Symphony No. 1 in D Major and the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) are works of simultaneous inception, stemming in part from an unhappy liaison between Mahler and the singer Johanna Richter during his brief tenure as music director in Kassel (1883–85). The songs were composed with piano accompaniments to be orchestrated later; in the delay, the symphony emerged, borrowing—and orchestrating for the first time—some of the material from the songs.

Originally, the First was not called a symphony at all, but rather a Symphonic Poem in two parts and five movements. The first part, “From the Days of Youth,” embraced three movements: “Spring without End,” the Andante Blumine (“A Chapter of Flowers”), and “In Full Sail,” the scherzo. In the second half, “The Human Comedy,” were the funeral march, called “Aground,” and the finale, “Dall’ Inferno al Paradiso.” The published score of 1899 omits the program elements and the Blumine movement.

The first movement alludes strongly, in its long, slow introduction, to the opening of Beethoven’s Ninth. But where Beethoven’s initial passage turns out to harbor all the violence of nature, Mahler flavors his open fifths with pastoral horns and a distant military fanfare. He then turns the falling interval into a cuckoo call. The high-pitched whine of the string harmonics, moreover, is decidedly post-Beethovenian. All the preparation is for an Allegro of meadows and fields, its principal material drawn from the second of the Wayfarer songs. In view of the length of the introduction, the exposition seems quite short and must be repeated for good balance. The development, which begins by returning to the slow motion and high whine of the opening, soon introduces important new material, a confident march heard in the quartet of French horns, pianissimo—not new, exactly, for there are antecedents in the ruminating horns of the introduction. For a Mahlerian development, what follows seems restrained and prevailingly carefree, even given the complexity of the motivic interaction. As the climax approaches, however, the trumpet calls are deflected into throbs and groans, emphasized in the bass, that begin the big crescendo to recapitulation. Rapturous flourishes of the trumpet calls from the introduction boil over into the French horn march, now quite martial. As is typical of Mahler’s sonata forms, the materials from the exposition return in midstream, compacted, anxious to conclude. In this case, the movement ends in an accelerando of the cuckoo figure and the rapid fire of general orchestral merriment. The second movement is a plodding country-dance, typically thought to be Breughelesque in connotation, with a genteel trio. In the first departure, things take wing and end up riotously with uplifted bells in the winds, stopped horns, the kind of chaotic forward motion Mahler is given to marking “wild,” and other tonalities clashing up against the interval so firmly established in the bass. The country-dance can return only tentatively at first, then with growing confidence. The trio is suave, with erotic glissandos and rubatos in the interwoven melody lines and lovely work for solo cello. When the dance recurs for the last time, its vulgarities have been polished and civilized.

For his funeral march, Mahler had in mind a vaguely comic fairytale illustration, “The Hunter’s Funeral Procession,” in which a coffin—presumably that of the hunter—is borne forward by a parade of forest animals. The tune is the familiar round Frère Jacques, set in the minor mode over the continuous knell of a timpani ostinato. What comedy there is lies in the droll choice of soloists: double bass, bassoon, cello, tuba, and so on. A funereal tattoo is heard from the oboes, then the tolling of a tam-tam. The first of the trios begins as a lazy, possibly ethnic strain for oboes and trumpets, soon made mocking and lively (and Turkish) by the band and primitive bass drum and cymbals. A partial and very brief return to the round separates the two trios: the next turns to the major mode and cites the fourth of the Wayfarer songs, Die zwei blauen Augen, likewise a cortege. Bits of the village-band episode have by now reasserted themselves and continue through the return of the D minor, and the procession recedes into the distance, with echoes in the timpani.

A terrifying orchestral thunderclap shatters the moment and sets the fourth movement into motion. The massive introduction carries on and on, as the triplet figures in the winds plunge ever deeper into the bass register. Finally, a savage march surges forth, eventually reaching a climax marked “with great ferocity.” From its rubble emerges, as second subject, a songful passage for strings in a passive key. The long timpani roll and groaning cellos begin the development by reintroducing the atmosphere of the first movement. When it reaches the familiar fanfare, a firm D major with the tonic pitch sustained across the orchestra, and a happy peal of French horns, you sense a peroration in the making. Instead there is a dramatic return of the first-movement motives and minor key, bird songs, and a lingering over the second subject before a proper recapitulation of the first. Once more the major-mode fanfares erupt over a sustained bass, this time culminating in a very long coda marked “triumphant.” The way he goes on is probably excessive, but you can’t deny the thrill when he gets to the end.

     —D. Kern Holoman

For piccolos I-II, flutes I-IV, oboes I-IV, English horn, E-flat clarinet, clarinets I-III, bass clarinet, bassoons I-III, contrabassoon; horns I-VII, trumpets I-IV, trombones I-III, tuba; timpani (two players), bass drum, cymbals, bass drum with top-mounted cymbals, triangle, tam-tam; harp; strings.

Composed c. 1885–88 in Kassel and Leipzig; revised through 1906; originally comprising five movements, with the second, an Andante called Blumine, removed c. 1896.

First performed November 20, 1889, by the Budapest Philharmonic, Mahler conducting

Published by Josef Weinberger (Vienna, 1899).

Inexpensive score: Gustav Mahler: Symphonies Nos. 1 and 2 in Full Score (New York: Dover, 1987)

Duration: about 50 minutes