What do you like about Mahler?

[drogulus]

Well,  if not nature and if not human nature, then certainly super-nature.

    The Horror! Mahler may be the least metaphysical of the great composers. The emotions are extreme but they are human reactions to human dilemmas. The earthbound nature of his music contrasts with Bruckner, the musical metaphysician. Mahler transforms metaphysics into psychology, or maybe allows it to be recognized as such. But this isn't why I'm drawn to his music. That is because I always associate music with a personality, a mind. Composers and great performers musically think a certain way, and that way suggests a whole person and in the case of a great composer this person has variety and subtlety. Mahler, Stravinsky, Berlioz, Beethoven are all gigantic personalities even before you discover anything about what they were actually like. The rest of the reason(s) for attraction to Mahler are the more strictly musical parts which should not be explainable, except to say I like the way it sounds.

     

I like his motivic development. To me, he was the only one that could be compared with Beethoven in this regard.

     And instead of alternate versions like Bruckner he put all the alternatives in. The first movement of the 3rd Symphony is one of the most remarkable in music history. Sometimes when I play it I actually laugh at the audacity.

[Mr. Darcy]

Great thread. I've been in a Mahler funk for well over a year now, but after reading a bunch of these posts I went and listened to symphonies 3-6. It's great to be back!

...The way in which his music anticipates later composers whom I admire (ie the Shostakovich of Symphony No 4). Spending a lovely week walking in Austria earlier this year his 6th Symphony often came to mind as I walked in the alps (all those cow bells!) - so I guess it is the contact with nature too.

When I was younger, I liked listening to Mahler because I heard in him the intense expression of a "tortured soul." And I related to that, of course, because life was particularly hard for me as a middle-class white kid... Anyhow, today I listen largely because I have come to recognize his influence on other composers I listen to (that Shosty 4 reference is spot on!). I definitely hear nature (in Mahler, that is--not so much in Shostakovich). And "guarded" optimism. I appreciate the form and architecture of his work; the sense of having journeyed.  I don't find his music particularly sentimental. But what I think I relate to most is a sort of down-to-earth, very human self-doubt or insecurity. It's definitely in the music, so I guess it was in Mahler, too.

[Grazioso]

I've grown leery of discussing music in terms of its emotional impact or qualities since the emotional reactions it can elicit inhere at least as much in the listener as in the music at hand. But I will say of Mahler that I deeply appreciate his incredible melodic fecundity, his ability to erect clear and logical structures on the largest scale, and his mastery of orchestration. I also appreciate the sheer variety of his small corpus of works.

[Josquin des Prez]

    The Horror! Mahler may be the least metaphysical of the great composers. The emotions are extreme but they are human reactions to human dilemmas. The earthbound nature of his music contrasts with Bruckner, the musical metaphysician. Mahler transforms metaphysics into psychology, or maybe allows it to be recognized as such. But this isn't why I'm drawn to his music. That is because I always associate music with a personality, a mind. Composers and great performers musically think a certain way, and that way suggests a whole person and in the case of a great composer this person has variety and subtlety. Mahler, Stravinsky, Berlioz, Beethoven are all gigantic personalities even before you discover anything about what they were actually like. The rest of the reason(s) for attraction to Mahler are the more strictly musical parts which should not be explainable, except to say I like the way it sounds.

Nice, first time i actually agree entirely with something you said.