Day Four: The role of instrumentation in Gustav Mahler
Prior to Gustav Mahler, most music was composed with harmony, form, melody and rhythm considered the primary elements of music. Very seldom, if it all, was instrumentation considered a primary element. Mahler on the other hand, confronts this hierarchy and through his masterful use of instrumentation, elevates it to a primary and essential element in his music.
As a conductor as well as a composer, his ear developed a system of countermeasures to the habitual tendencies of the day to day life of the orchestral musicians he was working with. If one looks at a score of Mozart, Beethoven or Brahms, most “performance directions” such as forte, piano, crescendo and diminuendo were applied across the orchestra in a uniform fashion. Without the proper care and nuance, this is a recipe for disaster. If a trombone section and a flute section both start their crescendo from piano to forte over, let’s say two bars at the same time, then it doesn’t take a genius to work out that there will be significant problems of balance.
What Mahler did, therefore, was transcend that which was conventional and create his own solutions to the problems both the music and musicians faced as a result of the “one size fits all” approach. His thought process was not concerned primarily with the whole but rather with the smallest of details. For example, he was the first composer to have different instruments start their crescendi and diminuendi at different times. To solve our earlier predicament of the trombone vs flute crescendo, Mahler’s solution would be to have the flutes start their crescendo on the first beat of the first bar, with perhaps the trombones starting their crescendo somewhere in the middle of the second bar. The result being that the ear can perceive a communal, gradual increase in volume across different instrumental timbres as opposed to simply hearing the trombones, trumpets and horns at the expense of everyone else. Mahler also had different instruments playing the same material at markedly different dynamics and again, in the pursuit of timbral clarity, he used the extremes of instrumental registers in a way that no composer had before him.
For today’s recommended listening, I have chosen the first movement of Gustav Mahler’s Fourth Symphony.
The way in which he organised his musical material in relation to colour was so far ahead of his own times, indeed it was something that would be taken and developed throughout the twentieth century by composers such as Arnold Schönberg and Anton Webern. He was an early pioneer of the technique of Klangfarbenmelodie, a technique in which a musical line is split up across several instruments, in contrast to the conventional number of one, and as a result gains in both timbral variety and texture.
In contrast to the New German School (a group of mid-nineteenth century composers that included Richard Wagner, Franz Liszt and Hector Berlioz), Mahler did not place euphony as his primary goal. Euphony, if it occurred in his music, was a secondary result to the material and colour that necessitated it. His use of instrumentation is such that many individual cells and events, if taken outside of their larger context, do not sound aurally pleasing when compared to, for example, a Brahms motif. The care towards sound colour is in evidence all throughout his music and there is an abundance of examples whereby, at a moment where the music seems to necessitate and crave a certain colour, he is always correct in his judgement and provides us with exactly what the music needs.
Two examples show this very clearly. In his first symphony, at the end of the first theme in the last movement, Mahler has the trombones doubled, playing a chord at triple forte. The doubling is not just used for volume but also for the sheer strength of the colour that the extra instruments add. In a similar vein, using four flutes at the beginning of his fourth symphony has a totally different sound than if he had chosen a singular, solo flute. This might seem trivial today after decades of Boulez, Stockhausen, Ligeti etc but at the time, these decisions and the change in orchestral colour were revolutionary at the time.
For those that are interested, I will now take the opportunity to discuss a few points from the essays on Mahler by the German philosopher and social critic Theodor Adorno. Adorno puts forward three descriptions of Mahler’s music, namely “Breakthrough”, “Suspension” and “Fulfilment” which define key moments in his musical language. In many cases, instrumentation lies at the heart of their respective successes. For John Sheinbaum, Adorno's reference to "Breakthrough" in Mahler is that which breaks through the boundaries of traditional form. In doing so, it is able to critique a society operating under the illusion that its own boundaries remain intact.
A work of art, by its very nature, is a finite totality. Yet at the same time, it seeks to capture the entire world which is infinite. The breakthrough of a piece of art, that is to say when it breaks through the image of a traditional form, is able to inhabit the space outside of the work of art and is, therefore, able to critique all that falsely claims to be in tact. It demonstrates that borders are permeable. To announce a moment of breakthrough, Mahler uses instrumentation. The fanfare breakthrough in the First Symphony is an example of this because it unleashes the full potential of the fanfare that had been hinted at beforehand.
To hear the fanfare breakthrough, listen from minute 14:55 in the video below for roughly a minute. You will quite literally hear the music seemingly burst out of everything before and inhabit a space that was impossible to predict. You may have to watch the video directly on YouTube as opposed to this site as a result of the restrictions imposed by the channel.
Essentially, the definition of a breakthrough is that a moment occurs in the music that is generally unprepared and creates a huge dramatic shift in the music. The way that Mahler does this is usually by a shocking use of instrumental colour that disrupts the flow thus far. The second parameter that Adorno discusses is that of “suspension”. This is the moment in Mahler's music where the music and the motion seem to stop. Adorno considers these moments a critique of the norm because it does not follow the conventional "formal path of logical progression.” Where tradition requires movement and continuation, Mahler stops and reflects. The paradox of the suspension is that they inhabit the role of the dialectic between inside and outside of the music, insofar as they destabilise the form from the outside but do so based on material inherent in the music itself.
The post-horn passage in the Scherzando of the third symphony is an example of an Adornian "suspension". The post-horn acts as a moment of reflection that disturbs the otherwise relentless movement. The timbral difference of the post-horn, in comparison to the french horn, for example, plays a huge role in the interruption of the movement. It really feels as if something foreign to what came before and what comes after has taken hold of the moment. The historical connotations of the post-horn also affect the impact of the suspension. It implies the "intrusion of modernity over an otherwise pastoral rhetoric".
Listen from minute 49-53 to hear the passage with the posthorn. Of course, for the greatest impact, it would be wise to listen to the whole movement to get the feeling for the suspension of the musics relentless movement. You may have to watch the video directly on YouTube as opposed to this site as a result of the restrictions imposed by the channel.
Sheinbaum also comments on the paradox in the use of the post-horn. On the one hand, the passage seems idyllic due to the timbre and texture, and yet its function is to disrupt and take over the movement. During the post-horn episode, there are many attempts to get back to the material of the Scherzando but it would seem that the temptation of the suspension is too strong, and the music, for a long period of time the music falls back into the idyllic, suspended world of the post-horn. The music finally forces a return to the Scherzando through the use of a fanfare on the modern trumpet. This is perhaps a comment on modernity, or humans, overcoming nature, or at least trying! The modern trumpet is finally able to overpower the post-horn which is the symbol of undisturbed nature.
The third parameter that Adorno comments on is that of “fulfilment”. Breakthrough and suspension are more concerned with moments or passages that affect the future course of the music, challenge the norms from an internal and external perspective. Fulfilment, on the other hand, is concerned with the conclusion of the music. As Adorno puts it, the "voila" moment. Again, Mahler was in new territory with the way in which he dealt with conclusions in music. The conventional means for musical fulfilment, such as the return to the tonic key, was no longer necessary in Mahler. Fulfilment could now also be connected to instrumental colour.
Timbral contrast can act as a sense of fulfilment because it can act both as a conclusion and as something new at the same time. In other words, it transcends the notion that a climax must be the culmination of a development based on variation. Fulfilment can be a negative space, showing more absence than presence. It does not have to be a a huge fff culmination. It needs to provide a philosophical closure to what has been presented thus far. On the other hand, fulfilment can be a result of timbral expansion, as is the case with Mahler's 8th symphony in the first movement, the recapitulation serving as the moment of fulfilment.
