preferred order, again citing the overall tonal scheme of the symphony.[19] In keeping with Mahler's original order, British conductor John Carewe has noted parallels between the tonal plan of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 and Mahler's Symphony No. 6, with the Scherzo/Andante order of movements in the latter. David Matthews has noted the interconnectivity of the first movement with the Scherzo as similar to Mahler's interconnectivity of the first two movements of the Fifth Symphony, and that performing the Mahler with the Andante/Scherzo order would damage the structure of the tonal key relationships and remove this parallel,[19] a structural disruption of what de La Grange has described as follows:
Moreover, de La Grange, referring to the 1919 Mengelberg telegram, has questioned the notion of Alma simply expressing a personal view of the movement order, and reiterates the historical fact of the original movement order:
De La Grange has noted the justification of having both options available for conductors to choose:
Mahler scholar Donald Mitchell echoed the dual-version scenario and the need for the availability of both options:
Matthews, Paul Banks and scholar Warren Darcy (the last an advocate for the Andante/Scherzo order) have independently proposed the idea of two separate editions of the symphony, one to accommodate each version of the order of the inner movements.[6][19] Music commentator David Hurwitz has likewise remarked:
An additional question is whether to restore the third hammer blow. Both the Ratz edition and the Kubik edition delete the third hammer blow. However, advocates on opposite sides of the inner movement debate, such as Del Mar and Matthews, have separately argued for restoration of the third hammer blow.[19]