Symphony No. 7 in E Minor

When Mahler had completed a symphony, something in him evidently wanted to call it into question. Having completed his most classically proportioned, closely integrated Sixth, Mahler seems to blow that all apart in his Symphony No. 7 (1905). The daring juxtaposition of extremes and abrupt discontinuities goes beyond anything else he ever created. At the symphony’s heart are two movements (the second and fourth) entitled Nachtmusik (Night Music), which frame Mahler’s most haunted, demonic “Scherzo”. This has led to the Seventh being nicknamed “Song of the Night”, but Mahler was quite clear that the wild, at times frenetic finale belonged firmly to the realm of daylight. In any case, the content of the five movements is strikingly varied. The first alternates visionary Alpine vistas with a driven, almost deranged march, after which the ghostly processional of “Nachtmusik I” leads us into a new world, with half-mocking echoes of the Sixth Symphony. The devilish brilliance of the “Scherzo” then yields to the sinister seductiveness of “Nachtmusik II”, after which the finale’s opening virtuoso timpani flourish is like waking suddenly from a sequence of vivid, disturbing dreams. Near the end, Mahler brings back the first movement’s march theme, but instead of unifying the symphony, this underlines its disparity. Life is full of riddles, even contradictions, it seems to say—live with it.