MAHLER (4) – THE LAST YEARS (1908 – 1911)

Mahler left Vienna for Cherbourg, embarking there, then, after a ten day crossing, arriving at New York the week before Christmas 1907. His contract for two seasons had been negotiated by him with the chief director of the Met, Heinrich Conried. The Met itself was not in the best of shape and Mahler the man targeted to put that to rights. His own physical condition was not known to them and he was no longer the man he was. He was not engaged as supremo so much as a chief guest conductor. At the same time Conried was himself about to be replaced in running the house by Gatti Casazza, in charge of La Scala, not only because of his success over twenty years but also because he would probably be able to bring Toscanini in tow from Milan. This worked a gem and we had Mahler starting out in January and Toscanini arriving with the new management in July. Here were two of the greatest conductors of their time, both strict disciplinarians with oodles of temperament between them. Somehow they managed to sort out a modus vivendi podii apart from which of them would direct Tristan. This was the opera which Mahler started out with in January 2008 followed familiarly by Don Giovanni, Walkure, Siegfried and Fidelio. During this first period the Mahlers stayed at the Majestic Hotel overlooking Central Park enjoying the novelty of New York with Mahler loving the subway rather than taking cabs.

By summer there was no thought of staying for vacation in the USA. It was back to Europe with concerts in Vienna, Munich, Berlin, Hamburg and Wiesbaden. After the experiences of the previous year in Maiernigg they took alternative accommodation instead in a farmhouse at Tolbach in the Dolomites. Alma found Mahler in a state of nerves stopping all the time on his walks to check his heartbeat and his pedometer. His mood was understandably black and tensions clearly existed between both of them. Nevertheless, he was able to resume composition where he had left off a year before with “The Chinese Flute”. The series of songs he had been writing now became more extended. The poems reflected his thoughts on life and death. The project had moved on from being just a song cycle to what he regarded as a symphony with songs. The final song, Abschied (Departure) lasts over thirty minutes. It has a recurring theme like ducks quacking on woodwinds written to the same rhythm, so it seems to me, as the opening of Beethoven’s fourth piano concerto. The whole work ends with the word “ewig” (eternally) fading into nothingness. Mahler had avoided designating it as a symphony and instead gave it the title of Das Lied von der Erde. This was probably due to the superstition that a ninth would signify the end because Beethoven had not managed to get past the curse of nine whilst Bruckner had an unfinished ninth. Schubert would have been out of his reckoning because the Great C major, now the ninth, was then known as No 7 and the Unfinished thought to be his eighth and last. Dvorak also with nine had died only four years before but his first four symphonies were unpublished, one of them lost, and what we know as 5-9 to-day were numbered, even as late as in my time, as 1– 5.

The stay in Europe was crowned with the first performance of the Seventh in Prague. It was then back to New York for the opening of 1909. Toscanini had arrived. He wanted to start off with Tristan but here Mahler put his foot down on the grounds that Tristan was his territory alone which he directed followed by The Marriage of Figaro, Smetana’s Bartered Bride and Tchaikovsky’s Queen of Spades. That brought to an end the contract with the Metropolitan which continued under Toscanini. Mahler however stayed on having been invited to front the Walter Damrosch Symphony Society. At this stage this was a members’ co-operative with a committee of women running the show who, though knowing little about music, knew only too well how to organize. The Society knew that the only route to improvement was through a strong conductor and not a co-op. So it was that Mahler took over and started to recruit new players. First of all though, it was back to Europe for summer 09, first to Paris where Mahler was sculpted by Rodin. The Mahler family strains were still continuing, the marriage teetering, but it was yet a new summer and a new symphony for Gustav. The dreaded Number 9 could not be put off any longer. Here, he returns to four movement form with orchestra only. Its first movement is a mixture of melancholy and hopelessness, a feeling of resignation for death. Its quiet tread is underlined by a strange vibration, what Leonard Bernstein describes as Mahler hearing his own erratic heartbeat. Bernstein has a vivid imagination but I reckon that Mahler would have been in need of an ECG printout for that. It has its landlers and its burlesque. Ultimately it finds the greatest peace in a slow movement for its finale, as did Tchaikovsky in his sixth, but it dies away, miraculously seeming to return for one last breath of life. Following the Hitler years, the Berlin Philharmonic under Furtwangler and Karajan had no tradition of Mahler. In 1964 Sir John Barbirolli, who had built an early reputation for Mahler (he had conducted the first British performance of the Resurrection Symphony in 1931) had directed the Berlin Philharmonic playing the ninth and then recorded it with them the next day whilst they could still feel it in their bones. It is a heart rending performance and one which I hope we may hear..

For Mahler it was back to New York in Autumn 1909 and to a reformed New York Philharmonic with whom he was to perform 46 concerts. The repertoire was not only his usual standard classical but also the introduction of various new works and composers. This was a difficult balance to achieve bearing in mind that his managing committee and, even more so, his audiences shied away from any form of novelty. In his various concerts which included tours in various regions of North America he introduced French music, Berlioz, Debussy Nocturnes, Dukas and Chabrier. He directed Elgar (Enigma Variations and Sea Pictures) and Stanford’s Third Symphony. This has produced one comment of incredulity but remember that Stanford was considered by many at the time to be the leading English composer. His star was to be eclipsed by Elgar but I have always found it strange that not one of his seven symphonies, nor his requiem or Stabat Mater, get an airing. Mahler also introduced a number aspiring American composers including Edward MacDowell and Florence Chadwick. He was also planning for the next season

(which sadly he did not undertake) to perform the Symphony No 3 of Charlies Ives. Had he done so the music of that strange composer, as revolutionary in his way as the Stravinsky of the Rite, could have given up being an insurance broker and his music become known that much the earlier

There was also a flip side to Mahler’s interpretations. Whatever objections there had been in Vienna to the Mahler additions to the scores of the composers he conducted, these were mild to that of those in New York. For the fourth movement of Beethoven’s Pastoral symphony, the Thunderstorm, for example, he added a second pair of timpani to enhance the effect. This not only caused antagonism amongst the audiences but got right up the noses of the righteous ladies of the committee who summoned Mahler before them in February 1911 and gave him as good as he had never before gotten. Mahler did not just reserve his corrections for dead composers but also bestowed his amendments on the works of living composers such as Richard Strauss. This was undoubtedly the arrogant side of Mahler.

Before that there was his third summer in Europe in 1910. Alma, now in a state of nervous breakdown did not share the same holiday home. She entered a sanatorium for treatment and was recommended by her consultant to take up dancing as being therapeutic. In pursuing this activity, she met the architect, Walter Gropius. He fell in love with her virtually straight away and she reciprocated. He begged her to marry him but she had no intention of leaving Mahler. In his condition she just could not consider doing so. Then came one of those inexplicable happenings. Gropius wrote her a love letter, containing his feelings towards her, which he put in an envelope addressed to Herr Direktor Mahler. Was that a mistake and what had he intended to write instead to Herr Direktor? Was this intended in order to upset the apple cart? Anyway, it wasn’t the apples that were spilt but the beans. Now it all came out. Mahler was stricken. He sat there whilst she gave him a catalogue of her grievances. He sought her forgiveness. Too late he realized he had thwarted her own ambitions as a composer which she had given up to support him. In an about turn he now wanted her to return to composition. Too late. He begged her to stay with him. He then went to see Freud in Amsterdam. Mahler had been troubled for some time by his own failing sexual drive which it is likely he had sublimated. This had only made matters worse for Alma and her desperate sexual needs. Freud may have unearthed connections with Mahler’s childhood but was unable to counsel help as regards Alma.

That summer Mahler conducted the first performance of the Symphony of a Thousand, No 8, in Munich. One small man stood in front of this huge orchestra and double choir, stricken in health, torn apart in his domestic life and conducted the one symphony which he had dedicated to Alma and which represented his love for her. Alma was there. Gropius was staying in a nearby hotel. It was Mahler’s crowning triumph but the cheering audience would never know he was in the depths of agony.

He had commenced writing his tenth symphony and had completed two movements. He was not to finish it but in it and over it, he was sending messages to Alma, not just metaphorical musical ones but scrawling all over the score knowing that she would be the one in copying his notation who would read the implorings of a soul in torment. “Oh God. Oh God. Why hast thou forsaken me? You alone know what it means. Farewell my lyre” On the last page he wrote “To live for you. To die for you Almschi”.

Yet, he did again return to New York but his stay was short lived. He was there for little more than a month, the time when he encountered the oligarchy of the New York women. A few days later his throat flared up again and he was diagnosed with acute streptococcal infection, a bacterial disease. He was advised that the best place for advice and treatment was the Pasteur Institute in Paris. Once more he made the Atlantic crossing back and photographs taken on board show anguish all over his face. At Paris he was examined and the verdict was that there was no hope. It is a disease which affects skin or throat and at this time it was as good as fatal, anti-biotics not yet to be invented for another twenty years. On his own consultant’s advice, he was sent home to Vienna for his last days and, no longer owning a house, admitted into a sanatorium there. Having written two completed movements of his tenth symphony, he now handed over the remaining sketches to Alma, knowing the end was near. Alma thus became the trustee of the tenth Symphony and the custodian of his manuscript.

Gustav Mahler died on 18th May 1911. His funeral was arranged by Carl Moll and Mahler buried alongside Putzi. Six months later Bruno Walter conducted the first performance of Das Lied von der Erde. Seven months after that, Bruno Walter conducted the first performance of the ninth symphony which Mahler had dedicated to him.

------------------------------

And What Ever Happened to Alma?

Mahler’s death must have come as a release to Alma. Had he been in good health and in possession of his full powers would their marriage have lasted? It is hardly likely. After Mahler's death, she did not immediately resume contact with Gropius. Between 1912 and 1914 she had an unrestrained affair with the artist Oskar Kokoschka, who created works inspired by their relationship, some 250 paintings including representations of their bedtime activities. Kokoschka's possessiveness began to wear and when Gropius, who had enlisted in the German army in 1914, returned on the scene, Alma ditched Kokoshka. So possessive was he that he made a lifesize doll of Alma that he could take to bed with him for his comfort. She and Gropius married in 1915 during one of his leaves. They had a daughter together, Manon Gropius. Manon died of polio at the age of 18, in 1935. It was in her memory that Alban Berg wrote his violin concerto (in memory of an angel). Alma became pregnant

and gave birth to a son in 1918. He died at 10 months. Gropius believed that the child was his, but Alma was by 1917 having an affair with Franz Werfel and Gropius, who had once sent his love letter in an envelope addressed to Mahler, was now himself the biter bitten when he overheard Alma telling Werfel the boy was his. Within a year, Gropius and Alma agreed to a divorce. Werfel and Alma lived together, marrying eventually ten years later. They moved to France when the Nazis took power as Werfel was Jewish. With the German occupation of France they took up residence in America. Age would not weary her and she carried on pitching at Alban Berg and others until not that long before her death in 1964. Alma, Oh what a gal!

THE TENTH SYMPHONY

The tenth symphony has a separate history of its own. The two extant movements were not joined at the hip and made no sense being played one after the other. In concert only the first movement got played. That is how I first heard it in the 1950’s under Klemperer. In 1922, Alma met the composer, Ernst Krenek who would marry Anna Mahler, the younger Mahler daughter, in 1924 (and divorce in 1925). Alma had asked Krenek to complete the tenth but, apart from attempting amendments to the first and third, the two extant movements, the task proved beyond him. It was only much later in the early 1960’s, when Mahler interest was taking off, that Deryck Cooke, an English musicologist, brought the symphony back to life. He had discovered that what Mahler had written was not quite as unfinished as it had seemed. Alma, particularly on the advice of Bruno Walter, would not allow anyone to work on the score. The tenth was the sole property of Mahler and had died with him (The same argument was raised over the elaboration by Anthony Payne of Elgar’s Symphony No 3). Deryck Cooke had written a performing edition played first by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by the refugee since 1935 composer, Berthold Goldschmidt, and broadcast by the BBC. The recording of that broadcast was taken to Alma, then in her eighties, and after listening to it she wrote to Deryck Cooke:-

“Dear Mr Cooke

Mr. Harold Byrns visited me here in New York. Today he read me your excellent articles on Mahler's Tenth Symphony and your equally authoritative score. Afterwards I expressed my desire to finally listen to the London BBC tape. I was so moved by this performance that I immediately asked Mr. Byrns

to play the work a second time. I then realised that the time had come when I must reconsider my previous decision not to permit the performance of this work. I have now decided once and for all to give you full permission to go ahead with performances in any part of the world.”

After Alma's death in December 1964, her daughter, Anna, allowed Cooke access to the full set of manuscript sketches. It turned out that a number had not been published back in the 1920’s. In the light of this, Cooke needed to revise his performing version in which he was assisted by the brothers Colin and David Matthews.

To hear the tenth for the first time is like bringing the Titanic to the surface. They both went down during much the same period. I have decided not to elaborate on the symphony but leave that to Matthew Taylor. I will simply finish by saying that after its bleakness Mahler seems to find again an optimism before both he and his last symphony came too early to their respective ends.

--------------------

THE MAHLER THERE NEVER WOULD BE

Finally, what direction would Mahler have taken had he survived? None of us can say. He and the members of the Second Viennese School had a good relationship but I do not believe that Mahler would have crossed the red lines. By the tenth there are signs of his going into temporary atonal mode and he may well have pursued that further. However, atonalism allows an anarchic freedom such that Schoenberg had to invent serialism, a more rigorous discipline than had hitherto existed and which Mahler, I am sure, would have eschewed. I believe there are two likely directions he might have taken. The first is with and following the First World War the Symphony of the Pre War Mahler would have been out of fashion and that he would have needed to pare down, perhaps as Sibelius had done in 1922 and 1924 with his last two symphonies. A pared down Mahler might more have resembled Britten’s Sinfonia da Requiem written in 1940.

The second direction might have been to pursue even further progressive tonality and to have adopted a course, like that of Carl Nielsen whom he is unlikely to have heard, using tonality to resolve conflict. To my mind (an I am only an amateur) there appears a hint of this in the tenth symphony. The first movement climaxes with an outburst with a long held trumpet note leading a discordant orchestra. One wondered why. The completed version by Cooke

shows the return of this outburst towards the end of the final movement before its tonality is re-assumed. There is something like it in Nielsen’s sixth symphony where towards the end of its first movement two parts of the orchestra meet head on in conflicting keys creating an aural reign of terror. Both these symphonic movements, the Mahler and the Nielsen, seem to proclaim the same kind of crisis.

However, I am merely musing. No-one can know how a composer would have gone on or how his voice would have changed with age. Had Beethoven died after his eighth symphony in 1812 could anybody have predicted the sound of the ninth symphony, the hammerklavier sonata or the late string quartets? No way. They just would never have been written. The loss would be ours. And so it must remain with Mahler.