Elgar's Mahlerian Masterpiece

Started by Klaatu, November 27, 2010, 09:36:03 AM

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Scarpia

Quote from: Luke on November 30, 2010, 07:56:09 PMThe tired stereotypes say one thing - Mahler the fastidious, intellectual Germanic orchestral wizard, Elgar the bluff, blundering, amateur retired colonel - but the scores themselves tell a very different story.

*note, I'm not saying or trying to imply that either of these two were poor orchestrators - I'm not stupid! Both Strauss and Sibelius are superb writers for orchestra, that's obvious....but it's equally obvious, I hope, that they have very different orchestral styles and aesthetics, and that is simply what I am claiming for Elgar and Mahler too - that they each have an orchestral aesthetic which is different from Strauss's, different from Sibelius's...but quite close to each other's in some though certainly not all respects, of which this detailed, highly shaded 'insider's perspective' type of writing is one.

I don't see that you get much mileage by refuting these supposed "stereotypes" which I have seen no one on this board advocate or give evidence of subscribing to.  As far as the point you buried in your "footnote," my impression is the opposite.  I listened to Elgar's 2nd a few times in the last couple of days and in terms of the orchestral technique, I continue to find it closer to Strauss than to the other composers you mention.  Listen to the opening of Elgar's first movement, and listen to the opening of Strauss's Don Juan, or Ein Heldenleben.  Compare Elgar's slow movement to the love scenes in Don Juan.   Compare the Scherzo to similar passages in Till Eulenspiegel, or Elgar's finale to the transformation music in Death and Transfiguration.  Elgar's approach is symphonic rather than theatrical, but the use of the orchestra strikes me as closely allied to Strauss's technique.   I did hear several passages in Elgar 2nd (for instance, a passage for woodwinds that occurs about 7 minutes into the second movement in the recording by Andrew Davis) that brought Mahler's sound world to mind, but the main impression I received was a similarity to the music of Strauss. 

As far as the "emotional" argument of Elgar's works, neither Strauss nor Mahler strikes me as being particularly similar.  In the end, I don't see that trying to compare Elgar to Strauss, Mahler, or anyone else is really much of a help in coming to an appreciation of his music.  It shares with Strauss and Mahler that it is big and loud and opulently orchestrated, but the argument is Elgars own.

Luke

Quote from: Luke on November 30, 2010, 07:56:09 PM
The tired stereotypes say one thing - Mahler the fastidious, intellectual Germanic orchestral wizard, Elgar the bluff, blundering, amateur retired colonel....

Quote from: Scarpia on December 01, 2010, 11:28:17 AM
I don't see that you get much mileage by refuting these supposed "stereotypes" which I have seen no one on this board advocate or give evidence of subscribing to.

No one?

Quote from: Scarpia on November 27, 2010, 10:22:50 AM
The angst of Elgar is that of a retired English Colonel, trying but not succeeding in entirely suppressing tear at the funeral of a dear friend.

For the rest - well of course, the similarities between Elgar and Strauss that you point out are obvious, I would have thought. A hardness and glitter, virtuosity required from bottom to top of the orchestra. The two composers tend to use the same sorts of instruments for the same sorts of things in similar combinations. But that's something you can quantify, and something one can learn. My point about Mahler and Elgar was not that sort of point, completely valid though it is. It was that in the scores themselves one can sense a similar attitude towards the task of writing for the orchestra which isn't there in Strauss's scores nearly so much. It's something aesthetic, as I said, and it's something which the pop-pyschologist in me would like to ascribe to both Elgar and Mahler's neuroticism and sensitivity (and its absence in Strauss perhaps to his more comfortable, secure personality). It's the tendency of both Elgar and Mahler to be ultra-precise, to control nuances in their orchestration so that (for instance) a line played in unison by a combination of instruments is coloured from within by differentiated dynamics so that it throbs with life - the chamber scoring which is spoken of so much in Mahler and which we find in Elgar too. Strauss tends not to do this nearly so much - it's as if for him the orchestra itself is the instrument on which he plays, whereas Mahler and Elgar's way of writing tends to emphasize the fact that the orchestra is a mass of individuals... Heavens, what a load of pseudy rubbish that seems! - it's something hard to put into words, but indicative to me of some deeper correspondence between the two that goes deeper than style. But honestly, it's not a big subject for me - I'm not the OP, don't forget, I just wanted to put a tentatively opposing POV to most of those which were being posted here.

Scarpia

#42
Quote from: meThe angst of Elgar is that of a retired English Colonel, trying but not succeeding in entirely suppressing tear at the funeral of a dear friend.

Quote from: Luke on December 02, 2010, 09:32:23 AM
No one?

You've misunderstood me.  When I wrote of "the angst of Elgar" I was not trying to describe Elgar's character or personality, but the impression created by his music, of a typically British character that knows pain refuses to outwardly acknowledge it.  He depicts pain and agony, but pain and agony that is fought against and although it might slip out it is put back in its place by an affirmative statement.  In Mahler, pain and angst are wallowed in, never in Elgar.

Luke

Yes, I agree with that entirely. Nevertheless, of the many images you could have chosen to illustrate this aspect of Elgar's music, you chose the one ('retired English colonel') which chimes with the stereotyped view of the composer startlingly, which suggests to me the endurance of this stereotype!  :)

Scarpia

Quote from: Luke on December 02, 2010, 09:57:47 AM
Yes, I agree with that entirely. Nevertheless, of the many images you could have chosen to illustrate this aspect of Elgar's music, you chose the one ('retired English colonel') which chimes with the stereotyped view of the composer startlingly, which suggests to me the endurance of this stereotype!  :)

Elgar, stereotyped as a Colonel?  He worked in a music shop and gave piano lessons, no?  The only thing remotely military about him was the mustache.

Luke

Exactly - so why is the 'retired colonel'/military imagery conventionally attached to him to the extent that it is. It's hardly an outrageous thing to point this out, surely. Here in a Musicweb review of Jerrold Northrop Moore's Elgar: Child of Dreams (great typo there - I originally wrote Elgar: Child of Breams) is the following:

QuoteThankfully, Moore goes out of his way to counter the 'conventional view' of Elgar as the patriotic, tub-thumping would-be Edwardian aristocrat by setting great emphasis on the effect that the countryside had on Elgar and how that became infused into his music. I consider this association with and inspiration of the countryside to be paramount in Elgar's music and welcome the lack of emphasis on Elgar the Edwardian patrician. One is so used now to seeing the picture of Elgar as a man in his sixties in the 1920s and 1930s, epitomising the retired Edwardian colonel; the image of Elgar standing by his bicycle with the Malvern hills behind on the front-cover of this book is deeply refreshing.

Elsewhere in the first couple of pages of google results:

Quote...Elgar, who looked something like a Colonel Blimp or a country squire, had a complex personality which comes out in his music. ...

...By their nature, the television films were highly pictorial with little opportunity to explore below the surface of a complex man with the persona of a Colonel Blimp and the passion of a Don Juan...

...But some Elgar skeptics have seen the composer and his music as a soundtrack to the stuffy Edwardian era. Elgar himself, dressed in tweed with his big walrus mustache, looked like the very cartoon figure of Colonel Blimp, a satire of everything stereotypically British, from pompous patriotism to the strict class system....

...As for the music Elgar did write, it rarely if ever conforms to the Colonel-Bogeyish caricatures of his enemies. Beneath its resplendent surfaces, the best of it is high-strung and joltingly febrile--much like the man himself....

...With the appearance of a retired colonel and often accused of jingo patriotism, Elgar was, in fact, a deeply sensitive man, easily hurt...

...As I write these words the manner and appearance and voice of Elgar are vividly in my memory, so vividly that I could almost lean over and say to that gruff figure looking like a retired Colonel, "You were wrong, Sir Edward, weren't you, when thirty-four years ago you said to me that you would be forgotten ten years after you were gone ? " Not that I believe Elgar really did believe that. It was a part of that armour he assumed to protect himself against the patronising sneers of the younger critics who had decided to regard him as a curious survival from the Edwardian decade....

etc.

jochanaan

Not being familiar with Elgar's Second, I can't comment on its Mahlerian qualities or lack thereof.  However, to anyone who believes Elgar was an inferior orchestrator, here's my testimony to the contrary.  I've played in the orchestra for the Cello Concerto and the Enigma Variations, and both works are just beautifully written for the orchestra, with both richness and precision on a par even with Mahler and Ravel. 8)
Imagination + discipline = creativity

Scarpia

Quote from: jochanaan on December 05, 2010, 04:37:33 PM
Not being familiar with Elgar's Second, I can't comment on its Mahlerian qualities or lack thereof.  However, to anyone who believes Elgar was an inferior orchestrator, here's my testimony to the contrary.  I've played in the orchestra for the Cello Concerto and the Enigma Variations, and both works are just beautifully written for the orchestra, with both richness and precision on a par even with Mahler and Ravel. 8)

Who said Elgar was an inferior orchestrator?  Why is it that people feel the need to refute criticism of Elgar that no one has made? 

Luke

Jo is referring to this I think, Scarps. Why is it that you refuse to see that there is any criticism of Elgar here? I'm bemused.

Quote from: DavidRoss on November 30, 2010, 02:50:38 PM
And Elgar's orchestration is a bit heavy-handed--amateurish, in the unflattering sense--without the sophistication and subtlety of Mahler in his more chamber-music-like works.

Scarpia

#49
Quote from: Luke on December 05, 2010, 09:11:11 PM
Jo is referring to this I think, Scarps. Why is it that you refuse to see that there is any criticism of Elgar here? I'm bemused.

Sorry, that silly statement did not register with me.  It is my distinct impression that there is a consensus that Elgar's orchestration is quite successful, although not always subtle.

[note added]

Luke

Fair enough! Same goes for Mahler too, sometimes  ;D  ;)

71 dB

My personal opinion (whatever the fact, if it even exists is) is that Elgar belongs to the very best orchestrators. Elgar is a great master of timbral colors to me. My father (who is mainly into jazz) keeps saying to me Elgar has a distinctive skillful way of handling strings.   
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Luke

I'm certainly with you on the essence of that. I find it hard to think of any passages in Elgar that are less than excellently scored.

mc ukrneal

I'm less than clear on why some people seemed to take offense (if that isn't too strong) at Mahler and Elgar being equated in some facets of their work. I actually had never really thought about it all that much and it gave me something to think about as I listened to a couple of his works this past weekend. Thinking about composers like that, especially those not usually associated with one another, has often led to personal revelations in music. So regardless of my position, I am happy that the OP chose to bring the subject up. 
Be kind to your fellow posters!!

Scarpia

Quote from: ukrneal on December 06, 2010, 05:46:28 AM
I'm less than clear on why some people seemed to take offense (if that isn't too strong) at Mahler and Elgar being equated in some facets of their work. I actually had never really thought about it all that much and it gave me something to think about as I listened to a couple of his works this past weekend. Thinking about composers like that, especially those not usually associated with one another, has often led to personal revelations in music. So regardless of my position, I am happy that the OP chose to bring the subject up.

I don't know if you are talking about me, but I don't "take offense" at any of it, but I wouldn't bother to come to this web site to discuss music if I didn't have strong opinions about it.

mc ukrneal

Quote from: Scarpia on December 06, 2010, 07:36:20 AM
I don't know if you are talking about me, but I don't "take offense" at any of it, but I wouldn't bother to come to this web site to discuss music if I didn't have strong opinions about it.
Wasn't singling anyone out - was just a general impression I got when reading through the thread. 
Be kind to your fellow posters!!

knight66

Not the impression I get: it seems simply that a lot of people don't hear a similarity. I don't observe hostility in general.

Mike
DavidW: Yeah Mike doesn't get angry, he gets even.
I wasted time: and time wasted me.

DavidRoss

Quote from: Scarpia on December 05, 2010, 05:58:30 PM
Who said Elgar was an inferior orchestrator?  Why is it that people feel the need to refute criticism of Elgar that no one has made?
Quote from: Luke on December 05, 2010, 09:11:11 PM
Jo is referring to this I think, Scarps. Why is it that you refuse to see that there is any criticism of Elgar here? I'm bemused.
Quote from: DavidRoss on November 30, 2010, 02:50:38 PM
I just listended to Barbirolli conducting Sospiri and had to struggle to hear why some might regard it as like Mahler.  To me the emotional worlds are very different, Elgar archingly romantic, bordering on sappy sentimentality, without Mahler's wry, self-conscious Weltschmerz.  And Elgar's orchestration is a bit heavy-handed--amateurish, in the unflattering sense--without the sophistication and subtlety of Mahler in his more chamber-music-like works.  Compare the overwrought harp in Sospiri with the sparing delicacy of the harp in Mahler's 5th Symphony Adagietto, for instance.
Quote from: Scarpia on December 05, 2010, 09:14:18 PM
Sorry, that silly statement did not register with me.  It is my distinct impression that there is a consensus that Elgar's orchestration is quite successful, although not always subtle.

Silly statement?  Perhaps, but I stand by it.  Note that I did not say Elgar was a bad orchestrator, only that I find him heavy-handed--unsubtle--in comparison to Mahler...which comparison is the topic of this thread.  And as much as I love Elgar's music, I'm not aware of anything by him that equals Mahler's delicacy (when he wants to be) and subtle use of color.

If I'm wrong, please enlighten me.  I'd love to learn about Elgar works that captivate me like DLVDE.

Incidentally, I don't think I'm the only one who regards Mahler as an extraordinary orchestrator.  For instance, see this passage from an article about the 6th Symphony at http://www.la-belle-epoque.de/mahler/sinf06_e.htm
Quote from: la belle epoqueBut the orchestration is not traditional at all: The number of wind instruments is considerably reinforced thus emphasizing the march rhythm of the symphony: Up to five flutes, four oboes and an English horn, five clarinets, five bassoons, eight horns, six trumpets, four trombones and the tuba lend an outstanding weight to the wind instruments thus often thrusting the strings into the background which is also underlined by the strong presence of percussion instruments such as timpani, glockenspiel, bass and side drums, triangle, cymbal, tamtam, slapstick and switch; they are completed by deep bells and - for the first time - cowbells and a hammer. Mahler is supposed to have said about the cowbells that they are the last sound to be heard from the earth by the lonely in the extremest height: A symbol of total loneliness. The three hammer strokes, "short, powerful, but dully reverberating in a non-metallic way" (Mahler), according to Alma Mahler are symbols of three great blows of fate in Mahler's life hereby anticipated.
At this point, I allow myself a short digression, a quotation by Kurt Blaukopf regarding Mahler's orchestration: "But the use of the instruments has been changed by Mahler in a decisive way. Gabriel Engel, one of the enthusiastic pioneers of Mahler's music in America, showed this by the example of the Fifth Symphony: The solo flute, playing sugary tunes before, at Mahler sounds ethereal, free of all false emotion and like coming from infinite distance; the sharp small clarinet in e flat, not used in symphonies before Mahler, appears roguish, grotesque and often bizarre; the oboe is not limited to the melancholy of the superior register but is heard without restraint in the natural middle register; out of the comical bassoon suddenly comes the voice of suppressed pain in the highest register; the contrabassoon is allowed to have solistic, extremely bizarre moments; never before, the horn seems to have played such an important role.
This catalogue of unusual uses could be completed for the other instruments, too, in Mahler's art of orchestration. The method aims at a multiple differentiation of sound and colour. Where the traditional instruments are not sufficient, Mahler does not hesitate to find reserves. So he uses the tenor horn in the first movement of the Seventh Symphony and underlines the night music character of the fourth movement by using guitar and mandoline besides the harp.
The second night music of the Seventh Symphony shows that Mahler did not simply want to increase the orchestration in a monumental way. Similar to some passages of the Sixth and to the Adagietto of the Fifth, Mahler anticipates in this night music the symphonic chamber style established by Arnold Schönberg - a Mahler admirer - in 1906 by his chamber symphony for fifteen instruments."
"Maybe the problem most of you have ... is that you're not listening to Barbirolli." ~Sarge

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Scarpia

Quote from: DavidRoss on December 08, 2010, 08:48:29 AM

Silly statement?  Perhaps, but I stand by it.  Note that I did not say Elgar was a bad orchestrator, only that I find him heavy-handed--unsubtle--in comparison to Mahler...which comparison is the topic of this thread.  And as much as I love Elgar's music, I'm not aware of anything by him that equals Mahler's delicacy (when he wants to be) and subtle use of color.

If I'm wrong, please enlighten me.  I'd love to learn about Elgar works that captivate me like DLVDE.

Incidentally, I don't think I'm the only one who regards Mahler as an extraordinary orchestrator.  For instance, see this passage from an article about the 6th Symphony at http://www.la-belle-epoque.de/mahler/sinf06_e.htm

I don't think I ever claimed Mahler would suffer in comparison with Elgar.  I would certainly agree that Mahler was an extraordinary orchestrator, but in his few great works I find Elgar equally extraordinary.   

Luke

Quote from: DavidRoss on December 08, 2010, 08:48:29 AM

Silly statement?  Perhaps, but I stand by it.  Note that I did not say Elgar was a bad orchestrator, only that I find him heavy-handed--unsubtle--in comparison to Mahler...which comparison is the topic of this thread.  And as much as I love Elgar's music, I'm not aware of anything by him that equals Mahler's delicacy (when he wants to be) and subtle use of color.

If I'm wrong, please enlighten me.  I'd love to learn about Elgar works that captivate me like DLVDE.

It may not captivate you like Das Lied - it's the notes that do that, not the orchestration so much - but Elgar can be every bit as visionary as Mahler when the mood descends on him, orchestrally speaking. I'm thinking (it's too obvious to mention, almost) of the 'thrumming' which accompanies the cadenza at the end of the Violin Concerto, an orchestral effect which was pretty much unprecedented and which is uniquely haunting and thought-provoking in its effect. In Das Lied there are those passages in the last song in which Mahler fragments the rhythm in very odd ways and lets the orchestra play with pentatonic fragments, flutes, harps, mandolin, celeste picking out interlocking patterns... Elgar never did anything like that that I'm aware of, just as Mahler never wrote anything like Elgar's thrumming - but both passages have a way of turning the orchestra into something completely new, like a welling-up of some force of nature. This is not meant as some dubious way of likening the two composers - but it is meant to support the idea that Elgar could indeed 'equal Mahler's delicacy' when (as you say) he wants to.