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Some Observations on Mahler's 5th by a student at NEC
12/5/2006 11:26 AMI heard Mahler's fifth symphony in Jordan Hall tonight and my mind is still reeling. He did something above harmonies and rhythms that brought me out of my usual pattern of trying to construct the music while it?s going on. I wasn't sure I wanted to go to the concert because I had wanted to go with ... and he backed out, declined, Etc. I wasn't at all keen on another concert alone like the Bach the week before. I went anyway since Mr. Zander (the conductor and teacher of interpretation class) had given me a voucher for a $5 tickets.
The first half of the concert was beautiful and uneventful. During the intermission, the idea came to me to write with my slate and stylus whatever came into my head. I was feeling creative and restless and needed a way to pour it out somehow.
Then, I was swept away beyond myself. The West was falling in a blaze of military glory and tragedy and its blinding light in its last glory made my heart stand still as at the brink of a precipice. Tears streamed down my face as the strings lamented from the depths of the soul. Do our prayers rise to God in that way ? disarrayed themes of sorrow? The second movement drew me deeper into Mahler's world? and I did not try to make a meaning for the music, but followed where it led like a child led by the hand; perhaps that?s what it is to be God?s first trumpet, to matter as He conducts every note because it is so important to Him. The laughter of the winds tore at me and I thought about the sting of ridicule and humiliation that can embitter suffering. The fourth movement was bliss upon bliss. The luxurious seventh chords and the beating of the harp like a heart drew me into their embrace and I was lost in the freedom of surrender. During the brilliant climax of the fifth movement, my breath was snatched from my body and like a ball bounced against a wall, standing up and clapping wildly was the natural response. At one point, as the music swelled and approached the breaking point of resolution, I felt the composer drawing back from the edge of perfection; he would not dare that culmination, that apex. The audience was captivated and all of us breathed out at once, remembering that we had been holding our breath and compelled once more to breathe in air and no longer music. There was in the unanimous proclamation of the applause such a unity as foreshadows Heaven.
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