What do you like about Mahler?

[Anne]

BTW, i forgot to mention the markedly Asiatic element in his music. Of course, a lot of people will dismiss the notion his works express anything relating to or pertaining to his Jewishness, but i think you need to be rather blind not to see it.

Leonard Bernstein would agree with you.  In fact he is in a video titled "The Little Drummer Boy" where he talks about the little Jewish boy all over Mahler's music something I would imagine might not be so easy to discern by some one who is not Jewish.  It is a very interesting and worthwhile IMO video to have.

[Sergeant Rock]

What i do see in his music is nature in the larger sense.

Exactly. La Grange and Mahler again:

"That nature was not only the idyllic world as it is usually represented, not only 'forest, air, little birds and flowers,' was not a recent discovery for him: 'One always forgets that nature includes All, all that is great and terrifying as well as lovely (this is what I particularly wanted to express in the whole work, using a kind of evolutionary development).'"

"It is absolutely essential to bear this in mind while studying the Third Symphony and experiencing the raging hurricanes, the dionysiac marches, and the icy gales of the first movement, otherwise its tragedy, its wild exuberance, its reckless mixture of styles would remain absolutley enigmatic and unintelligible...Here, as in Das Lied von der Erde, Mahler's much later 'farewell to nature,' his philosophy has a definite pantheistic flavor. This form of mystical feeling was perhaps even more essential to his nature than either the Christian or the Jewish faith."

Sarge

[Franco]

'One always forgets that nature includes All

When you say that Mahler's music reflects nature and nature includes "All" - you have blurred the concept so as to make it rather meaningless to me. 

[jochanaan]

What I like most about Mahler's music is its intensity.  Somehow every note becomes full of passion and power, even at his gentlest (the Third Symphony's finale, the Adagietto from the Fifth, for example).

[jochanaan]

Believe me, i've had plenty of experience with it. Indeed, for the longest time i probably knew more about contemporary music then i knew about Romantic, Classical or Baroque. My problem with modern music is that it has no soul, something of which i became acutely aware as my depression progressed in this past several years. The more my life becomes seeped in despair, the more i have to rely on art as a mean to find comfort, and i found increasingly that contemporary art has a considerable damaging effect upon my mood, something i can no longer afford to tolerate, regardless of any intellectual attraction i may still have for this music. It is because of this that i also derive my notion of Mahler as a positivist, since his music rarely fails to put me in a good mood.

Very briefly (I don't want to be accused of "cutting threads" ), thanks for this response.  I tend toward depression too, but lots of contemporary music actually is cathartic and healing for me.  There are many reasons, probably as many as there are contemporary composers, but I don't see such folks as Varèse, Boulez, Hovhaness, or Carter as without soul or pessimistic.  Varèse in particular was as forward-looking as they come, and very optimistic about humanity.  His music is valuable to me primarily for showing that you can make great art music without any reference to past traditions.

[Sergeant Rock]

When you say that Mahler's music reflects nature and nature includes "All" - you have blurred the concept so as to make it rather meaningless to me.  

I didn't say "nature includes All," Mahler said that. It's in a letter he wrote that's quoted in La Grange's book. It's essentially the same thing he said to Sibelius, 'A symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything."

The world is nature, obviously, not only the little birdies and chewing cattle, but also the instincts, drives, desires, appetites of man; his various psychological states too.

Sarge

[jlaurson]

Perhaps a little bit of an answer here: http://www.weta.org/fmblog/?p=518

...and more to follow when it's Mahler Month at WETA.

[greg]

If I could put into words the basic harmonic approach of my favorite aspect of Mahler, I'd rather just show a picture of three aspects which you could use as starting points, or focus.


I can hear these as little things that are used often by composers just before him- kind of like their signature sound.

1) is the (i forgot technical name for it is- suspension? appogiatura?) but anyways, it's the tension-release of a regular chord (most often major, although augmented really sounds intense with this) with a different note on the stronger beat, which resolves on the weaker beat. The best version of this is exactly how I have it- major chord with the top voice doing a suspended fourth down to a major third. I hear this in Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (in obvious places), and I think that's where Mahler got the practice.

2) the "jumping" of (usually) major chords. In a chord progression that jumps around, you'll hear mostly major, with some minor, diminished and augmented (though you don't hear a minor jumping to another minor- that's Prokofiev-like) thrown in. Overall, it makes sense to relate everything to the major- and it's easily analyzed when you consider the "jumps" (like this one) to be like a major and its own minor going back and forth. This is a signature of Bruckner. You just hear it everywhere.

Combine the two ideas and you get something deadly.........


3) just a cadence idea (tonality D Major). Again, this is related to what I just said- the G Minor is kind of like the iv of the D Minor, but it resolves to D Major (overall, a iv-I cadence). This is used so often in Brahms, which is part of what I like about him. It has that mystic quality to it. It's not his most often used cadence, but him and Brahms seem to use it more than any composer I can think of.



Of course, i could go on and on and on........ if anyone is interested...

[vandermolen]

I like the sense of impending doom and catastrophe (symphonies 6 and parts of the first movement of Symphony No 9) Didn't Bernstein say something like the 20th Century was the centurry of mass destruction and Mahler was its prophet? I love the beautiful/valedictory ending of Symphony No 9, which I find very moving. 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.

[Cato]

Cato might seem naturally ebullient and full of effervescence, but he actually is a quite silent and reserved type.

The appeal therefore of Mahler's music to me in the last 50 years has been its emotionally unleashed qualities, not just the near hysteria at times, but also the deeply mysterious (e.g. the 2nd part of the Sixth Symphony's Finale, right after the introduction, the opening of the Eighth's Finale, or the mid-section of the Ninth Symphony with the harp and the strings in quiet dialogue), as well as the naturally ebullient parts.

In short, the music illuminates my moods and thoughts.

But I must also admit that the Sixth's cowbells do express my mooods!   

[not edward]

More than anything, what I like about Mahler is his range. To mark him as just a composer of emotional extremes is to miss so much of what's going on in between them. For me, his music embraces so many of the dichotomies of its time (and indeed our own); one I think could even make a reasonable case for the 6th and 7th symphonies being, amongst other things, commentary on the nature of the symphony.

I've been particularly taken by the 7th of late--there are just so many interpretations that work. One can take Mahler's claim of its lightheartedness at face value, one can stretch it to extreme lengths like Klemperer, one can see it as commentary a la Boulez, one can even play it like Scherchen in Toronto--a nightmare from which you wake only to discover it's real. And for me, they're all completely valid.

[vandermolen]

But I must also admit that the Sixth's cowbells do express my mooods!   

Hehe, I like that 

[Wanderer]

For me the most endearing of Mahler's qualities are his utmost sincerity of feeling and his obvious love for nature, combined with the immaculate tone palette of his orchestral writing.   

[Brahmsian]

For me the most endearing of Mahler's qualities are his utmost sincerity of feeling and his obvious love for nature, combined with the immaculate tone palette of his orchestral writing.   

I'm not even sure if this makes any sense.....but I like it! 

[greg]

but also the deeply mysterious (e.g. the 2nd part of the Sixth Symphony's Finale, right after the introduction,

It took me awhile with that, but man, I caught on! 
It especially helps to have a recording like Tennstedt's, which really brings out the low string of the harp and has one wild horn glissando (which is how it should sound, and how I never hear it).

[jochanaan]

...one I think could even make a reasonable case for the 6th and 7th symphonies being, amongst other things, commentary on the nature of the symphony...

Only #6 and #7?!

[bhodges]

More than anything, what I like about Mahler is his range. To mark him as just a composer of emotional extremes is to miss so much of what's going on in between them. For me, his music embraces so many of the dichotomies of its time (and indeed our own); one I think could even make a reasonable case for the 6th and 7th symphonies being, amongst other things, commentary on the nature of the symphony.

I've been particularly taken by the 7th of late--there are just so many interpretations that work. One can take Mahler's claim of its lightheartedness at face value, one can stretch it to extreme lengths like Klemperer, one can see it as commentary a la Boulez, one can even play it like Scherchen in Toronto--a nightmare from which you wake only to discover it's real. And for me, they're all completely valid.

For me the most endearing of Mahler's qualities are his utmost sincerity of feeling and his obvious love for nature, combined with the immaculate tone palette of his orchestral writing.   

These two comments embrace many of my own feelings, too. 

I would add that I love the contrasts between full orchestral moments and those that are chamber music; Mahler sometimes uses a huge orchestra very sparingly.  I also like the contrasts between seeming chaos and formal structural elements; just when it seems everything is falling apart, it miraculously comes together (if that isn't too oxymoronic). 

Love the quick mood shifts, the intensity of emotion, and his brilliant orchestration.  But I could go on and on...

All that said, I find I sometimes want to ration my hearing of his symphonies; it's easy to play them too often and get accustomed to all of the wild parts. 

--Bruce

[greg]

The only downside to Mahler is whenever you're done listening to him, anything listened to right after just sounds trivial and not so good. 

[Opus106]

The only downside to Mahler is whenever you're done listening to him, anything listened to right after just sounds trivial and not so good. 

In my case, it's worse. I don't want to listen to anything after I listen to Mahler. I went a whole day (perhaps even more) without listening to any music after I listened to Mahler for the first time (Sym. No. 2). These days, the hangover lasts anywhere from 30-60 minutes.

[imperfection]

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