It's the sleigh-bells (schelle) that sets the mood: any composer using these association-laden instrument must be expecting the audience to respond in a particular way - sleigh rides, christmas: he's playing with our expectations. So much so that the B minor-ness of the opening bars of this Symphony "in G major" is disguised. And B minor is an important "pointer" to the "alternative" Tonality of the work: E major (the Climax of the slow movement and the conclusion of the Symphony are both in this "other" key).
So: a Symphony of sleights-of-hand, with immediate appearances disguising other realities - a(nother) Hoffmannesque world and with playful, optimistic sounds used to "express" dark, disturbing ideas. "Friend Henry", the skeletal soloist of the (C minor-F major-C major) Scherzo; the childish vision of Heavenly Life with which it concludes seems at face value a (?faux)- naïve depiction of how a young child would imagine Heaven; until it's realized that this child is speaking in the present tense. It's another "infant mortality" piece, like the Kindertotenlieder, or the boys greeting the soul of Faust in the Eighth ("he will teach us" they sing in delight). The reason why the child of the Fourth is so fixated on food is that s/he has starved to death: the Wunderhorn texts are full of this bleakean, Blakean juxtaposition of Innocence and Experience that reflected both Mahler's lifelong experience of childhood mortality and his psychological means of coping with such loss.
The whole of the First Movement is a series of such juxtapositions of seemingly contradictory moods (carefree and sinister) culminating in the climax (fig 16 in the score): E minor juxtaposed with C major crunching onto a Db Major triad over the pedal G (a Tritone - the "diabolus in Musica" ) before the "pre-quotation" of the solo Trumpet opening of the Fifth (and am I the only one who hears a parody of Mendelssohn's Wedding March there?) that Petrushka mentioned. And then the insouciant "Recapitulation" that isn't really a Recap: the First Movement's seeming conformity to "Sonata Form" is another of its "sleights-of-hand", I think.
AND mock-simple, "cheap"-sounding "modulations"; AND the Vienna Phil trying to sound like peasant instrumentalists; AND instruments contorting and cavorting at the extremes of their register. It's all mask with glimpses of the skull beneath the skin: probably the most joyfully nasty work in the repertoire!
... but then there's the slow movement ...
So: a Symphony of sleights-of-hand, with immediate appearances disguising other realities - a(nother) Hoffmannesque world and with playful, optimistic sounds used to "express" dark, disturbing ideas. "Friend Henry", the skeletal soloist of the (C minor-F major-C major) Scherzo; the childish vision of Heavenly Life with which it concludes seems at face value a (?faux)- naïve depiction of how a young child would imagine Heaven; until it's realized that this child is speaking in the present tense. It's another "infant mortality" piece, like the Kindertotenlieder, or the boys greeting the soul of Faust in the Eighth ("he will teach us" they sing in delight). The reason why the child of the Fourth is so fixated on food is that s/he has starved to death: the Wunderhorn texts are full of this bleakean, Blakean juxtaposition of Innocence and Experience that reflected both Mahler's lifelong experience of childhood mortality and his psychological means of coping with such loss.
The whole of the First Movement is a series of such juxtapositions of seemingly contradictory moods (carefree and sinister) culminating in the climax (fig 16 in the score): E minor juxtaposed with C major crunching onto a Db Major triad over the pedal G (a Tritone - the "diabolus in Musica" ) before the "pre-quotation" of the solo Trumpet opening of the Fifth (and am I the only one who hears a parody of Mendelssohn's Wedding March there?) that Petrushka mentioned. And then the insouciant "Recapitulation" that isn't really a Recap: the First Movement's seeming conformity to "Sonata Form" is another of its "sleights-of-hand", I think.
AND mock-simple, "cheap"-sounding "modulations"; AND the Vienna Phil trying to sound like peasant instrumentalists; AND instruments contorting and cavorting at the extremes of their register. It's all mask with glimpses of the skull beneath the skin: probably the most joyfully nasty work in the repertoire!
... but then there's the slow movement ...
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