Founder of the New Symphony

Symphony No. 5; Gustav Mahler, composer; BBC Welsh Symphony Orchestra; Tadaaki Otaka, conducting

During my first academic year at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, the Philharmonia Orchestra, under the direction of Gerhard Samuel, received not only an invitation to perform at the International Mahler Festival in Paris, France, but also the opportunity to play the world premiere of a symphony. As the only American orchestra and the only collegiate orchestra to be granted a summons to the prestigious musical event, the powers what be at CCM were nothing less than thrilled to accept both invitations.

The world premiere of a major work always kindles excitement. The prospect of hearing something that has never been heard before stirs the heart and soul of the audience, the ensemble of performers, the conductor and the composer. And the real moment of triumph comes when the conductor can lead the composer out to the front of the stage after a gripping performance. But that didn’t happen at this premiere – for the symphony had been composed more than one hundred years before.

While attending the music conservatory in Vienna during the late 1870’s, the musically gifted Hans Rott studied composition and organ performance with Anton Bruckner and shared a room with fellow student Gustav Mahler. During the final year of his studies, Herr Rott set out to compose his first major work, and, in 1878, submitted the first movement of his Symphony in E Major to a composition contest. Nobody liked it. Gathering up all of the self-confidence he could muster, Rott finished the symphony in 1880 and began showing it around in an effort to get it performed. When he offered it to Brahms, the old master glanced at it and told the emotionally fragile Rott that he had wasted precious time and ink on rubbish, that he had no talent to speak of and that he should seek out another profession.

Lacking the inner resolve of his stout-hearted friend Gustav Mahler, the poor composer spiraled quickly into a depression that imminently led to mental instability. After two years in a mental hospital, he received a diagnosis claiming “hallucinatory insanity, persecution mania – recovery no longer to be expected”. He died six months later in June of 1884 at the tender age of twenty-five.

The Symphony in E Major landed in the hands of his friend Mahler. It was during Mahler’s perusal of the work that Rott’s genius was recognized. He wrote:

What music has lost in him cannot be estimated. Such is the height to which his genius soars in … [his] Symphony [in E Major], which he wrote as a twenty-year-old youth and makes him … the Founder of the New Symphony as I see it. To be sure, what he wanted is not quite what he achieved. … But I know where he aims.

Mr. Mahler took on the mantel of “Founder of the New Symphony”, set off in the direction that Mr. Rott pointed, and took the genre to impossible musical and emotional heights, famously declaring that, “the symphony must be like the world, it must embrace everything.”

In one of the concerts leading up to their trip to the Mahler festival, the Philharmonia Orchestra performed Mahler’s Symphony No. 5. I acquired my CD of this classic work from inside the cover of BBC Music Magazine Volume 1, Number 9, published in 1993.

On March 4, 1989, the Philharmonia Orchestra of CCM performed the world premiere of Symphony in E Major by Hans Rott in Corbett Auditorium on the campus of the University of Cincinnati. Six days later, they played it again at the Theatre du Chatelet in Paris. The day after that, they traveled to London, England, to record the symphony.

A sad addendum: One of the horn players in the orchestra, Russell Kline, suffered an allergic reaction to peanut oil while dining out with friends on the last night in London. He tried to make it back to the hotel in time to take medication but didn’t make it. It seems that the legacy of Hans Rott’s symphony, beyond the triumphs accumulated by Gustav Mahler, is death and sadness.

Credits: To Gustav Mahler, on the occasion of the one-hundred fiftieth anniversary of his birth. Your symphonies are epic, maestro, but I really like your songs. Bravo.