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        <h4><a href="http://www.barbwired.com/barbweb/programs/index.html"><font color="#FFFFFF">Program Notes</font></a></h4>
        <p><font color="#FFFFFF">These pages contain program notes written for <a href="http://www.redwoodsymphony.org"><font color="#FFFFFF">Redwood
        Symphony</font></a>. You are free to use the information in your own program
        notes. If you quote me directly, please attribute it. Thanks!</font></p>
        <p><font color="#FFFFFF">These notes were edited, amended, and otherwise
        improved by Eric Kujawsky, Peter Stahl, and Doug Wyatt.</font></p>
        <p>
<i>
<a href="http://www.barbwired.com"><font color="#FFFFFF">Barbara Heninger</font></a>
</i>
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<h2>Gustav Mahler <br>
Symphony No. 7</h2>

<p>Mahler's Symphony No. 7 is considered by both music critics and Mahler fans
to be his most difficult symphony to love. It's a work of sometimes surprising
contrasts, with a history of ups and downs to go with it.</p>
<p>Mahler began the work in the summer of 1904, while completing his most tragic
symphony, the sixth--at, as is often pointed out, one of the sunniest periods of
his life, when his adored wife Alma had just given birth to the second of their
two daughters. While still putting the finishing touches on that work during the
family's annual stay at Maiernigg on Lake W�rth, Mahler began sketching the two
Nachtmusiken, which would become the second and fourth movements of his seventh
symphony. He was pleased with his initial progress, but soon had to return to
his responsibilities as music director at the Vienna Court Opera, as well as
overseeing the premieres of his Symphony No. 5 in Cologne and of his
Kindertotenlieder in Vienna. By the time he returned in the summer of 1905 to
Maiernigg, he found no immediate inspiration. Frustrated, he took a train to
Krumpendorf on the north shore of Lake W�rth and there, as he was rowed in a
boat across the lake, &quot;the theme of the introduction (or rather, its
rhythm, its atmosphere) came to me.&quot; During the next four weeks he wrote
the major portions of the remaining three movements, declaring the symphony
essentially finished on August 15, 1905.</p>
<p>Over the next two years he continued to polish the work and make revisions,
while waiting for the time to premiere it. By 1907, however, the happy days that
had seen the symphony's beginning had become tragic ones. He had been forced to
resign his post at the Opera due to political infighting and anti-Semitism, he
was diagnosed with a dangerous heart condition, and his eldest daughter, Maria,
died of scarlet fever that July. (These three events, his wife noted, seemed to
have been predicted by the three tragic hammer blows of his sixth symphony.)
Faced with a more hostile atmosphere in Vienna, Mahler decided to premiere his
seventh symphony in Prague, where it was performed as part of a celebration for
the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Emperor Franz Joseph.</p>
<p>The performance took place on September 19, 1908, with Mahler conducting. By
all accounts it went well, attended by admirers such as the conductors Artur
Bodanzky, Otto Klemperer, and Bruno Walter. The work was received respectfully,
but not with huge enthusiasm, and in later performances was met with puzzlement
or skepticism--except, however, by composer Arnold Schoenberg. Schoenberg had
previously been rather cool towards Mahler's music, but he sent an admiring
letter to Mahler after hearing the seventh symphony at its first performance in
Vienna in 1909. &quot;It was an extraordinarily great treat. I simply cannot
understand how I was not won over to this before,&quot; the younger composer
wrote.</p>
<p>Yet the work remained problematic to audiences and Mahler's music world as
well, and to this day it is the least recorded of his symphonies. Its contrasts
are at times difficult to take in. The work constantly shifts from major to
minor and back again. It is Romantic, even reaching towards the modern style in
its tonal palette and what critic Donald Mitchell has called &quot;peculiarly
shrill and piercing&quot; instrumentation in the first movement. Yet that same
movement is resolutely classical in its form; in his letter to Mahler,
Schoenberg wrote &quot;this time I felt perfect repose based on artistic
harmony--something that got me going without unsettling my center of gravity...
I have ranged you with the classical composers.&quot;</p>
<p>Another contrast, of course, is Mahler's musical juxtaposition of dark and
light. Although Mahler resisted giving this work a programmatic interpretation,
he described the symphony to Swiss critic William Ritter as follows: &quot;Three
night pieces; the finale, bright day. As foundation for the whole, the first
movement.&quot; As mentioned earlier, the 'night music' was the germinating seed
of the symphony. Night in this work is not necessarily ominous, but a time of
watchfulness, or even romance. Some of Mahler's friends suggested calling the
work Nachtwanderung (&quot;a walk by night&quot;), and its popular subtitle is
&quot;Song of the Night.&quot; However, it's clear from Mahler's note to Ritter
that he saw the work as a progression from night into day. The passage from dark
into light has been seen as a passage from the tragic nature of his sixth
symphony to something more hopeful, or as a change in mood from the very
personal emotions of his previous symphonies to impressions of the broader
world; as critic Michael Steinberg put it, &quot;the world humans inhabit, more
than the humans themselves.&quot;</p>
<p>A final anecdote may reveal Mahler's basic intent. The second movement was
said to have been inspired by Rembrandt's famous painting &quot;The Night
Watch,&quot; which Mahler saw during his many trips to Amsterdam. However, Dutch
composer Alphons Diepenbrock, a friend of Mahler's, discussed the symphony with
Mahler during rehearsals in Amsterdam, and wrote:</p>
<p>&quot;It is not true that he [Mahler] wanted actually to depict 'The Night
Watch.' He cited this painting only as a point of comparison. It [the second
movement] is a night walk, and he says himself that he was thinking of a patrol.
Beyond that, he said something different each time. What is certain is that it
is a march in a fantastic kind of chiaroscuro, hence the analogy with
Rembrandt.&quot;</p>
<p>In short, this is a symphony in chiaroscuro, &quot;the interplay or contrast
of dissimilar qualities (as of mood or character),&quot; of dark and light, of
what is clear (chiaro) and what is obscure (oscuro).</p>

<p>The huge first movement, <b>Langsam--Allegro risoluto ma non troppo</b>, opens with
Mahler's rhythmic oar strokes. A tenor horn states the first theme; Mahler
writes, &quot;Here nature roars.&quot; The tempo gradually quickens to a
stirring march, which is by turns measured and impetuous. The exposition
develops from E minor to C major, then introduces a yearning violin melody,
while the development juxtaposes these lyrical moments with the march themes. At
one point woodwinds and trumpets sound questioning calls over high trembling
strings, while soft brass recall the march theme, transforming it to a
mysterious echo. Then, as Steinberg writes, &quot;the harp wakens us to an
ecstatic vision of the glorious lyric theme, with the march fragments still
perceptible in the background.&quot; Mahler telescopes all this material in the
recapitulation, compressing it toward an intense final coda.</p>

<p>The second movement is the first of the two <i>Nachtmusiken</i> (literally, night musics),
<b>Nachtmusik I: Allegro moderato--molto moderato (Andante)</b>. This is Mahler's
watchful night of the evening patrol, and it opens again with a questing horn
call, met by woodwinds in skitters and swirls. The theme that develops is
two-faced, both marching and melodic, major and minor. The night watchman of
this movement encounters sinuous melodies for oboes, distant cowbells, woodwind
passages marked by Mahler as &quot;like bird calls,&quot; fragments of stately
dances, and even a section reminiscent of Mahler's sixth symphony, with a C
major chord that falls into minor. The movement wanders into silence at its
close, with a pluck of the harp on G, leaving it undetermined whether we have
resolved on C minor (the movement's nominal key) or major.</p>

<p>Mahler marks the third movement <b>Scherzo: Schattenhaft</b>
(&quot;shadow-like&quot;). A spooky waltz, again sounding both major and minor,
is threatening yet amusing. Woodwinds scurry, low brass call, and the strings
swoop and slide. The central trio section, introduced by oboes, is brighter with
a lyrical line, but ends almost as soon as it begins. Then the ghosts continue
their weird dance, finally slowing in a series of stuttering figures by
different instruments, with a final strike on the drum and a brass chord to end.</p>

<p><b>Nachtmusik II: Andante amoroso</b> is a romantic serenade augmented by mandolin
and guitar, recalling the strolling musicians from whom the <i>Nachtmusik</i> form got
its name (the name goes back to Mozart's time, to describe popular night-time
serenades by street musicians). Though this movement also has its moments of
minor against the major, here they are lyrical. It is orchestrated lightly, with
only horns for brass. Individual instruments or small groups of instruments
engage in gentle or passionate interplay that ends with quiet pulses over a
trilling clarinet.</p>

<p>After the calm of the fourth movement, Mahler's final &quot;bright day&quot;
bursts forth with loud drums and brass fanfares in the <b>Rondo-Finale: Allegro
ordinario--Allegro moderato ma energico</b>. The rondo form lets Mahler introduce
several varied sections, including references to Wagner's <i>Die Meistersinger</i>,
Lehar's <i>The Merry Widow</i>, and Mozart's <i>Die Entf�hrung aus dem Serail</i>, yet always
return to the main theme and its triumphal strains. Mahler also quotes portions
of the march from the first movement. At first they do not seem to integrate
into the whole, but eventually the march theme joins with the fanfare to come to
a brilliant climax, with pealing bells and rolling drums. The constant contrasts
of the entire symphony make their final appearance in the resolution of the
penultimate chord (augmented) to the ultimate chord (major).</p>
<p><i>April, 2006</i>
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