The most frightful chord in Mahler?

[00:00:00]Mahler's Second Symphony begins with a funeral.

[00:00:04]But at rehearsal 20, we encounter a chord unlike anything we've heard so far in the symphony.

[00:00:11]>> [music] [music] [music] [music] >> Keep horns chord [music] of a week.

[00:00:34]>> Wow.

[00:00:35]>> Mahler's Second Symphony, dubbed the Resurrection Symphony, has become one of the most popular and famous pieces in the orchestral canon. The first 15 minutes of Mahler 2 lead us through a funeral march, and we move from [music] despair to to pride to anguish to moments of the sublime, but it always comes back to the funeral march, the despair of it. A sense of like the inevitable march toward death just permeates this movement. The Mahler biography by Jan says this about the second. The opening movement is an allegro maestoso that accompanies listeners and mourners to the coffin of a man they once loved.

[00:01:16]His life and his suffering and aspirations passed before their minds eye, encouraging them to collect their thoughts on the questions of life and death and the afterlife, but above all on the question as to the meaning of what we call life.

[00:01:31]But at rehearsal 20, he hits us with this.

[00:01:37]>> [music] [music] >> And at first I thought, "Man, that sounds like anger. Why is he so mad at this five chord?"

[00:01:57]Cuz it has a dominant function. It's a five-chord and it finally leads to C.

[00:02:01]And but on a on second thought, I wouldn't call it anger. It's I wouldn't even call it tragic. It's It's more like it's horrific. Up to this point, we've been mourning, but this chord feels different. It's as if >> [music] >> the music has stopped grieving and it's suddenly glimpsed this terrible reality behind death itself, which is a very Mahler thing to express. He was famously introspective and self-analytical. He was constantly examining his own emotional state, his his searching for meaning, his relationship to suffering and to death. And he experienced more than his fair share of suffering in his life. It's widely agreed that his music, most of it is a reflection of this suffering and this this introspective searching. So, let's take a look at these chords. We start with this fully diminished seventh chord >> [music] >> inside these G's.

[00:02:57]Sort of a G sandwich with this diminished inside.

[00:03:00]>> [music] >> It's really kind of Baroquish, isn't it?

[00:03:03]It sounds like Bach. It sounds like if this were Bach, he would do this with it.

[00:03:06]>> [music] >> Right? So, that first chord is kind of accessible. Even though at first glance and first listen, >> [music] >> it sounds really dissonant. It's not that dissonant because to me it hearkens back to Baroque music.

[00:03:22]It's the second chord is where things get gnarly.

[00:03:25]>> [music] >> We have this G7 and then superimposed on top of it, we have this polychord where we have an A-flat major over top of a G7.

[00:03:34]>> [music] >> And again, the G on top. So, inside of this gnarly G sandwich, we have a minor ninth here, a minor ninth here, >> [music] >> and here.

[00:03:45]There's three minor ninths stacked on top of each other.

[00:03:48]>> [music] >> And the third chord is just a simple resolution of this note to here. So, we have the second chord, third chord.

[00:03:57]So, it gives us a [music] little bit of resolution, but not really cuz we still have a minor ninth here and here.

[00:04:03]>> [music] >> Which incidentally kind of reminds me of the the Californians chord.

[00:04:10]Actually, you know what? They're nothing like each other. Anyway, back to Mahler.

[00:04:13]So, again, here's the three chords.

[00:04:16]>> [music] >> One, two, and three. [music] Orchestra sort of walks down chromatically and we can finally get here.

[00:04:28]Just a unison C.

[00:04:30]As if it almost sounds like Mahler's just going, "Fine, I give up."

[00:04:35]It's just in this the face of this heroic thing that just sort of falls and it almost sounds like it's pulling you down to this realization of the of just like it just sounds like "I give up" is what it sounds like to me when I hear it and it brings us right back to the top where we started. This chord is guaranteed to induce the stank face and it almost forces you to kind of contort when you hear it because it's it's so I always like I like the word gnarly. I overuse it, but this is a gnarly chord and I love the I just love the the tension in it and and just how um in your face it is. I love that about this and it it gives me the stank face every time I hear it.

[00:05:14]This is from the Fischer biography about the premiere of the symphony. Among the audience was the composer Wilhelm Kienzl who sat in one of the boxes alongside Strauss, Richard Strauss, and Karl Muck who recalled Strauss turning to him enthusiastically at a harmonically bold passage in the brass and saying, "Believe me, there are no limits to [music] music expression."

[00:05:36]At the same time, Muck twisted his face into an [music] unstable expression of horror.

[00:05:42]Told you, stank face.

[00:05:44]And the single word "frightful" escaped through his clenched teeth.

[00:05:51]My guess is this is the harmonically bold passage in the brass that they were reacting to. And I think frightful is a better word to describe this chord or series of chords, especially after listening to the first 15 minutes of music that preceded, which I recommend that you do. It's like we're being forced to confront something that's just too terrible to comprehend. And for this brief section of the symphony, Mahler kind of allows us to stare into that deep dark abyss with him.

[00:06:19]>> Yeah.

[00:06:20]Who that?

[00:06:21]Just be Y'all who that?

[00:06:23]Y'all who that? Who that?