Leap
years have a certain mystique and even a mythology
to them: they are seen as special, and often have
of way of becoming just that, somehow living up to
the expectations that people have of them. Certainly
the year that has just started will mark many significant
anniversaries.
It is the centenary year for many events that have
either shaped subsequent history or simply got embedded
into our collective consciousness: the construction
of New Delhi as the capital city of Imperial India;
the maiden – and final - voyage of the ''unsinkable''
Titanic, the ship that famously struck an iceberg
and sank in mid-April; the announcement of the formation
of the Chinese republic by Sun Yat Sen and the abdication
of the last Q'ing Emperor; the ''discovery'' of the
South Pole in Antartica; the end of the Meiji era
in Japan upon the death of the last Meiji Emperor.
In Europe too, a century ago was a time of ferment
– perhaps even more so than today. Vienna, Austria
at the turn of the century (the fin de siècle)
epitomized the cultural churning that reflected the
political, economic and social changes that people
were trying to absorb and come to grips with. Writers
like Robert Musil and painters like Egon Schiele and
Gustav Klimt captured the sense of decadence of the
dying order and the search for new meanings and structures
to organise life. The social and cultural mood – which
obviously was also to be soon reflected in the politics
that led up to the First World War – was brittle,
volatile and slightly ominous.
Perhaps this sense of portent was most potently expressed
in the music of the time. The non-verbal nature of
music often makes it the best way of expressing ambiguity
and emotions that cannot be easily crystallised into
words. The pre-eminent example of this may come from
the composer-conductor Gustav Mahler. His Ninth Symphony
premiered in Vienna – a year after its composer died
in May 2011 without ever having heard it performed.
In fact he was superstitious about writing it all.
He feared (correctly, as it turned out) that, just
as had been the case for Beethoven and Bruckner before
him, it would turn out to be his last symphony and
indeed his last major work.
Certainly this is music written in the shadow of death.
Two years before, Mahler and his wife Alma had lost
a beloved child, a young daughter. Then he lost his
job conducting at the Vienna court opera. And then,
in the course of a routine medical examination, he
was diagnosed with a serious heart condition. All
of these events must have underlined the ephemeral
nature of life and the inevitability of mortality.
But by the time Mahler was working full time on the
symphony, his frame of mind was happier than it had
been for some time. His health was much better, as
he worked in the serenity of a summer retreat in the
hills, he had just returned from two very successful
seasons conducting orchestras in New York and looked
forward to a professional tour of the United States.
In fact, he is known to have been anticipating a time
when he could accumulate enough to retire from conducting
and devote himself full time to composition.
So the Ninth Symphony contains so much more, and is
so brilliantly complex even at its most shattering,
that it cannot be seen in simple terms as a harbinger
of death. Indeed, fellow composers saw it as immensely
life-affirming even in its acceptance of the certainty
of death. Alban Berg wrote to his wife: ''The first
movement is the most glorious he ever wrote. It expresses
an extraordinary love of this earth, for Nature; the
longing to live on it in peace, to enjoy it completely,
to the very heart of one's being - before death comes,
as it does, irresistibly.''
Much later, the physicist-philosopher Lewis Thomas,
in his famous essay ''Late night thoughts on listening
to Mahler's Ninth Symphony'', described how his own
response to this music evolved with time. He heard
the music not as an ultimately peaceful affirmation
of death but a clanging nightmare of destruction,
emanating from the growing possibility of nuclear
war.
''I
cannot listen to Mahler's Ninth Symphony with anything
like the old melancholy mixed with the high pleasure
I used to take from this music. There was a time,
not long ago, when what I heard, especially in the
final movement, was an open acknowledgement of death
and at the same time a quiet celebration of the tranquility
connected to the process. I took this music as a metaphor
for reassurance, confirming my own strong hunch that
the dying of every living creature, the most natural
of all experiences, has to be a peaceful experience.
I rely on nature. The long passages on all the strings
at the end, as close as music can come to expressing
silence itself, I used to hear as Mahler's idea of
leave-taking at its best. But always, I have heard
this music as a solitary, private listener, thinking
about death.
Now I hear it differently. I cannot listen to the
last movement of the Mahler Ninth without the door-smashing
intrusion of a huge new thought: death everywhere,
the dying of everything, the end of humanity.''
However one chooses to interpret this extraordinary
and powerful work of music, what is also evident is
that it expresses forcefully the instability and yearning
of those times. Musically it is not on firm tonal
ground: despite being formally structured in major
and minor tonalities, it is marked by the use of chromatic
harmonies and even dissonance. Thematically, it is
marked by contrast, with often conflicting themes
vying for supremacy. Emotionally, it moves from tranquillity
to aggression to irony to reflection. There are several
false climaxes or anticipations of them, and so the
actual climax, even at its most reverberating, is
but a part of the transition to quietude. For the
symphony closes very slowly, softly, with long hushed
phrases only on string instruments, fading away almost
imperceptibly into silence.
So this is music for uncertain times, even though
it contains within it certainties of different kinds.
No wonder it appeals so strongly to us a century later.
Europe, and indeed the whole world, is now faced with
another period of political and economic volatility.
As old and not so old orders collapse under the weight
of their own contradictions, there is social yearning
for some security even with the knowledge that much
of what exists is neither just nor tolerable.
In Europe, the events that unfolded later as a result
of what occurred in 1912 turned out to be significant.
For example, the first Balkan war in southeastern
Europe (in which, incidentally, Greece was involved)
led to a chain of events that culminated in a world
war. The eventual official collapse of the Gold Standard
(by which major currencies were linked to a precise
weight of gold) was presaged by the growing tendency
of the major powers to ''cheat'' the system and print
more money than was justified by their gold reserves.
Across Europe, there was social and political ferment
as workers marched for their rights and protested
against the inequality and injustice of the economic
system.
Does any of this sound contemporary? But then, that
need not be only something to be feared. As Leonard
Bernstein said of the final movement of Mahler's Ninth
Symphony: ''It is terrifying, and paralysing, as the
strands of sound disintegrate ... in ceasing, we lose
it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything.''
*This article was originally
published in the Frontline, Volume Vol 29: No 1, January
14-27, 2012.
