Abschied (Part 1): A Spoonful of Soup, A Few Grains of Caviar and Two Chords
(Arnold Schoenberg: Burial of Gustav Mahler)
I.
An oil on canvas. A work of memory. A painting by Arnold Schoenberg depicting the burial of Gustav Mahler. The details are accurate: it was a melancholy spring day; there were grey clouds that threatened rain; big, strong winds did buffet at the trees. Mahler died on the 18th of May 1911 and on the 22nd of that month, he was buried in the small suburban cemetery at Grinzing, in a plot beside his daughter Maria Anna, who had, four years earlier, died from diphtheria, three months shy of her fifth birthday. The funeral was attended by hundreds of friends, acquaintances and onlookers. Conspicuously present were Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern: the new wave, where Mahler had been the ripple before, and Brahms (standing corrected that music would die with him) the one before that. Conspicuously absent was Alma Mahler, though not of her own volition: her doctors, convinced that grief would overwhelm her, prevented her from attending her own husband’s funeral.
In his will, Mahler asked for a funeral with neither music nor speeches. He also asked for his heart to be pierced with a sharp instrument to guarantee that he would never run the risk of being buried alive. Both these wishes were honored. Webern would later recall in a letter to Schoenberg:
“I will always think of the cemetery up there where his body now rests. Do you still sense that enigmatic silence when his coffin was lowered into the earth?”
II.
There is a resonance to final things that lingers long after the event is over: a last word, a last kiss, a last breath. On May 17 at 8pm, Mahler, with Alma holding the spoon, ate his final meal: a spoonful of soup and a few grains of caviar. In so precise a recollection, there can only be tenderness in its remembering. Some memories, no matter how painful, we nurse, lovingly. I still remember (cannot forget, even if I wanted to) my grandpa’s last meal: a spoonful of ice-cream and a few drops of beer on his lips. Why remember this moment, an Abschied, at the exclusion of all the rest? Is love then inextricably tied to loss? Both an unmistakable puncturing of the heart?
III.
There is a second work of memory, another memorial to Mahler written in Schoenberg’s hand, a different, perhaps more profound recollection, this time in sound: the sixth in a set of Six Little Piano Pieces op. 19.
IV.
The most immediately striking aspect of this piano piece, besides its brevity, is the opening sonority, the bell-like clang of two chords, the first played by the right hand (henceforth the “RH chord”), the second by the left (henceforth the “LH chord”); the first evoking multiple associations (how should one characterize this chord? A D major chord with an added 6th? A dominant 7th chord missing a D-sharp?) and the second, a chord built on stacked fourths. The first:
And the second:
These two chords are fixed in pitch and register. They punctuate the work, with each reappearance dividing the work into five discrete sections: the first having a duration of 7 quarter notes; the second a duration of 9 quarter notes; the third a duration of 9 quarter notes; the fourth a duration of 8 quarter notes; and the fifth a duration of 4 quarter notes.
The first section is a bare presentation of the “RH” and “LH” chords. The fifth and last section echoes the first, adding a closing gesture, stranded on a staff all on its own.
The middle three sections are characterized by the presence of a melodic line, one in each section, that traces a falling minor 9th (only in Schoenberg’s hyper-expressive world could one describe two consecutive notes, a bare interval, as a melody). In the second section, the melody appears as:
In the third section, the melody is transposed down a perfect 4th:
The fourth section stands out because the bell-like clang, the opening two-chord sonority is absent. The falling 9th (16th) is related by transposition to the first by a major 9th and the second by a major 6th:
If we pause briefly to return to the opening sonority of the piece, a closer look at the “RH chord” will reveal that this transpositional relationship that expresses itself horizontally across time, expresses itself, within that opening chord, vertically in space as well, illustrating what Schoenberg himself would later describe as “the unity of musical space”:
V.
How do we understand the “LH chord”? How does that particular sonority evolve across the span of the piece? And since I’ve described this piece as a sonic memorial to Mahler, the more pertinent question to ask would be: how does a musical work function as memory. How does music remember?
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