Background music. There distant, accompanying different activities, that is the role that contemporary songs play. We experience them as a way to fill the void. We hear them, but we no longer listen to them; there is no more contemplation. When was the last time you spent exclusive time listening to music? If the answer is “a long time ago”, this article is for you. If the answer is “recently”, we don’t need to explain why it is worth giving a little of your time to this note. Today we want to take you by the hand so you can listen to Gustav Mahler’s Adagietto from his Sinformation no. 5 in C minor and learn a little about its history.
The first thing we need is for you to find a comfortable place and listen to it without judging, using headphones or speakers. We recommend that you try to identify the different layers of , going from the lowest to the highest. Once you’re done, let the experience sink in, and then continue reading the rest of the text.
Before knowing its history, to avoid reaching premature conclusions and concentrating only on the sound, let’s review a description of the piece to begin navigating it with more elements.
What does Mahler’s Adagietto sound like?
Suddenly, the silence, the space begins to transform into a place that requires a very different way of relating to it; The gaps are beginning to fill. This happens in an instant thanks to the rubbed string effect. It is a moment that could have been overlooked, but the harp enters. Thus, little by little the intensity with which the strings are played increases. The sound of the harp, from the beginning, is like a continuous wave, which returns and expands, just like what is drawn when a drop falls. With the help of the double bass plucking, around the strong tempo a sensation of going to an increasingly deeper place is generated, using as a boat the play in the melody that the violas, violins and cellos take turns. With each change the power increases. Afterwards, all the bowed ropes that take us to the top of an enormous wave are at the same level of prominence, so enormous that the distance from the earth is such that it is like no longer being on this planet. The melody, like the harp, generates a sensation of cyclical time. You don’t know how you got there, you don’t see the end and neither do you see the beginning.
When you finally expect to feel rest after the wave passes, a new type of tension is generated. They enter delicately, although no less intensely, the violas playing a melody a little more cheerful than the one heard before the wave. The double bass continues with the same logic along with the harp. The harp increases its speed and makes a spiral shape with its sound that allows the cellos to project the sound of the violas even more. A very thin sound comes from the horizon, generated by the violins, and brings with it a series of small waves. The other rubbed strings become its shadow. After the last note of the violin, the tide calms with the arrival of the violas, who sing and then respond to the violins. Simultaneously, that atmosphere is seen more clearly, the cellos become the air that encompasses everything and that does not escape any respite. The violins take the ship deeper, further and closer. Again, smaller waves arrive, moving at a slower pace, interrupted by small pauses. There’s no more left, that last note from the violins shoots out like an arrow and seems to disappear into the air and…
Then, that ascending swirl of the harp revives those strings and their sound rejoins along with the cellos and violas. The melody resumes the form of the one heard at the beginning, although with more marked pauses. There is a parenthesis in which the violin cries briefly. Little by little, the bowed strings announce the arrival of a new wave and look at it with strange nostalgia. The boat twists and turns until it reaches the top in a violent and agitated manner. There, suddenly, the unfathomable space is lost because there is nothing left but time; time without space and without body.
Now, let’s briefly look at the technical aspects.
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The technical breakdown of Mahler’s Adagietto
Mahler’s Adagietto has a regular, binary beat. It seems that the main ethos of the piece is of type malakon. However, in some of the moments of greatest tension and intensity (some waves), one also falls under the effect of the ethos enthusiasm. The piece has a ternary structure: an ABA. Thinking about the entire work, we can see that it has an anachrusic beginning and a feminine ending.
Now, thinking about each of the great ideas that give shape to the piece, the first A has an anacrusic beginning and a feminine ending, then B has a thetic beginning and a feminine end, followed by a thetic beginning and again an end. female in the last A. The first change from A to B is located around minute 3 (after the passage of the first big wave); We can locate this transition thanks to the cadence and the change in melody. The transition from B to A is identified around minute 6, after a pause that allows the melody to be recovered in the first part, where motifs such as the harp are recognized.
Regarding the melody we can say that it is formed by long suspensions on the bowed strings, which allows us to observe many legatos between the notes in the score. Regarding timbral, we can recognize that there are instruments with bowed strings – violin, viola and cello – as well as plucked strings – harp and double bass. The selection of these instruments is of utmost importance, since they are fundamental to achieving the sensations that lead us to identify the type ethos. malakon. The bowed strings manage to extend the notes and take them to the limit, and that tension is supported by the plucked strings; The double bass manages to generate a sensation of greater space due to the transition from the soft tone to the strong tone. The harp, for its part, after the repetition and play between motives produces a cyclical sensation. Another factor that contributes to the ethos of the piece is the harmony that is primarily handled with minor scales; In this sense, no major modulations are identified. The cadences contribute greatly to the way in which after the development of the work one feels greater weight and depth; Although cadence is what resolves tensions, instead of generating a feeling of relief, they only lead us to darker levels of tension.
The history of Mahler’s Adagietto
The Adagietto was written between 1901 and 1902 by Gustav Mahler and corresponds to the fourth movement of his fifth symphony. This time in Mahler’s life was very happy, thanks to the fact that he met Alma Schindler, who would become his wife, companion and assistant. Since Mahler was recognized for his work as a conductor, he used his summer time to dedicate himself to composing (which was what he had wanted to do all his life). So he wrote the Fifth Symphony in the cottage back to his country house in Maiernigg, which is a township in the district of Klagenfurt-Land in Austria, where there is a large light blue lake surrounded by a dense forest, and a radiant sun. Curiously, in contrast to this cheerful landscape, Mahler composed his darkest works here. This irony seems to make sense in the following story: after a very violent encounter between his father and mother, Mahler ran barefoot, and as he fled from that terrible and overwhelming scene, the happy music could be heard emanating, in the distance, from a organ grinder.
The relationship between Alma and Mahler was very close, as reflected in the letters that Gustav sent her and in Alma’s diary where at some point she mentions that she helped her husband a lot, since she transcribed his works. Mahler could afford not to make many notes, since Alma knew him well and had great intuition to know what things to fit into Mahler’s instructive gaps. Taking this into account, it is normal to think that Gustav communicated with Alma through her music. For this reason, it is said that the Adagietto is a love letter that Gustav wrote to Alma.
But it seems that the Adagietto is much more than a love letter from Gustav to Alma. It is a letter to love itself, love that he knew through Alma. As she says in her diary: “they found themselves in each other.” In a space that breathed the same air, at the moment: “sublime love,” as Gustav answers in one of his letters. Mahler had multiple near-death experiences and was able, thanks to them, to explore very well the relationship between love and death, which are inseparable. The love that is not love without the death of oneself, of the other and of the other. A concept that opposes the force of attachment, which binds and does not liberate, where fear appears from pain in the form of pleasure. An experience that does not fit into any form of word, into any story, because it is impossible to escape the subject. Love that is not lived in any form of language.
Clearly, this is just one way of interpreting and feeling the piece. Yours, like this one, will be unique.
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