Symphony No. 1 in D major

At its first performance in 1889 and up to c. 1896, the work included an additional movement, usually known as Blumine, the title it bears in the autograph full score of the 1893 version of the Symphony (AF2). It was included in the first three performances, in which it was placed second as it is in AF2 and ACF2. It is not present in the earliest surviving manuscript, an incomplete copyist's manuscript that also lacks the slow movement (ACF1), but there is strong circumstantial evidence that it was present when the manuscript was bound, though placed third (or, less likely, fourth) in the movement sequence. As early as 1893 there seems to have been some doubt as to whether Blumine would be used in the revised version that Mahler prepared that year; it was eventually re-incorporated into AF2 at a relatively late stage. The definitive decision to exclude the movement was made between the Weimar (1894) and Berlin (1896) performances.

In October 1901 Mahler, in conversation with Natalie Bauer-Lechner, recalled his decision to exclude Blumine (NBL2, 169):

This seems to be an important statement of principles, but only partly corresponds to the surviving evidence:

• For Mahler, similarity of mood and/or tonality was undesirable between adjacent movements.

• On the other hand it was possible for an extreme contrast in mood between adjacent movements to be troubling, and in the case of the Second led the composer to contemplate a different ordering of movements. In the event it was the first principle that took precedence in his decision making process:
  Original and final key sequence
  C minor - A major - C minor - D major - F minor/G major/E major
  Alternative sequence
  C minor - C minor - A major - D major - F minor/G major/E major
  It seems that what really troubled Mahler about the alternative was that the work would begin with two movements in the same key and mode, this despite the fact that there was a clear precedent for such a tonal arrangement in the work that in other ways informed the design of the Second, namely Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. More than ten years later it was clearly again the crucial issue behind his decision to reorder the inner movements of the Sixth Symphony.

• No autograph outlines for the Third Symphony have been located and the printed transcriptions, published by Paul Bekker and Alma Mahler, do not refer to the tonalities of the movements; however the one surviving autograph outline for the Fourth Symphony (very different to the final design) does include the keys of the planned movements.

• Mahler's assertion that the second movement, Blumine, was finally eliminated from the First Symphony on similar tonal grounds is unconvincing, since the original key sequence of the five-movement version was:
  D major - C major - A major - D minor - F minor/D major.

Literary and other Sources

a) The overall title adopted in 1893–4, ‘Titan’, is possibly an allusion to the novel of the same name, written in 1800–2 by one of Mahler’s favourite authors, Jean-Paul. To what extent this source had an impact on the design or content of the symphony is not entirely clear. According to Bruno Walter, who first got to know the composer in the autumn of 1894,  it was more a matter of a general tribute (BWGM, 95–6; BWGME, 140–1 [revised below] – for the significance of Walter’s reference to another Jean Paul novel, Siebenkäs, see the discussion later in this section):

This assessment is supported by another of Mahler’s artistic colleagues from the Hamburg years, J.B. Foerster who commented (JBFDP, 409f.):

However, another (and rather more ambivalent) observer of Mahler in his early Hamburg years was the critic Ferdinand Pfohl, who suggest that the choice of title did not reflect any very serious thought on the part of the composer (FPGM, 17–8):

If Pfohl’s tacit assumption was correct, the title 'Titan' had nothing to do with Jean-Paul, and that seems to have been what Mahler told Nathalie Bauer-Lechner in 1900 (NBL, 148–9; NBL2, 173–5; NBLE, 157–8):

b) The subtitle for the Part I of the Symphony given in the handbill for the Hamburg performance in 1893 alludes to Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornenstücke oder Ehestand, Tod und Hochzeit des Armenadvokaten F. St. Siebenkäs im Reichsmarktflecken Kuhschnappel by Jean Paul, published in 1796–7.

c) The title used for the original second (later subsequently deleted) movement, Blumine, may be an allusion to Jean Paul’s Herbst-Blumine, oder gesammelte Werkchen aus Zeitschriften (3 vols, 1810–20).

d) As early as 1889 Mahler told a journalist that the funeral march drew on a picture called ‘Hunter's Funeral’ and the the 1893 Hamburg programme for the fourth (third) movement refers to a ‘parodistic picture, known to all children in Austria, ‘The Hunter’s Funeral’ from an old book of children’s fairy tales’; these and all the subsequent references are probably to ‘Wie die Thiere den Jäger begraben’ a woodcut after a drawing by Moritz von Schwind (1804–71) (from Münchner Bilderbogen No. 44: Die guten Freunde (Munich, 1850):

Related Works

a) The first movement incorporates complete passages from ‘Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld’, the second song of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen.

b) Richard Specht (RSpGM1, 17) reported, perhaps on the basis of information from Mahler, that much of the first movement was based on motives taken from the sketches for the music of the first Act of Rübezahl. See also d) below.

c) Blumine, the eventually-deleted second movement in the five-movement version, was originally composed as one of the numbers in Mahler’s incidental music to tableaux vivants based on Scheffel’s Der Trompeter von Säkkingen.

d) The second movement in the four-movement version, uses material with a strong resemblance to ‘Maitanz im Grünen’ from Mahler’s early collection of 5 Lieder für Tenorstimme, a song Mahler also planned to use in the Märchenoper Rübezahl (1879–1890). The song was later published as ‘Hans und Grete’ in Lieder und Gesänge (1892).

e) The central section of the third movement is a purely orchestral version of the closing section of the final song of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, ‘Die zwei blauen Augen’ (bb. 37–67).

f) The finale (bb. 340–6) re-uses in slightly modified form the climactic gesture from Das klagende Lied (Der Spielmann, bb. 451–7).

Quotations

a) The main section of the third movement is based on a minor-mode version of the famous round Bruder Martin.

b) Constantin Floros has suggested that the finale of the Symphony alludes to Liszt’s Dante Symphony in both overall design (epitomised by Mahler’s movement heading D'all Inferno al Paradiso) and motivic elements, and that the chorale (bb. 296–304) is ‘nothing more than a rhythmic variation of the Grail theme from Wagner’s Parsifal which is [itself] shaped from Liszt’s Cross symbol and the Dresden Amen’ (see CFGM, II/247–65; CFGME 43–48).

Duration

In 1894 Mahler’s own estimate of the duration of the symphony (i.e. the five-movement version, with no repeats in the first movement or scherzo) – offered in a letter of 24 April to Hans von Bronsart – was 48 minutes. This is broadly in line with three timings that appear in performers' annotations to Mahler’s orchestral part set (GMPO2) used for later performances of the four-movement version.

Metronome Markings

At the start of his career as a published composer Mahler included some metronome markings despite voicing concerns about their limited value as early as January 1896 (NBL2, 42; NBLE, 46). In the case of the First Symphony, there are such markings in some of the early printed sources. The table below lists these, and those in the 1893 copyist's manuscript, together with details of the variant tempo indications in the Scherzo:

Bar		ACF2	PF1	PTp4	PS1	PF2
I
1	Langsam. Schleppend	=56–60
9	Più mosso	=104
18	Tempo I	=60
22	Più mosso	=104
63	Immer sehr gemächlich	=88
135	Hier ist nach allmächlicher Steigerung  ein frisches, belebtes Zeitmass eingetreten		=116		=116	=116
163	(= wie füher die )	=96	=96	=96	=96	=96
207	Sehr gemächlich	=66	=66	=66	=66	=66
220	Etwas bewegter, aber immer noch sehr ruhig	=72	=72	=72	=72	=72
257	Hier is wieder das Zeitmass: „Gemächlich” eingetreten	=96	=96	=96	=96	=96
358	a Tempo (Hauptzeitmass)	=84	=84	=84	=84	=84
364	Etwas bewegter	=92	=92	=92	=92	=92
416	Hier ist bereits ein ziemlich frisches Zeitmass eingetreten, welches jedoch noch immer etwas zu steigern ist	=112	=112	=112	=112	=112
II
1	Andante allegretto con moto	Y	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
II/III
Bar		ACF2	PF1	PTp4	PS1	PF2
1	Kräftig bewegt. (Langsames Walzer-tempo) [ACF1/PTp4] Kräftig bewegt [PS1] Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell [PF2]	=66	=66	=66	=66	=66
93	Vorwärts		Y	Y	Y	N
101	Vorwärts		Y	Y	Y	N
106	Immer vorwärts	N	N	Y	N	N
118	Tempo 1 Hier ist das Tempo bereits frischer, als am Anfang	N N	Y N	N Y	Y N	N N
133	Vorwärts		Y	Y	Y	Y
153	Immer vorwärts		Y	Y	Y	Y
159	accelerando al Segno *		Y	Y	Y	Y
171	Mässig		Y	Y	Y	Y
175	Recht gemächlich (Etwas langsamer als im Anfang)	=54	=54	=54	=54	=54
285	Tempo primo		Y	Y	Y	Y
IV/III
Bar		ACF2	PF1	PTp4	PS1	PF2
1	Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen	=76		=76
83	Sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweisen	=72	=72	=72	=72	=72
V/IV
Bar		ACF2	PF1	PTp4	PS1	PF2
1	Stürmisch bewegt	=92	=92	=92	=92	=92
55	Energisch	=108	=108	=108	=108
254	Wieder wie zu Anfang. Stürmisch bewegt	=112		=112

A number of these tempi are rather swifter than those commonly adopted today (particularly the scherzo and slow movement) and it is also worth noting that the tempo markings in the earliest printed editions of the score imply a double accelerando in the first section of the Scherzo. (The curious reading at bar 118 in PTp4 suggests a single, longer accelerando, but this may be the result of an error or oversight.) The metronome markings at the start of the work that are given uniquely in ACF2 indicate that the fanfares are to be considerably faster than main pulse at this point – perhaps anticipating the tempo that is to be the goal of the whole movement. (For a more extended discussion of tempi in the first two movements, see PBMDC.) Mahler provided these relatively detailed indications in this manuscript because it was to be used by Richard Strauss at the preliminary rehearsals for the 1894 performance in Weimar.

Doubling of the horns (Finale, bb. 657ff.)

Mahler's requirements for this passage evolved over the years. Two important letters dating (probably) from February 1898 to Franz Schalk – who was preparing for the Prague première on 3 March 1898 – make it clear that even at this date Mahler considered two strategies (GMUB, 159, 161; GMUBE, 155, 157):

Clearly at this stage Mahler's preference was for additional horns, with the use of a trumpet and trombone as a possible alternative, and the first edition of the score includes a stave for the Hörner Verstärkung, an unspecified number of additional horns playing in octaves, with a footnote (p. 162, at the upbeat to bar 657) and a headnote (p. 163, at bar 657):

The scoring of this passage and the notes remained unaltered in PS1 (1906). Nevertheless the first edition of the orchestral material (PO1) contained parts for the Hörner Verstärkung and for a fifth trumpet and fourth trombone, playing in octaves.

Two of the later annotated copies of the first edition of the full score have autograph additions to the note on p. 162:

The APF5 addition is adopted in PF2, and pp. 162–71 re-engraved to replace the single stave for the Hörner Verstärkung with two additional staves, one for each of the optional reinforcing instruments.

Critical Edition

SWIa: Gustav Mahler, Symphonie Nr. 1 in vier Sätzen für großes Orchester (Revidierte Ausgabe), Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Band I, ed. Erwin Ratz (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1967)

SWIb: Gustav Mahler, Symphonie Nr. 1 in vier Sätzen für großes Orchester (Verbesserte Ausgabe), Sämtliche Werke, Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Band I, ed. Sander Wilkens (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1992)