Gustav Mahler's 6th Symphony, nicknamed his 'Tragic Symphony' follows a pattern set by Mahler's previous 5 other symphonies: scale. Everything about this piece is big - its orchestration, its length, its ideas, its structures - everything. A lesson, perhaps, in the overwhelming, the sheer scale of the piece does not undermine its intricacies. Mahler himself said that his 'sixth would propound riddles, the solution of which may be attempted only by a generation which has absorbed and truly digested [his] first five symphonies'. Perhaps you could take from this that, while upon listening the vastness of the piece is immediately apparent, its meanings and deeper levels of enjoyment can only really be unlocked by getting inside the composer's head.
Mahler, for me, is the best example of a composer whose music is indeed enjoyable on first listen, but then also grows on you enormously as you become more familiar with its detail. A cross between the way in which I have described Tchaikovsky and Brahms, for example. The result really is quite phenomenal.
The piece begins with a whopping 25(ish) minute movement beginning in full, almost aggressive force. Many of the musical ideas which are revisited throughout the symphony are set up here, but 25 minutes is more than enough time to do some exploring within the movement itself, which showcases Mahler's immense skills with orchestration and musical colour as well as his ability to manipulate the music as if it were telling a story, whilst somehow also presenting the music to you in its own right. In just one movement, we are taken through a whole host of emotions, sounds, tonalities, melodies, dynamics... and here we have a composer very precise in his orchestral markings - he knows exactly what he wants players to do, which results in incredibly detailed music both at its deepest as well as a carefully controlled whole.
The order of the following two movements - a scherzo and an andante moderato - is hotly debated (as is the origin of the symphony's nickname), as Mahler changed the order in some later scores. The scherzo may act as a further development of a lot of the themes and moods of the first movement, prolonging the sense of grandeur and, at times, creating a truly encapsulating sense of terror and doom. By enormous contrast, the andante moderato (probably more often played as the second movement, to fit with the most 'up to date' scores) showcases something entirely different. Mahler's ability to manipulate some very beautiful melodies - and therefore the emotions that go with them - has arguably never been more apparent. He brings together a number of ideas on a number of instruments and combines them in this movement's final moments, consolidating the immense emotional content of the first part of the movement into something truly moving.
The fourth movement is the largest of all - at half an hour in length, its sheer variety of emotion almost puts the first movement to shame, with incredibly tumultuous moments and then moments of relative calm, building layer upon layer of emotional intensity and unpredictability. There's even an actual hammer in this one. Mahler is well known for his enormous finales, and this movement appears to be building towards something similar. However, after a suitably grand culmination of ideas, the piece has still not yet finished. The first idea from the movement interrupts, as the layers of intensity begin to fade away, along with the music... but not before one final outpouring of emotion.
I once read a review of the piece - and agree wholeheartedly - that the piece is not characterised by its quieter ending, but by the way in which anything could happen right up until the very end. It's like a well written story - there could be a happy ending, or a sad one, and you are genuinely on the edge of your seat to find out which one it is. In this case, it's not so happy (tragic, you might say) - but that's what good story writers do - they show you that they aren't always going to take you to a nice resolution, but that you will never know when this will be. The result is that the stakes become all the more high...
If you've enjoyed this, the fab youth orchestra that I'm part of (City of Sheffield Youth Orchestra) is playing this piece in Oxford University's Sheldonian Theatre on 31st July, and in Sheffield Cathedral on 2nd August:
http://www.venues.ox.ac.uk/event/city-of-sheffield-youth-orchestra/
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/mahler-6th-symphony-sheffield-tickets-34479778947?utm_campaign=new_event_email&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eb_email&utm_term=viewmyevent_button
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