Spring in Autumn

In autumn, there are days that give the illusion of spring with their tender warmth. At dawn the grasses raise their heads, the flowers open, and the birds sing out feebly, as if everything could begin again – before a blast of killing wind brings the dream to an end. This is the atmosphere of the first movement of Mahler’s 9^th Symphony. Late in life, memory is so overpowering that the present and past become confused. One relives the enthusiasms of youth, and fights once more its hopeless battles as if they could still be won.  And when this youth is lived in a period of general decline like ours, in the midst of a decaying empire, youth’s vigor could not help but dash again and again against the walls before exhausting itself prematurely.

The middle section of the first movement is made up of three climaxes, each followed by a collapse. In the first our hero, scaling a mountain, falls over a cliff into a void filled with mocking voices. In the second, he finds companions who charge into battle with him, amid brass fanfares, like Don Quixote against the windmills. But the current reverses, an undertow pulls them in different directions, friends scatter, each one left to fend for himself.  In the third climax, the hero bets everything on one last throw of the dice – and meets Death itself clad in full armor. Then the outrage and bewilderment of “this is it” – a whole lifetime has gone by like a dream; there are no more chances. The song of spring-within-autumn returns, now mangled beyond recognition. Then, only scattered voices in the shocked empty space, the consolation of utter hopelessness.

As always in Mahler’s treatment of heroism, we do not know whether to identify with the protagonist or watch him from a distance with ironic sympathy. We do not know whether he is (we are) being righteous or absurd. Heroism, Beethoven’s heroism, convinced of the individual’s power to influence the world, now appears delusional in face of social and existential reality. Whereas the 6^th Symphony depicts the individual undone by the pressure of history, here personal aspirations are undermined by Time itself, which emphatically enters the music in gestures of “tearing away” – Time breaks in brutally, irresistibly upon the moments of dream, of reverie and nostalgia, until all that is personal and distinctive is carried away on the flood.