Lyniv, Ansini

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Not since Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony had a composer attempted, with the same pathos, to go beyond the boundaries of music. And it was Beethoven Gustav Mahler had in mind in 1894, while his Second Symphony was taking shape, originally conceived for orchestra alone. The revelation of the final chorus came during the funeral of Hans von Bülow, the conductor who had helped him so much in his Hamburg years. «For a long time I had been turning over the idea of bringing in a chorus in the last movement — Mahler admitted — and only the worry that this might be taken as a shallow imitation of Beethoven kept me hesitating. Then Bülow died, and I attended the funeral service in his honour. The state of mind in which I sat there was in the spirit of the work I was carrying within me. At that moment the chorus, accompanied by the organ, intoned the chorale on Klopstock’s text, ‘Auferstehen!’ (Thou shalt rise again). It struck me like lightning and everything appeared limpid and clear to my soul!». So was born the «Resurrection», the most grandiose symphonic and choral page of the nineteenth century, whose finale seems to answer, through the idea of rebirth after death, the problems and the anguish of earthly life.
I. Allegro maestoso