Mahler's Univers (IV): Symphony No. 6

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Image courtesy of the Liceu.

“The Sixth is his most personal work and it is also prophetic.” With these words, Alma, Gustav Mahler’s wife, defined the apocalyptic sound language of this symphony.

Called the “Tragic” Symphony, Mahler's Sixth introduces the audience to the composer’s inner world, showing the most pronounced emotional ups and downs that run through the entire score.

The symphony is world in itself that anticipates the composer’s own personal catastrophes: the diagnosis of an incurable heart disease, the death of his daughter Maria at the age of four, the death of his mother-in-law at her daughter’s funeral and professional failures such as the forced resignation from the Vienna Opera.

The percussion frames the emotional extremes that Mahler intended to capture in many ways: first, with the shrieks of mountain animals, which evoke a nostalgic image of rural life, and then with the famous hammer blows. Each of the three crushing blows of the fatal hammer represents a fatality that drowns out happy memories.

Written between 1903 and 1904, the Sixth occupies a special place in his catalogue. With a tragic and unexpected conclusion, it contrasts greatly with the happy stage of his life in which he had married Alma in 1902 and his second daughter, Anna, had been born during the course of the composition.

An incredible score that narrates the misfortunes of a man who becomes small in the face of adversity greater than himself and that, despite the fatalities, is such an emotionally human journey that it ends up reaffirming life itself.

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