Before Pan Awoke: A Quiet Beginning for Mahler’s Third Symphony

Milijana Pavlović

doi:10.1017/rma.2022.2

Abstract

AbstractIn the genesis of Mahler’s Third Symphony, the composition of the first movement occupies a particularly interesting and important position. The first in the symphony but the last to be composed, this movement had a complex structural development from the mere introduction that it was originally supposed to be to the gigantic and extraordinary construction that we know today. As it is, every new piece of evidence that surfaces sheds more light on this fascinating process. This article examines one such item: an original manuscript source in a private collection which gives a fresh take on the creative mechanism behind the composition of this movement and is directly connected to a well-known manuscript housed in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna.

Highlights

In the genesis of Mahler’s Third Symphony, the composition of the first movement occupies a interesting and important position
This article examines one such item: an original manuscript source in a private collection which gives a fresh take on the creative mechanism behind the composition of this movement and is directly connected to a well-known manuscript housed in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna
Milijana Pavlović helps us to expand our knowledge about the genesis of this movement and about the evolution of its thematic content

Summary

Gustav Mahler

4 Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler As Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner, ed. Gustav Mahler: ‘Mein lieber Trotzkopf, meine süße Mohnblume’: Briefe an Anna von Mildenburg, ed. In a letter to Anna von Mildenburg dated by the editor to June, Mahler wrote that he had finished the sketches of the first movement that day. See Solvik, ‘Culture and the Creative Imagination’, 442–9 Their general importance for the symphony aside, these two manuscripts are relevant for our understanding of the connection between the fourth-movement material and the beginning of the first movement because at the time of composition of the opening of the symphony the fourth movement had not yet taken its final form

Description of the manuscript Steinbach 189616

Steinbach 1896 and ÖNB 22794

August 1896: – Einleitung

The ‘O Mensch!’ problem, the Weckruf and the sixth movement

55 Gustav Mahler

Closure and aperture