Listening Guide – Movement 4: Sturmisch bewegt
Transcription Without a pause after the previous movement, that finale begins with an enormous explosion that ricochets off the first beat into a massive dissonant chord in high woodwinds, while at once called this chord the cry from a deeply wounded heart, following upon the hushed sounds of the funeral march gradually fading away at […]
Listening Guide – Movement 3: Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen
At the end of the Scherzo movement in the symphony original version, Mahler suggests a suitable pause before the next movement. The radical change in mood seemed to him to necessitate a moment of silence. For what follows is one of the strangest most uncanny movements ever included in the symphony before them. In this […]
Listening Guide – Movement 2: Kraftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell
Transcript With the elimination of the Blumine Movement, a second fast movement follows the first. Mahler may have considered the problem of juxtaposing two fast movements when he initially inserted roominess between them. Although an early version places Blumine after this scared so moving, between the first two movements is established from the outset, in […]
Listening Guide – Movement 1: Langsam, schleppend; Immer sehr gemachlich
Transcript Mahler opens the first movement by creating an atmosphere unique in his time for the beginning of a symphony and almost inaudible sustained a natural in eight octaves, for divided strings in harmonics evokes the shimmering haze and serene calm of A Midsummer sunrise. This long sustained multi octave chord provides the harmonic underpinning […]
Listening Guide – Symphony No. 1 Intro
Transcript For a first Mahler’s Symphony is a remarkable achievement, the high level of musical sophistication and creativity is outstanding for a first effort at writing a symphony, although there is some slight evidence that Mahler may have written several earlier symphony’s, none of them have survived, so we have little material with which to […]
Listening Guide – Blumine
Transcript In the original version of the first Symphony written in 1889, a movement that Mahler entitled Blumina, to follow the first movement. It was apparently written as a love song for the wife of a composer called Maria von Weber’s grandson with whom Mahler had had an affair.Mahler himself called the movement A Love […]
Listening Guide – Symphony No. 10
By Lew Smoley
Listening Guide – Symphony No. 9
By Lew Smoley
Listening Guide – Symphony No. 8
By Lew Smoley
Listening Guide – Symphony No. 7
By Lew Smoley