Gustav Mahler's Third Symphony: Program, Reception, and Evocations of The Popular

Abstract

This dissertation examines Mahler’s evocations of popular styles in the Third Symphony. These vernacularisms, long recognized as a hallmark of the work, remain peculiarly understudied. Here they are considered from a number of perspectives: their critical and scholarly reception, their sources in the popular musical environment of Mahler’s day, and their aesthetic function within the symphony. The study begins with the composer’s own words about his music. Chapter 1 argues that the public programs were a means to promote the symphony at a time when Mahler lacked a secure position in the concert hall repertory, and that these programs, though part of the creative process, did not motivate the work’s specific allusions to popular styles. Chapter 2 shifts focus to reception, demonstrating how strongly the aesthetic and ideological frameworks of listeners condition which referents they attribute to Mahler’s vernacularisms. Before World War II, for example, the intersection of Mahler’s Jewish heritage with ideologies of race greatly influenced whether writers identified references to folksongs or to popular music. The next part of the dissertation uncovers allusions to popular styles based on musical and expressive conventions no longer familiar today. Chapter 3 focuses on the third movement, identifying elements of posthorn stylizations unique to genres of entertainment music. Chapter 4 examines the variety of popular march types in the first movement, using as a basis of comparison sound profiles derived from military music and operetta, a genre that Mahler enjoyed and knew intimately. This dissertation proposes that Mahler found folk and popular styles attractive in part for the manifold associations that lurked behind their deceptive immediacy. His vernacularisms are thus most typically instances of multivalent evocation: seemingly referential music that can be convincingly traced to multiple, even contradictory sources. Chapter 5 places these evocations in the context of an extended analysis of the formal processes and semantic content of the first movement. Specific allusions to popular styles do not contribute overtly to the symphony’s meaning as articulated in its song texts. Instead, Mahler uses multivalent evocation of vernacular styles to trigger strong emotional reactions, positive and negative, in a maximally diverse audience.