- Mahler’s Symphony No. 3 in d minor is an extensive piece for alto soloist, chorus, and large orchestra consisting of six movements.1 The piece is the longest symphony in standard repertoire and typically runs between 90-100 minutes.2
- Mahler began the first sketches of his third symphony in 1895 and completed the work the following year.3 While movements from the symphony had been performed in the late 1890s, the complete symphony would not receive its first performance until 1902. Mahler conducted the premiere in Krefeld, Germany, with the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein.4
- Mahler originally conceived the symphony accompanied by programmatic titles. One version of this programmatic design was the following:
- Symphony title: “The Happy Science. A Summer Morning Dream”
- “Summer is marching in”
- “What the flowers in the meadow say to me”
- “What the animals in the forest tell me”
- “What the night tells me”
- “What the morning bells tell me”
- “What love tells me”
- “The heavenly life” –> This movement was eventually taken out and used as the fourth movement of the composer’s fourth symphony.
- Symphony title: “The Happy Science. A Summer Morning Dream”
- Before publication, Mahler removed these programmatic elements and instead used tempo markings to distinguish the movements. However, listeners can still experience the progression of Mahler’s original intent even without the subtitles.5
- A couple of notes regarding the text used in the symphony:
- The alto solo in the fourth movement, “O Mensch! Gib Acht!” uses text from Also sprach Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. You can read the English translation of the text here.
- In the fifth movement, the text is drawn from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and is sung by a boys chorus, a womens chorus, and the alto soloist. You can read an English translation of the folksong, “Es sungen drei Engel einen süssen Gesang,” here.
- In addition to Mahler’s use of Nietzsche in the fourth movement, the composer was also undoubtedly influenced by the philosopher’s writing when creating Symphony No. 3. This influence is particularly evident in the symphony’s original title, “The Happy Science,” which is also the title of a book by Nietzsche.6
Sources
- Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 3 (Vienna: Josef Weinberger, 1898).
- “History Symphony No. 3,” Mahler Foundation, accessed November 10, 2022, https://mahlerfoundation.org/mahler/compositions/symphony-no-3/symphony-no-3-history/.
- Milijana Pavlović, “RETURN TO STEINBACH: AN UNKNOWN SKETCH OF MAHLER’S THIRD SYMPHONY,” Il Saggiatore Musicale 17, no. 1 (2010): 43–52, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43030043.
- Gustav Mahler, Symphony No. 3.
- “History Symphony No. 3,” Mahler Foundation.
- Carl Niekerk, “Mahler Contra Wagner: The Philosophical Legacy of Romanticism in Gustav Mahler’s Third and Fourth Symphonies,” The German Quarterly 77, no. 2 (2004): 188–209. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3252122.
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