A Masterpiece by Mahler: Symphonie No.9
Music masterpieces should be interpreted with historical backgrounds, as they could demonstrate experience of individuals. As for Gustav Mahler, there were clues that he saw Symphonie No.9 as adieus to the world. Ub this four-movement work, he informs the world of his idea around death that it is inevitable but it cannot overpower everything.
The first movement expresses a mixed feeling between despair of impending death death and fantasizing about the afterlife. Mahler uses sonata form with two themes to express the confrontation between those two feelings. At the beginning, french horns, harps and cellos introduce the first movement with a syncopated motif, and lead to the first theme played by the second violins. The variation form of the first theme transferred by woodwinds to minor and connects with the second theme played by the first violins. The bridge is introduced by the brass and
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After two slow notes,the violins come up with a dark theme in minor, which is developed from the third movement, and the rondo start to develop. With a more tense form, the bridge builds up in the texture of polyphony, reaches the climax, and reproduces the theme again. Then, like smoke spreads to the sky, each melody gradually disappear into absolute silence. The final silence presage the death finally catching up with Mahler, but prolongs to say the goodbye because he is still attached to world. But it has to be an end, so with Pianississimo, he whispers “adieus.”
As Alban Berg commented, Mahler’s Symphonie No.9 was “the expression of an unheard-of love for this earth, the longing to live in peace upon her...before death comes.” Symphonie No.9 uses sonata form to bring up the battle between two feeling. Mahler also use rondo to express his contrition of self-involved. The final movement，depicts Mahler’s reluctance to leave the world expressed by an intense