Between Mahler’s three vocal/choral symphonies with texts from the famous anthology of folk poetry Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Nos. 2, 3, and 4) and the vast affirmation of the choral Eighth Symphony, there stand three orchestral symphonies. They have in common a large scale and powerful intimations of struggle, but whereas the Fifth and Seventh achieve optimistic resolutions, the Sixth does not. It is also unique among them for its basically classical outlines, though the orchestra called for is far from classical in size or composition, and the course of musical events is often unconventional. The Sixth comprises a sonata-allegro first movement with its exposition repeated literally, a scherzo, a slow movement, and a finale. In the symphonic mode promulgated by Beethoven, it implies a protagonist, one engaged in a fateful contest.

When they were new, the scale of Mahler’s symphonies must have been a major cause of audience resistance, as it had been with Beethoven. (Twenty years after the premiere of the “Eroica,” a London reviewer argued that the symphony was “much too long for public performance.” Mahler’s Sixth is twice as long.) The composer recognized the difficulties his work presented, and in a letter to the critic Richard Specht, wrote that “My Sixth will pose conundrums that only a generation that has absorbed and digested my first five symphonies may hope to solve.” In fact, it was the last of Mahler’s symphonies to join the active repertory--for example, not performed in the United States until after World War II: the American premiere took place in Carnegie Hall on December 11, 1947, by the New York Philharmonic under Dimitri Mitropoulos.

Mahler began the Sixth at Maiernigg, on the Wörthersee in the Austrian province of Carinthia, during the summer of 1903; the evidence about just how much was completed that summer is contradictory, but that indefatigable chronicler of Mahler’s life and works, Henri-Louis de la Grange, believes the first three movements were written then. The following summer, after Alma’s arrival at Maiernigg (prior to which he had composed only the two songs that completed the Kindertotenlieder), he corrected final proofs of the Fifth Symphony, finished the Sixth, and wrote the two “Nachtmusik” movements of the Seventh. (He later described it to Bruno Walter as the most productive summer of his life.) During the following winter he worked on the full score, which was done by May 1, 1905, and published the following March. The premiere took place on May 27, 1906, at the festival of the Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein in Essen; Mahler himself conducted the Municipal Orchestra from the Dutch city of Utrecht.

In the first edition, the sequence of the two middle movements was Scherzo--Andante, but at Essen Mahler reversed them, a procedure reflected in subsequent printed editions. (Mahler was an inveterate revisor of his works--and of those of other composers as well; some striking details of orchestration in the Sixth, such as the appearances of the celesta in the final pages, are the result of late revisions). However, the 1963 critical edition of the International Mahler Society reverted to the original order, and most recent performances have followed suit. But no concrete historical evidence has been adduced to support this, and the matter remains open; in a recent article (19th Century Music, Summer 2001), Warren Darcy suggests that “It seems best to conclude that there are two versions of this symphony, depending on the order in which the two middle movements are performed.”

The following orchestra is called for: piccolo and 4 flutes (2 doubling piccolo), 4 oboes (2 doubling English horn) and English horn, clarinets in D and E-flat, 3 clarinets in A and B-flat and bass clarinet, 4 bassoons and contrabassoon; 8 horns, 6 trumpets, 3 tenor trombones, bass trombone, bass tuba; timpani, bass drum, snare drum (doubled), cymbals, triangle, rattle, tam-tam, glockenspiel, cowbells, deep bells, Rute (a birch brush), hammer (“a shorter, mighty, but dully resounding stroke of a non-metallic character--like an ax-blow”), xylophone; 2 harps, celesta (preferably two or more); and strings.

Though the title page bears no indication of key, the symphony is unquestionably in A minor. The first movement begins with repeated A’s in the bass, over which march rhythms quickly build to a principal subject: a slashing octave drop, followed by other falling gestures. As the march fades, timpani utter a motto rhythm, and repeat it under an A major chord that fades into A minor; this modal shift becomes one of the symphony’s basic gestures. A muted chorale in the winds (with ghosts of the march theme pizzicato in the strings) leads to an expansive, upward-striving second subject that Mahler explicitly associated with Alma. Both principal subjects are briefly invoked before the exposition repeat.

In the development, the march is fragmented, distended, and transformed in character, sometimes grim or grotesque, occasionally more optimistic. An alpine pastoral episode brings temporary relaxation, the major/minor motto and bits of the chorale sounding against cowbells, celesta, and tremolo violins. In the recapitulation, the chorale is played twice as fast; the “Alma” theme, calmer and less ecstatic, fades away sooner than before. The march resumes quietly, then suddenly speeds up. After further development, Alma’s theme returns in a grandiose A-major version that is driven to a fast, almost hysterical conclusion.

The scherzo, which extends the usual classical pattern (ABABA instead of ABA), begins like the first movement, with loud staccato repeated A’s in the low strings, but this time the meter turns out to be triple. Despite that, the spirit of a march is not far away, thanks also to thematic and timbral resemblances to the first movement. After a climax (incorporating the major/minor shift) and collapse, there comes a slower, more pastoral episode labeled “Altväterisch” (ancestral): more amiable, more folkish--but often odd and grotesque in its shifting meters and syncopations. The return of the opening material is at a still slower tempo, but suddenly recovers its original speed. The same pattern unfolds again, with variations; when the main material returns the last time, its climax dissolves without having invoked the major/minor shift, but this then surfaces among the fragmentation of motives into which the movement dissolves.

The slow movement begins with a sweetly lyrical violin melody in E-flat major (the most distant possible key from the A minor of the other movements)--which, however, unfolds in irregular phrase-lengths. From this the winds extract a rocking motive, against which the English horn sings a more wistful melody. Through several shifts of key, range, and tonal color, these two themes and their counterpoints are transformed, even transfigured, eventually achieving an anguished climax (with cowbells, and a motif similar to the weaving figure in the last of the Kindertotenlieder). At last, and triumphantly, the home key is reattained and the movement closes quietly.

Few moments in Mahler’s work are as arresting as the opening gesture of the Finale: a deep low C, a celesta arpeggio, a diminished-seventh chord in winds and tremolo strings over harp arpeggios, an upward-striving theme in the violins that soon collapses. The introduction then brings back the major/minor shift and the motto rhythm, along with a grim theme in octaves. The bass tuba introduces a spectral episode, uttering a theme whose opening (upward) octave and march rhythms evoke the opening movement; a march motive in the horn recalls a phrase from the last of the Kindertotenlieder (“nie hätt ich gesendet die Kinder hinaus”). A chorale in the lower winds, with a widely-skipping bass line that becomes a motive in its own right, leads again to the major/minor shift. At this point the tempo gradually picks up, gathering march rhythms and eventually achieving the first movement’s Allegro energico.

The subject matter of that movement, if not literally its thematic material, is clearly again under discussion (a version of the cowbell episode actually recurs), but the level of discourse is freer, more fantastical, passing among grim marches, exuberant aspirations, and intimations of catastrophe. Twice during the development, a fierce stroke from timpani, bass drum, and hammer interrupts the proceedings. Soon after the second, the movement’s opening gesture returns, introducing a free recapitulation. Yet another return of the opening gesture leads again to the major/minor motive (at this point, the original score had a third hammer stroke, which Mahler removed in revision). A somber contrapuntal meditation among the trombones leads to a final catastrophic gesture; the triumphant ending of the first movement now lies shattered in the memory.

By the time the Sixth Symphony was performed, Mahler had completed the Seventh and the Eighth. Within months of the Sixth’s premiere, he was stricken with the biographical equivalent of the original three hammer strokes that prefigured the doom of the symphony’s protagonist. After years of pressure from segments of the press and the company, Mahler resigned the directorship of the Vienna Court Opera, signing a new contract to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. In July, his elder daughter, Maria Anna, died of scarlet fever. A few days later, he himself suffered a heart attack; the diagnosis was a defective valve, the prescription, complete rest, with a ban on all the recreations the composer most valued: swimming, cycling, walking and mountain climbing. His remaining works--Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth Symphony, and the unfinished Tenth--would inhabit a far different world.