Contrapuntal Parody and Transsymphonic Narrative in Mahler’s Rondo-Burleske

Abstract

This article deconstructs the intersections of form, counterpoint, and narrative that contribute to parody in the third movement Rondo-Burleske of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony. Motivic counterpoint problematizes the movement’s main rondo theme, placing initial cracks in the movement’s rondo façade. Through thematic and formal counterpoint, the rondo genre itself destabilizes as signifiers of sonata-form rhetoric intrude. To interpret how counterpoint and generic mixture contribute to the burlesque character of the movement, I consider theoretical accounts of parody and the burlesque, and I adapt, as a generative metaphor, Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of the carnivalesque. In the context of the Ninth Symphony’s transsymphonic narrative, the Rondo-Burleske performs a carnival parody of the symphonic finale genre, functioning as a brazen, iconoclastic, but in the end, failed counterpart to the first movement.