Gustav Mahler, 1860-1911. Adagietto from Symphony No. 5 in C sharp minor. Completed 1902, first performance October 18, 1904 at Köln (Cologne). The complete symphony is scored for a large orchestra, but the Adagietto is scored for harp and strings only.
Like Leonard Bernstein after him, Gustav Mahler's superb compositional abilities were hamstrung by his overwhelming success as a conductor. In his position as Kapellmeister of the Vienna Court Opera, which he held for ten years beginning in 1897, Mahler was forced to devote most of the year to his duties with that organization, and could only devote himself to composition during his summer vacations in the Austrian Alps. Nevertheless, he managed to complete nine of the greatest symphonies ever conceived, plus a number of songs and two other large orchestral works.
Mahler began work on his Fifth Symphony in 1901, soon after coming near death due to a severe hemorrhage. The symphony reflects that experience in a stormy, melancholy opening movement (which, not incidentally, pays clear homage in its opening rhythms to Beethoven's own Fifth Symphony). Nevertheless, it works its way through a complex of emotions to a triumphant finale that is one of the most rousing in all Romanticism.
Before the finale, the famous Adagietto (``little Adagio'') provides a brief respite for the listener to reflect and relax after the emotional upheaval of the first three movements. Surely the most beautiful music the composer ever set to paper, it serves as perhaps the supreme example of Mahler's mastery of orchestration. Most of the orchestra is idled, but rather than choosing a conventional string ensemble, he adds a single harp to provide an underpinning of motion to the lazily soaring melody. This simple change is pure genius, producing a sonority that has never been matched before or since. Closing the eyes and relaxing in the concert hall, one can easily imagine a peaceful sunset in the mountains the composer loved, bringing a perfect end to the day's solitude and the last true happiness he would know.
© 1994, Geoff Kuenning
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