Mahler - Symphony No. 7 in E minor (Song of the Night): III. Scherzo [HD]

Gustav Mahler's Seventh Symphony was written in 1904–05, with repeated revisions to the scoring. It is sometimes referred to by the title Song of the Night (German: Lied der Nacht), which Mahler never knew and certainly would never have sanctioned. Although the symphony is often described as being in the key of E minor, its tonal scheme is more complicated. The symphony's first movement moves from B minor (introduction) to E minor, and the work ends with a Rondo-Finale in C major. Thus, as Dika Newlin has pointed out, "in this symphony Mahler returns to the ideal of 'progressive tonality' which he had abandoned in the Sixth". The complexity of the work's tonal scheme was analysed in terms of 'interlocking structures' by Graham George.

There is an undercurrent of night about the spooky third movement; while "Scherzo" means "joke", this movement is remarkably spooky and even grim. If the first "Nachtmusik" possessed a friendly mood disguised in grotesqueries, this movement is a demon sneering at the listener. Nonetheless, as the Spanish musicologist José L. Pérez de Arteaga points out, this movement is really "a most morbid and sarcastic mockery of the Viennese waltz".

The movement begins with a strange gesture: a pianissimo dialogue between timpani and pizzicato basses and cellos with sardonic interjections from the winds. After some buildup, the orchestra sets off on a threatening waltz, complete with unearthly woodwind shrieks and ghostly shimmerings from the basses, with a recurring "lamenting" theme in the woodwinds. The scherzo is contrasted by a warmer trio in the major mode, introduced by and containing a "shrieking" motif beginning in the oboes and descending through the orchestra.
The brilliance of this movement lies in its extroardinary and original orchestration, which gives this movement a strongly nightmarish quality. Multiple viola solos rise above the texture, and there is a persistent timpani-pizzicato motif that pervades the dance. The theme and its accompaniment are both passed around the orchestra rather than being played by a specific instrument. At one memorable point in the score, the strings are instructed to play pizzicato with the volume fffff, with the footnote, pluck so hard that the strings hit the wood.