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Are You Sleeping?: The First Eleven Measures of Mahler’s 4th Symphony
Allen Gimbel

Lawrence University, Appleton, WI, May 1995

The following lecture was given in 1995 at Lawrence University's Conservatory of Music, Appleton, WI, preceding a performance of Mahler's Fourth Symphony by the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra, Bridget Michaele Reischl, conductor. I would like to thank Jeffery Meyer, a student of mine at the time at Lawrence and presently Director of Orchestras at Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY, for his assistance.

*****

Frére Jacques, Frére Jacques,
Dormez vous? Dormez vous?
Sonnez le matines, sonnez le matines,
Din, dan, don; Din, dan, don.

[play opening, Mahler Symphony #1, III, recording]

Many of you may have recognized this lovely melody as 'Frére Jacques' (not, I hope, as 'Stranger in Paradise'). [1] "Morning bells are ringing, morning bells are ringing..."

[play PT, Mahler Symphony #4, I, mm. 37, recording]

But how many of you recognized that melody as, also, 'Frére Jacques'? It is obvious that the tune does not lie at, or even on, the surface of the music. And it is certainly not the whole tune, but rather one phrase of it, specifically the third one ("Sonnez le matines"): D, E, D, C, B, A, G.

[play pitches]

How does Mahler turn this banal musical idea into the principal theme of the first movement of his Fourth Symphony, which you will hear performed this evening by the Lawrence Symphony Orchestra? (WHY he does is another question, which I will return to below.) The musical process is that of ORNAMENTATION, produced by prolonging the very simple constituent pitches of the tune by surrounding them with the stocks-in-trade of tonal composition, namely arpeggiations, neighbor notes, and passing tones.

[Play example of composing-out process:
D E D C B A G
D (e) C B A G
D (d# E) C B A G
D (d# E) C b a ;g a B c d; c A G
g b D (d# E) d C b a; g a B c d; c A G
(d e f# ) g2 b1 D2 (d# E) d C b a; g a B c d; c A G]
[tune proper]

Certainly that is a rather convoluted method of expressing such a disarmingly simple little tune. After all, 'tis a gift to be simple. [2] Why doesn't he just come out and write 'Frére Jacques'?

The answer is: because he already did, as the opening of the third movement of his First Symphony, the excerpt you heard at the very opening of this lecture. Is Mahler quoting himself? (And if so, why did he originally give it to a solo double bass, rather than, say, a cello? Or a viola? [3] Was he trying to tell us something -- DISTURBING?) But, even more importantly, how do we really know that morning bells are ringing? How can we be sure that a crazed Schenkerian Theorist is not just hallucinating on tonal paradigms and -- God forbid! -- INTERPRETING them?

[Play recording, mm. 1-3]

Well, it certainly sounds as if bells are ringing -- SLEIGHBELLS, no less. Is the next hidden tune going to be "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas"? (Well, this is Appleton. Anybody hear the weather report this evening?) And why Christmas? Mahler was JEWISH! But he converted. Why? Was it only to keep his conducting career going? (which, I assure you, was certainly one of the reasons). And did everybody hear what the clarinets were playing?

[Play clarinet line, mm. 2-3]

So 'Frére Jacques' seems to have some important part in the very opening of Mahler's Fourth Symphony. And it seems to have the function of a kind of recapitulation, not of a previously heard tune within this symphony (which would be unlikely, since I've only been discussing the first 7 measures of the piece), but of a tune previously heard in an earlier symphony. A recapitulation -- a Recurrence.

"Alas, man recurs eternally!... Go out to the roses and bees and flocks of doves! But go out especially to the song-birds, so that you may learn SINGING from them!"

[Play birdie, mm.2-3]

"For your animals will know, O Zarathustra, who you are and must become: behold, YOU ARE THE TEACHER OF ETERNAL RECURRENCE, that is now YOUR destiny!
That you have to be the first to teach this doctrine -- how should this great destiny not be your greatest danger and sickness!
Behold, we know what you teach: that all things recur eternally and we ourselves with them, and that we have already existed an infinite number of times before, and all things with us." (pp. 236-7)

[play opening of Symphony #3, IV, recording]

"O Mensch! O Mensch! Gibt Acht! Gibt Acht!" (O Mankind! O Mankind! Take Heed! Take Heed!) Thus spoke Zarathustra. And thus spoke Nietzsche. And thus, apparently, speaks Mahler. This is the opening of the fourth movement of Mahler's Third Symphony, a setting of Zarathustra's final Song to the Higher Men from Nietzsche's great work. What words follow those I just cited?

"What does the deep midnight say?
'I sleep, I sleep.
And now awaken at dreaming's end.'" (p. 333)

Dormez vous?

The opening: A-B-A-B-A-B-A. A simple neighbor note figure -- a simple RECURRING neighbor note figure, and for Mahler a clear symbol of Nietzsche's doctrine of Eternal Recurrence, which states that all time and all things recur in never-ending cycles, and that, since this is true, man had better be an enlightened entity, rather than a foolish one.

[Play recording Symphony #4, opening, mm. 1-7]

Let's review. Mahler's Fourth Symphony opens with bells -- sleighbells -- ringing, over which we hear the Nietzschean motive of Eternal Recurrence. Echoes of Frére Jacques appear in the clarinets, over which a birdie tweets. And then the principal theme in the violins, which turns out to be a disguised version of 'Sonnez le Matines', the source of which we had just heard warbling in the clarinets.

Why Frére Jacques? The tune is so familiar we might have a tendency to forget the meaning of the words. Frére Jacques-- Brother Jacques, that is, Brother as in Friar Jacques. "Are you sleeping? Bells are ringing." What are the bells? Is it the phone? No, these are clearly Church bells. A juxtaposition of the Church with Nietzsche -- could there be a spiritual crisis lurking here?

"'And what does the saint do in the forest?', asked Zarathustra. The saint answered: 'I make songs and sing them, and when I make songs, I laugh, weep, and mutter: thus I praise God'... [could this be a reference to St. Gustav?] But when Zarathustra was alone, he spoke thus to his heart: 'Could it be possible! This old saint has not yet heard in his forest that GOD IS DEAD!...

[later, Zarathustra is preaching to his followers...]

I entreat you, my brothers, REMAIN TRUE TO THE EARTH, and do not believe those who speak to you of superterrestrial hopes!
They are poisoners, whether they know it or not.
They are despisers of life, atrophying and self-poisoned men, of whom the earth is weary: so let them be gone!
Once blasphemy against God was the greatest blasphemy, but God died, and thereupon these blasphemers died too.
To blaspheme the earth is now the most dreadful offense..." (pp. 41-2)

Recall the meaning of Nietzsche's often-misunderstood phrase. "God is Dead"... because Man is God. To blaspheme the earth is to blaspheme mankind, and that is now the most dreadful offense.

[Play Symphony #4, mm. 1-11, recording]

We may now move to the third phrase of the symphony -- here we discover two new elements. The first is an innocent sounding three-note pickup that opens the phrase (d1-b2-g2).

[Play opening of phrase]

Those of you who know the symphony might recognize these three notes as the exact pitches (and rhythm) that open the final movement of the piece, a setting of a poem from 'Des Knaben Wunderhorn', a collection of folk poetry that Mahler employed constantly during the first stage of his career.

[Play opening of Symphony #4, movement IV, recording]

This poem deals with a child's view of heaven (a terrifying thought since Mahler was to lose his infant daughter just a few years later).

The soprano soloist sings:

"We lead the lives of angels,
Dancing and springing, skipping and singing,
St. Peter in heaven looks on!...
All manner of herbs aromatic,
they grow in our garden ecstatic!...
Good apples, good pears and good peaches,
to eat them the gardeners beseech us..."

So we can add the spectre of death to our motivic inventory, but let's return to the very opening of the principal theme.

[Play movement I, mm.3-4]

Before the morning bells start ringing, we hear the following three notes: G B D, with passing tones in between the B and the D (m.4). [demonstrate] This 3-note figure is the same as that of the pickup to the third phrase of the movement (m.7), only BACKWARDS.

[Demonstrate]

As if it were a mirror. Could Mahler be envisioning his own death here? Is that why the bells are ringing?

[Demonstrate mirror of arpeggiation]

There are, then, two versions of the arpeggiation figure that opens the fourth movement, both present in the opening 7 bars of the first movement. It is interesting to note that, throughout the entire first movement, Mahler employs 13 different permutations of the idea of unfolding the triad --G B D, D B G, B D G, G D B, both in 3 and 4 voices, and with variations in register. Thus, in this symphony a melodically unfolded triad is not merely an abstract fragment of the tonal system, but rather a premonition of a child's death. How metaphorical is the concept of Child in this instance? Let's continue and see.

Let's now examine the second new element of this phrase, the horn solo.

[Play horn solo]

Fans of Wagner will certainly recognize this as a very slightly ornamented version of a leitmotif from his Good Friday opera, "Parsifal", another spiritually confused young innocent.

[Play Faith motive from Parsifal prelude, recording]

This motive represents Faith in Wagner's opera. But Mahler has used this motive before, notably in the Finale of his First Symphony.

[Play Symphony #1, IV, climax (recording)]

But there is an even clearer presentation in the coda of the first movement of this symphony, again played by the horn. Let's listen to the coda.

[Play coda, recording]

What is Mahler expressing Faith in? The answer may be found in this movement's last four bars, and this will help us understand the juxtaposition of the opening of the fourth movement with the Faith motive that we've examined in mm. 7-11. It will also help us to understand that, contrary to popular belief, this is hardly the cheery symphony that it is so often made out to be.

Listen to the joyous motive that opens the movement's final phrase.

[Play mm. 346-7]

This is clearly a simple ornamentation of the following three pitches: B A G.

[demonstrate: B d b g A c a f# G d]

Now listen to this brief excerpt, the opening of Beethoven's Piano Sonata op. 81a ('Les Adieux').

[Play opening of Beethoven]

Above these notes in the score, Beethoven writes 'Le-be-wohl': farewell. (I might add parenthetically here that this motive begins to come to fruition in Mahler's next Symphony -- #5 -- the opening of which has been foreshadowed in the trumpet solo of m.225 of THIS symphony; and this Lebewohl motive becomes the basis of much of the first movement of Mahler's Seventh Symphony, which brings up the question of how many symphonies Mahler really wrote, an important question that I will return to below.)

It is hard not to notice that in the presentation of this figure -- which has not been heard up to this point -- bells are very noticeably ringing.

[Play coda again, recording]

Let us now return, then, to Mahler's rather repulsive presentation of Frére Jacques from his First Symphony, but this time concentrate on the incessant perfect fourths being played as the accompaniment by the timpani.

[Play Symphony #1, III, opening, recording]

This motive is itself a quotation from Mahler's early song cycle, 'Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen' (Songs of a Wayfarer), where, in its final moments, the distraught protagonist treads toward his death (a suicide, I assure you, and a bloody one at that -- the title of the preceding song is 'I have a gleaming knife'). This motive -- sequences of perfect fourths -- is defined throughout Mahler as THE death motive, not that of some metaphorical child, but of Mahler, the Man. Now listen to the closing bars one more time.

[Play coda again, recording]

And now we can see what Mahler has faith in. Faith... in... DEATH. And we can see how this was being foreshadowed way back at the beginning of the movement, in mm.7-11.

So how many symphonies DID Mahler write? The textbooks, record guides, and publishers all say either nine or ten, depending upon how much of the final incomplete torso one counts as a symphony. The truth of the matter, however, is that Mahler wrote only one symphony, broken up into nine (or nine and a half) parts. All of the motives we have been discussing appear -- in various guises and disguises, to be sure -- throughout all of the symphonies, with additional recurring motives besides. In so doing, Mahler has created what is surely one of the most riveting autobiographies in the history of that genre, one which articulates man's three most critical obsessions: life, death, and God.

Time will not permit further detailed reflection on the remaining 1239 bars of this great and dreadfully misunderstood work. Nevertheless, as you listen tonight, reflect on the following items of interest:

-the first movement's second theme, another prolonged, disguised version 'Sonnez le Matines'
-the first movement's closing theme, played by the oboe, a version of the Faith motive
-the first movement's codetta in the exposition, which contains, in order, the opening of the last movement, the Faith motive, and one last version of 'Sonnez le Matines'
-the fact that the first movement's exposition closes in the tonic, rather than the dominant or some other tonal area -- the only sonata form in the literature that I know of that exhibits this tonal structure, and clearly a further manifestation of the concept of eternal recurrence
-the spotlighting of a mistuned solo violin in the second movement, the solo violin being a Mahler signifier throughout all of the symphonies, but interestingly here also a reference to the medieval picture of Death (a skeleton) playing the fiddle (Mahler marks this "wie ein Fiedel")
-the astonishing glimpse of heaven in that same movement as the clarinets sing a line from the song of the last movement, a line that will later be sung to the words: "die englischen Stimmen ermuntern die Sinnen" (" the angel's voices awaken the soul") (dormez vous?)
-and, certainly not least, the breathtaking slow movement, which would consume another lecture at the very minimum.

Can music mean anything other than itself? This question, which has raged throughout the history of Western music, and continues to rage in the world of aesthetics to this day, finds an unequivocal answer in the symphonies of Gustav Mahler. Any analytic approach that confronts these works with a purely formalist image, a view of these works as being exclusively abstract constructions of sounds moving in time, can never hope to approach any legitimate interpretation of these monumental works' content. I hope I have given you an introduction to their content, and the interest to pursue such study further. And, most importantly, I hope that I've given you the foundation for an interesting hearing. Thank you.

Notes:
Nietzsche references are from 'Thus Spoke Zarathustra', trans. R.J. Hollingdale, Penguin Books, London, 1969.

[1] This refers to an irritating commercial making the rounds on television at the time hawking greatest hits of classical music. It opened with Borodin's famous tune from 'Prince Igor', to which the snooty salesman sniffed in the obligatory British accent: "surely you recognize this lovely melody as..."

[2] A reference to Copland's 'Appalachian Spring', which was performed at Lawrence around that time.

[3] A reference to an earlier lecture on Elgar's Enigma Variations, and its repercussions. See "I've Got a Secret: Elgar's Enigma."

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