Today in Music (1895): Mahler’s Symphony No 2 premiered

Symphony No. 2 in C minor (Resurrection) Gustav Mahler

Composed: 1888-1894 First Performed: December 13, 1895 Peak: -- Sales (in millions): -- Genre: classical > symphony

Parts/Movements: Allegro maestoso Andante moderato In ruhig fließender Bewegung (With quietly flowing movement) “Urlicht” (Primal light) Im Tempo des Scherzos (In the tempo of the scherzo) Average Duration: 80 to 90 minutes

Rating: 3.909 out of 5.00 (average of 3 ratings) Awards: (Click on award to learn more).

About the Work: Gustav Mahler’s second symphony, referred to as the Resurrection Symphony, was one of the composer’s “most popular and successful works during his lifetime. A 2016 poll from BBC Music Magazine named it the fifth greatest symphony of all time. It was his first major work that established his lifelong view of the beauty of afterlife and resurrection.” WK Mahler posed questions such as, “Why have you lived? Why have you suffered? Is it all some huge, awful joke? We have to answer these questions somehow if we are to go on living – indeed, even if we are only to go on dying!” LA He said these were questions posed in the first movement which would be answered in the finale. LA In 1888, Mahler began writing a symphonic poem called “Totenfeier (Funeral Rites)” which would become the first movement of the symphony. He said it represented the funeral of the hero from his first symphony, “whose death presented those superheated existential questions.” LA That same year, he started sketching out the second movement as well. He said it “sounds completely incongruous after the first” but that “it isn’t lack of understanding on the part of the audience…The Andante is composed as a sort of intermezzo (like an echo of long past days from the life of him whom we carried to the grave in the first movement.” LA It wasn’t until 1893, however, that he composed the second and third movements. WK The third movement is essentially a symphonic adaptation of “St. Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fishes,” a song Mahler wrote based on a collection of German folk poetry called Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy’s Magic Horn). LA He struggled with the finale because he knew it would be compared to Beethoven’s ninth symphony since both “use a chorus as the centerpiece of a final movement which begins with references to and is much longer than those preceding it.” WK The composition was completed in 1894 after Mahler received inspiration from the funeral of Hans von Bülow, a fellow conductor at the Hamburg Opera. Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s poem “Die Auferstehung (The Resurrection)” was performed and, as Mahler said, “It struck me like lightning…and everything was revealed to me clear and pain.” WK He incorporated the first two verses of the hym into his work. In March of 1895, Mahler conducted the first three movements with the Berlin Philharmonic. Then in December he led that orchestra in a premiere of the full work. LA

Resources and Related Links: DMDB encyclopedia entry for Gustav Mahler LA LAphil.com “Symphony No. 2, ‘Resurrection’” WK Wikipedia First posted 12/7/2023.