First performance on September 19, 1908 in Prague
conducted by Gustav Mahler

In summer 1904 already, just after having completed the Sixth Symphony, Mahler started to work on the Seventh Symphony. He wrote the two Nachtmusik (Night music) and sketched the Scherzo and the Finale, but had difficulties to get musical ideas for the first movement which to me does not seem very astonishing since after the enormous tragic end of the Sixth Symphony, it could not be easy to find a continuation leading over to the atmosphere of the Seventh which was exactly the opposite of the Sixth. The following summer, Mahler tried to complete the symphony but his abilities of creation suddenly seemed to be lost so completely that he feared not to be able anymore to compose at all causing depression-like feelings. One day, however, when he was rowing in a boat across the lake, the musical idea for the first movement sprang to his mind so that he could not only complete this movement but also the third and the fifth within four weeks. The full score manuscript of the first movement is headed by the inscription "Maiernigg, August 15, 1905, Seventh Symphony completed". One should take into consideration, however, that in the Mahler literature, the terms "commencement", "sketch", "completion" are not used in a standardized way; "completion" often means that the musical content is completed whereas the full orchestral score is written a long time afterwards.

The first performance of the Seventh Symphony took place on September 19, 1908 in Prague, thus after Mahler had left Vienna for New York. During the 10th Philharmonic Concert, on the occasion to celebrate the 60th year of the emperor Franz Josef's reign, it was the only work presented on the programme. Otto Klemperer reported: "The Seventh Symphony was no success. Especially the music reviewer Leopold Schmidt from Berlin spoke against the work which still today is a problematic one especially in its first and last parts, but the three middle movements are just fascinating in their simplicity." In October, another performance took place in Munich, "celebrated by the audience with frenetic applause. The press, on the other hand, showed no understanding for Mahler's "noisy cacophonies". [...] Rudolf Louis, music critic of the Münchner Neuste Nachrichten, composer himself and a declared anti-Semite, called the symphony a "monstrosity of impotence and artificiality" (de la Grange/Weiß). Thus the Seventh Symphony is often regarded as a failure. Still today, the work is - very unjustly! - Mahler's stepchild in the concert halls and like in his days, the receptiveness of the audience is rather reserved.

What is the reason? The Seventh Symphony, frequently, is called "bulky"; surely one does hardly appreciate it immediately, but how often in life you love something more intensely and more deeply the longer you need to understand and appreciate it! Apparently there are no disagreements regarding the middle movements which are highly appreciated by everyone; the first and the last movements are the problematic ones. As mentioned before, Mahler needed a very long time to compose the first movement. In adopting my point of view that all symphonies including the Song of the Earth are one novel of eleven chapters, the reason herefore is very simple because the end of the Sixth Symphony is a tragic break; it is rather difficult to continue afterwards, thus the Seventh Symphony raises in a secret but slow, laborious and painful way; just like a sick man after long suffering and deep exhaustion slowly recovers, the music, bar by bar, slowly gets going, life gradually returns. So in my opinion, this first movement symbolizes a new start.
The second possible problem for the listener, the final movement, is, following Yasuhiko Mori's opinion, "the lack of any obvious necessity for the closing bright Finale in C major. The sudden appearance of a glorious song of victory seems totally out of place in the context of the work as a whole: listeners, in a state of embarrased shock, are left by the wayside, unable to become involved in the music as it soars to ever greater heights."
An external reason could thoroughly be the fact that at the time of this composition, Mahler being director of the Vienna Court Opera had reached the height of his career and finally was world-wide held in high reputation as a composer. An inner reason, in my opinion, is that the moral low which had been reached at the end of the Sixth Symphony, is definitely surmounted in the Finale of the Seventh, and from the inmost inside of Mahler, a great feeling of happiness forges ahead to the outside. Kralik describes it in a similar way by joining the Seventh to the Fifth: "The Seventh Symphony, as for the rest, stands in a complementary proportion to the Fifth Symphony. There, in the Fifth, it was a deployment of the powers feeling the forthcoming adventure. Here, in the Seventh, it is a joyful parade of the powers with the awareness of having successfully stood the ordeal, as if having walked through fire and water without damage. And while Mahler was emotionally so deeply down by the Sixth Symphony, he could recommend the Seventh to an artist friend as the most joyful music he had ever written."
Mori who in his whole gives to me the impression of being rather helpless considering the Seventh Symphony wrote nevertheless the following remarkable sentences: "Absence of context and disintegration of form are two of the main characteristics of Mahler's work, and are surely his great strengths. The Seventh Symphony is the work in which these characteristics are in clearest evidence, and it is for this reason that the symphony may surely be regarded as one of the most quintessentially Mahlerian of works. When seen in this light, traditional approaches to the other symphonies seem to be lacking in substance, and it is the very bewilderment one feels when confronted with the Seventh Symphony which may surely be seen as a clue to an understanding of Mahler."

The symphony has a clear and symmetrical structure; opposite to the enormous but not dominant first movement is the bright Finale, in the middle is the Scherzo, framed by two lyric "Night Musics" maybe showing the most lovely and relaxed side of Mahler's character.
The 1st movement is at first predominated by a tragic mood similar to the one we had left with the Sixth Symphony. Slowly raises the first theme in minor presented by the tenor horn which is forwarded by the wood winds and increased by the trumpets, but soon ebbing away. Softly raises a more lyric theme, develops into a march rhythm and leads the listener to the first main theme con fuoco still in a minor key before the strings lead to the second main theme, a tender melody in C major which already anticipates the atmosphere of the romantic-optimistic night musics dominating the symphony consequently until the end of the fourth movement, an impression to be shared maybe only after having heard the symphony several times; a clear indication is the violin solo and the following sudden stop of the music, the quiet listening and breather reminding of the lyric intermezzo in the third movement of the Third Symphony. Soft trombones lead out of this atmosphere up to a brilliant climax. In a not easily recognizable sonata form, the two main themes are leading a battle to predominate the scenery, framed by collage-like side themes, the harmonies of which are rather difficult to be appreciated by the listener; the movement ends, however, in an optimistic balance of the themes.

At first impression, probably, most listeners will easily love the fourth movement, but maybe as easily grow tired of it, whereas the tender and austere beauty of the 2nd movement is revealed much more slowly but stays deeper and more permanently. You find yourself in a nightly sound scenery, presented by call and answer of the horns, where the voices and noises of the most different beings are heard, march rhythms, glockenspiel and cowbells conjure the presence of nature and animals in the night, a romantic and poetic magic dominates the atmosphere.

The 3rd movement, the Scherzo, is an unusual piece of music and could as much be called a "night music"; Mahler headed it by "Schattenhaft" (shadowy) and that is exactly the composition, eery, demonic, grotesque; nightly shadows, goblins, ghosts are dancing through the darkness, hallucinations and nightmares flit through the sounds, at times hardly perceptible, never seizable. Only a lyric fairy-tale-like Trio, introduced by the oboe, interrupts this witches' dance for a short while and abducts into another world of dreams.

Certainly, the 4th movement, the Nachtmusik II, is as famous and as beloved as the Adagietto of the Fifth Symphony; the using of guitar and mandolin, unusual in classical music, together with harps and solo violin, as much as the title Andante amoroso prove clearly what it is meant to be: A serenade for a beloved person. I will, however, mention that there are impressions leading much more further like Bruno Walter's who wrote that "... the third (middle movement) as a piece of music (is) maybe the most beautiful Mahler has ever written: there is a sweet tender erotism living inside which is the only erotic sound in Mahler's work as far as I know." On the other hand, there are absolutely contrary opinions like e. g. Yasuhiko Mori's that "this movement [...] reveals ambivalent feelings, a mixture of affection and contempt, for the music to be heard in the pubs and on the street corners of Vienna, [...]" I can absolutely not share the latter point of view since in this movement, there is a total lack of irony which otherwise can be heard often enough in Mahler's music, this graceful and tender serenade has no inclination towards exaggeration or kitsch. By the way, Blaukopf rightly points out that Mahler here anticipates the symphonic chamber style established by Arnold Schönberg, one of the most enthusiastic Mahler admirers, with his Chamber Symphony in 1906.

A virtuous timpani roll introduces the 5th movement, followed by the often described citation of the Meistersinger by the Wagner admirer Mahler, blared by the trumpets while the movement in its whole is dominated by the brass instruments underlining the character of triumph. Such a turning from the deeply depressed into a highly cheerful mood, in real life, is nothing unusual: After having crossed a state of misery, finally leaving behind you that depressive moment by which the Finale of the Sixth Symphony is characterised not only by me, high spirits and cheerfulness can very easily turn into a feeling of triumph. But here again, some listeners have other impressions, and again I cite Mori: "The dazzling cry of victory coming from the brass section rings hollow [...] Is this an unsuccessful attempt to create a victorious Finale, or is it a bitter confirmation that the illusion of victory is just that: no more than an illusion?"
No, absolutely no, I cannot agree with this, and the compositions following the Seventh Symphony, moreover, prove the opposite: The emotional grief is overcome, the triumph is real!