Mahler: you don't have to hit us over the head with it

This weekend, I went tothe Des Moines symphony. They played Mahler's 6th Symphony, known as "The Tragic", because it tells the story of a hero who is destroyed by fate. Now, a lot of musical pieces have symbolic elements that help tell the story. Messien's Quartet for the End of Time has clarinet trills which represent birdcalls. Vivaldi's Summer has a repetitive cello motive which represents a dog barking in the distance. Literal, yes, but charming. Mahler can't be bothered with this sort of subtlety. To represent the "crushing blows of fate", which "fell...(the Hero)... as a tree is felled," Mahler uses not a percussive motive or a ringing brass chord, he uses...

A GIANT HAMMER.

That's right, the guy you see here picks up this 38-pound monstrosity that he apparently stole from a Klaus Oldenberg sculpture garden, and whacks it against a table. Mahler calls it the "Hammerschlag", which translates of course to "hammer blow" or hammer hit." (Click on the picture for a video) It happens three times during the last movement. Before one of them, I had started to doze off (the 6th symphony is long), and I imagine I would have jumped straight out my chair had my quick-thinking friend Matt not said "Hammerschlag!" in my ear just before the big moment.
I'd like to add that in a less -depressing portion of the symphony, Mahler depicts the Hero's childhood with a lovely pastoral scene. He uses lush, rolling melodies and major tonalities. Then, just in case you're not yet convinced that we're on a farm, a percussionist walks forward with 5 cowbells attached to a stick, with a look on his face that says, "why me?" Luckily, he just shakes them lightly, rather than busting full-on into a rendition of "Mississippi Queen", but the moment (and his dignity) has been lost.