SYMPHONY NO.

7 IN E MINOR
When Mahler began his Seventh Symphony, he started in the middle. As he told the Swiss
critic William Ritter, the structure is symmetrical—three night pieces, with a finale
representing bright day, and a first movement as foundation for the whole. Indeed, the first
and last movements flank three character pieces, which are themselves symmetrical in that
the first and third are called Nachtmusik.
It was with these two night musics that Mahler began this score in the summer of
1904—a happy summer in a happy year. From his felicity at Maiernigg on the Wörther See,
Mahler had wrested his most tragic music so far, the shattering close of his Sixth Symphony
and the last two Kindertotenlieder. Rightly it has been said that no composer's music is as
autobiographical as Mahler's, but we must heed his stricture that his symphonies are "not
just the diary of an opera director."
Even before the finale of the Sixth Symphony was complete, Mahler drew what he
called the architectural sketches for the Seventh. It was the first time he had worked on two
symphonies simultaneously. But summer came to an end, and with it the Maiernigg idyll.
Mahler plunged into a frenetic year. In June 1905, he was finally free to head back to
Maiernigg. Returning to his manuscripts was always part joyous anticipation, part nervous
apprehension. It was one thing to be at Maiernigg again, another to invent the framework
into which to fit his two Nachtmusiken. He could not find the way in. Despairing, he took off
alone for the Dolomites. Hiking around Lake Misurina had released his creative energies in
the past. But this time nothing happened. Profoundly depressed, he returned. He took the
express to Klagenfurt, then the local as far as Krumpendorf, where he was rowed across the
lake. With the first dipping of the oars into the water, he recalled later, "the theme of the
introduction (or rather, its rhythm, its atmosphere) came to me."

From that moment he worked like a man possessed, as indeed he must have been to bring
this gigantic structure under control by mid-August, even if not finished in detail. Three
years later, on September 19, 1908, he conducted the first performance, in Prague.
The Seventh is a victory symphony, not a personal narrative but a journey from
night to day (the Seventh is sometimes called Song of the Night). The focus is on nature—on
the world humans inhabit more than on humans themselves. If the Seventh is a Romantic
symphony, one should add that the "distancing" effect produced by the outward-pointing,
non-narrative character of the music can also be perceived as Classical. For that matter,
Mahler's refusal to issue a program for the Seventh is also part of the work's Classical
temper.
The opening is music in which we may hear not only the stroke of oars, but the
suggestion of cortege. This is night indeed. The tenor horn roars his song, that verb being
Mahler's own. Suddenly the tempo changes, and the character becomes more severe. The
opening music returns, but the tempo accelerates into a fiery allegro and a third march,
aggressively impetuous. Mahler has carried us from a slow introduction into the main body
of a sonata -allegro movement, adhering to the design that afforded symphonists from
Haydn through Bruckner a broad range of expressive possibilities.
Now, settling into a new key, Mahler brings in a gorgeous theme, a highly inflected
violin melody full of yearning and verve, rising to a tremendous climax, to merge into the
music of the second of the three marches. More such merges lie ahead. At the focal point of
the development comes what must be the most enchanted minute in all Mahler. Across a
high note in the violins, trumpets and high woodwinds sound calls and questions while low
strings with a quartet of bassoons, echoed by soft brass, musingly recall the second march
and transform its character from focused to veiled. It is the harp that wakens us into an
ecstatic vision of the glorious lyric theme, with the march fragments still perceptible in the
background. A sudden plunge of violins returns us, shockingly, to the slow introduction.
The recapitulation has begun. It is tautly compressed. The coda is fierce and abrupt.
The opening of the first of the Nachtmusiken is a minute of preparation and search.
The theme that emerges is part march, part song, given a piquant flavor by that mix of
major and minor we find so often in Mahler. The Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg said
that this movement had been inspired by Rembrandt's so-called Night Watch, though the
composer Alphons Diepenbrock said that Mahler "cited the painting only as a point of
comparison." The initial march theme is succeeded by a broad cello tune, seemingly naive
but full of asymmetries and surprises. Distant cowbells, reminiscent of the Sixth Symphony,
become part of the texture, and wandering woodwinds suggest bird calls. Suddenly a
fortissimo trumpet chord of C major droops into minor. The music shrinks away from this
other reminder of the tragic Sixth Symphony, until nothing is left but a cello harmonic and a
ping on the harp.
Mahler's direction for the Scherzo is "schattenhaft," literally "like a shadow" but
perhaps better rendered as "spectral." Drums and low strings disagree about what the
opening note should be. Notes scurry about, cobwebs brush the face, witches step out in a
ghastly parody of a waltz. The trio is consoling, almost.
The first Nachtmusik was a nocturnal patrol, the second is a serenade that Mahler
marks Andante amoroso. Guitar, mandolin, and harp create a magical atmosphere. Once
Mahler touches the Fifth Symphony's Adagietto, his love letter to Alma, his wife.
After these four night scenes comes the brightness of day, with a thunderous tattoo
of drums to waken us. The orchestra proclaims a spirited fanfare whose trills put it on the
edge of parody—sometimes so near the edge that, unless you know Mahler's language and
temperament, it is possible to misunderstand him completely, for example to mistake
humor for ineptness, as many of his first listeners did. Few here will fail to be reminded of
Die Meistersinger.
But what is that about? William Ritter understood that Mahler never quotes Wagner
but "re-begins" the Overture to take it far beyond. Mahler uses Die Meistersinger as an
easily recognizable symbol for a good-humored victory finale. No part of the harmonic map
is untouched, while the rhythms sway in untamed abandon. So high is the humor that even
the dread major- into-minor triad from the Sixth Symphony is rendered harmless when it
appears.
Then we hear music we have not heard for a long time-the fiery march from the first
movement. Or rather, we hear a series of attempts to inject it into the proceedings, though
the instruments who propose it cannot seem to get it quite right. Just as we think the
attempt has been abandoned, the drums stir everything up again, and the theme enters in
glory. The circle is complete, and Mahler charges to his thunderous final cadence.

—Michael Steinberg
© 2014, San Francisco Symphony. Used by permission.