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Mahler's Ninth. Well, it's hard to explain.
Because to explain it, to even just get a whiff of it, you need to know something first.
First like everything that precedes it.
And then it's the Ninth. Which for all composers is written with a capital 'N'. The Ninth is the thing that no one forgets.
And you know, if you're a composer, that it might be the last one. It will be for Gustav too. Even though it's strange business.
Many think of Das Lied Van Der Erde as the tenth. But it's not a symphony. And then Mahler himself will attempt the tenth. And that I have it is useless for me to tell you. But he'll only make one movement of the tenth. And then he'll die. He'll die anyway before seeing the Ninth staged.
He'll end with the Eighth, with the Symphony of a Thousand, in the sense that there are a thousand people playing. A thousand. Everyone, the whole world. So, perhaps starting from there is the simplest way to explain what came before.
Mahler, throughout his life, sought this stuff. That on stage, that singing (at least three choirs) there were a thousand people. Those you meet on a tram, those you love, those you've never seen maybe through your own fault, those who are no longer there, those you've forgotten, those you've lost, those you've betrayed, those you've disappointed. All of them. And you think about making them get along. To make everyone say their thing, in their own way. And you - who do that damn job which is the symphony composer, which is nothing but the creator of a world - you have this duty. To take everything and make it harmonize. But not in the way that you stop saying your thing. Those things - you know - like the first republic, the secret deals, those things. I give up. The freedom that borders on the other's. Being free means having no borders.
No. He has an idea. At the core. One. But beautiful. He says that if you are a composer - you chose this job, it wasn't imposed on you - there's one thing you must do. You must make everyone heard. And you must find the damn way in which everyone gets along. He always had in mind that thing. (then also some worms, all his own, but that's really another story).
And he does that thing. The Eighth. The Symphony of a Thousand. A thousand people. Three choirs. Two orchestras.
When they perform it for the first time, in the hall, in Vienna, everyone is there. Everyone. Worse than Escalator Over the Hill by Carla Bley, worse than Sergeant Pepper by the Beatles.
There's Nietzsche, there's Thomas Mann, there's whoever comes to your mind. The hall is packed. And inside there's everyone.
Mahler enters. And everyone stands up. He will never conduct anything else again. And they do something. That they are Austrians, they are different. They stand up. And they give him a huge, unforgettable, moving silence. Everyone. Thomas Mann stands up and does nothing. Says I wait for you to speak. Nietzsche the same.
I've had a lot of luck in life. And in this bag of luck, the luck that one day they gave me silence. Believe me, you have no idea what it is.
They gift it to Mahler.
But anyway, I've written like two hundred lines and still haven't said anything about the Ninth. Because the Eighth is gone. You were in Vienna, Nietzsche greeted you in silence, you're happy. And then there's the Ninth. The last one, maybe. And you've brought the Thousand on stage. And anyway, be that as it may, you start thinking that maybe you won't do the tenth. And of death, of hope, of everything, you've already talked. But now - you've already written The Song of the Earth, your testament - you start asking yourself what's left. Even of those Thousand, who were there that night in Vienna. What remains standing. You are in Dobbiaco, although he thought Toblach. You're not really alright. And life hasn't been that kind to you (you've already written it, in the fifth, with that Hammer). Nietzsche stood up, that night. And was silent. It's beautiful together to keep silent.
The second movement of Mahler's Ninth Symphony is a little waltz. A landler, as it's called. A beautiful thing. And simple. A thing you can really whistle while you shave. A thing that makes you understand why it's nice to get up in the morning and say I got lucky. And say it's nice to live. A thing that's the essence of everything you've fought for your entire life. The essence. Peppino will do it very explicitly. Will say that it's all a joke. He - Austro-Bohemian Czechoslovak, he's one of those you ask where he comes from and the answer he doesn't know - he does it with a waltz. A simple thing. That you can also whistle in the morning. And that maybe you imagine him - also - Mahler, in the morning, a morning that feels good, a morning that you feel like you are one of those cannonballs Fourier talked about. You imagine him not whistling, but inside his head hearing this music here. And that he says who the hell cares. Says let's dance. Even alone. Even if there would be no reason. And certainly, it's inappropriate. But who the hell cares. In the head, in the whole head, like a cannonball like those Fourier studied, there's only one thing.
A little waltz. A thing you can whistle, a landler.
His last gift.
Inside my head. Now.
I wanted to tell you.
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