Symphony No. 6 in a minor

Composer: MAHLER, Gustav
  • Mahler composed this symphony in 1903-4, and revised it in 1906 ahead of its premiere that year.1 It was published in 1906.2
  • This symphony premiered in Essen on May 27, 1906.3 The Essen Philharmonic performed, and Mahler conducted.4
  • On at least one occasion, Mahler presented this symphony with a title or description attached: it was billed as the “Tragic” Symphony when Mahler conducted its Vienna premiere on January of 1907.5 
  • Alma Mahler claimed that the first movement’s second theme was a musical portrait of her. Alma Mahler’s reminiscences about her husband’s music are not always considered reliable, but there are definitely scholars who refer to this theme as the “Alma Theme.”6

“My Sixth will pose riddles that only a generation that has absorbed and digested my first five symphonies may hope to solve.”

Gustav Mahler, from a 1904 letter to Richard Specht7

The Hammer Blows

  • The Finale of this symphony features a unique percussion effect, which Mahler described thus in his first edition score: “brief and mighty, but dull in resonance and with a non-metallic character.” In later editions of the score he added “(like the fall of an axe)”.8
    • To achieve this effect, modern orchestras often use a contraption known as the Mahler Box and Hammer. (The first-edition score just labels the instrument as “Hammer.”)9
  • Mahler’s original version of this symphony (at the premiere in 1906) included three hammer-blows. After the premiere (which was not well received) Mahler removed the final hammer blow from the published edition. Today, conductors choose between the two-hammer-blow and the three-hammer-blow versions at their artistic discretion.10 
  • According to Alma Mahler, the three hammer-blows represent three fateful events. However, please take this account with a grain of salt, because Alma Mahler’s accounts tend to filter events through her own personal interpretations.11

“In the last movement, Mahler described himself and his downfall, or as he later said, that of his hero. ‘It is the hero on whom fall three blows of fate, the last of which fells him, as a tree is felled.’ Those were his words. None of his works came so directly from his inmost heart as this. We both wept that day. The music and what it foretold touched us so deeply.”

From Alma Mahler’s Gustav Mahler: Memories and Reflections12
  • Alma Mahler even went on to identify later events in Gustav Mahler’s life which she associated with the three hammer blows (none of which had happened yet when Mahler wrote his Sixth Symphony):13 the death of the couple’s eldest daughter (July 12, 1907), Mahler’s heart disease diagnosis (1907), and his resignation from the Vienna Opera and move to America to direct the Metropolitan Opera in New York (late 1907).14
  • Mahler’s Viennese public was not quite sure how to cope with hammers in symphonies. In this 1907 Viennese cartoon, entitled “Tragische Simphonie,” Mahler appears with an array of percussion instruments, including a hammer (and a club). He holds a car horn, saying, “Gosh, I forgot the car horn! Now I have to write another symphony!” 

A collection of hilarious Mahler 6 hammer-blow gifs 

Sources

  1. Peter Franklin, “Mahler, Gustav,” Grove Music Online (2001), accessed April 26, 2022, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000040696.
  2. Gustav Mahler, Sechste Symphonie für grosses Orchester (Leipzig: C.F. Kahnt, 1906).
  3. Franklin, “Mahler, Gustav,” Grove Music Online
  4. “Symphony No.6 (Mahler, Gustav),” IMSLP, accessed April 26, 2022, https://imslp.org/wiki/Symphony_No.6_(Mahler%2C_Gustav).
  5. Jens Malte Fischer, Gustav Mahler, trans. Stewart Spencer (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), 411.
  6. Ibid., 410.
  7. Quoted in Ibid.
  8. Quoted in “Movement 4: Finale (Allegro moderato),” Mahler Foundation, accessed April 27, 2022, https://mahlerfoundation.org/mahler/compositions/symphony-no-6/symphony-no-6-movement-4-finale-allegro-moderato/.  See also Gustav Mahler, Sechste Symphonie für grosses Orchester (Leipzig: C.F. Kahnt, 1906), 194.
  9. Mahler, Sechste Symphonie für grosses Orchester, 149.
  10. “Movement 4: Finale (Allegro moderato),” Mahler Foundation, accessed April 27, 2022, https://mahlerfoundation.org/mahler/compositions/symphony-no-6/symphony-no-6-movement-4-finale-allegro-moderato/.  
  11. Kate Rogers, “A Spotlight on Mahler’s Sixth Symphony,” The Cleveland Orchestra (February 2015), accessed April 27, 2022, https://www.clevelandorchestra.com/discover/archives/stories/mahlers-sixth/.
  12. Quoted in Rogers, “A Spotlight on Mahler’s Sixth Symphony,” The Cleveland Orchestra.
  13. “Movement 4: Finale (Allegro moderato),” Mahler Foundation.
  14. Franklin, “Mahler, Gustav,” Grove Music Online.

Cut IDs

10244 15468