Listening to the 9th Symphony of Mahler
With the Ninth Mahler returns to a purely orchestral Symphony, after having succeeded in integrating chorus and orchestra in his Eighth, and the genres of the song cycle and Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde, Mahler turns his attention to the purely abstract orchestral music of his middle period symphonies to express the dark thoughts of death that enveloped him during his last years.
Still an active conductor, Mahler made ambitious plans for the future, yet he must have realized that his health was waning. Although mortality was a burning issue for Mahler throughout most of his life with Das Lied, his manner of expression became more intensely personal and deeply philosophical thoughts of his own death motivated greater desperation in his obsessive search for meaning and value in human existence as a justification for having to endure unwarranted suffering, which leads only to the grave. Although the manner of musical expression remains deeply subjective, Mahler seems to reach a new level of abstraction in the ninth as he surveys the world of human passos, as if from a distant plane. Most commentators see the ninth is Mahler’s farewell to life, and recognize that like Das Lied it focuses upon death, but in the ninth Mahler seems more intent on expressing the negative side of the issue, representing the problem of human mortality from a new perspective, musical references to Das Lied that appear in the ninth are by no means a concession that the problem had been definitely resolved in the previous work. So in the ninth, Mahler begins yet again, to explore both the positive and negative sides of human life in order to find sustainable meaning and value in the face of inevitable death.
Source Mahler Foundation
Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, a Masterpiece and a Magnificent Farewell
Every Mahler symphony is a work of pure genius, says Nézet-Séguin, “but this symphony, I consider, is a real farewell ”
Mahler wrote his 9th symphony in 1908 and 1909, when the composer had suffered several recent blows: his young daughter Anna Maria had died of scarlet fever, and he himself had been diagnosed with heart disease.
“This is a journey of definitely a man who has lived and also is opening up a lot of doors for modernism in music through that testament,” says Nézet-Séguin.
The symphony is a powerful meditation on the human condition: exploring ideas about life and death.
While there is darkness, “there are moments where it’s jolly in the middle,” he says, pointing to the music that recalls Austrian folk music.
As the musical journey nears its end, it is both sobering and deeply touching.
“The last movement, I feel, is Mahler—maybe at his purest— the soul of an old man talking directly to us. There’s almost a certain comfort in listening to this symphony. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions, but there’s always somewhere in a Mahler symphony where we can as individuals find that someone on Earth has understood our feelings.”
Mahler died in 1911. His Symphony No. 9 premiered in 1912.
By Susan Lewis
Source: WRTI
Sila Blume 
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