Why is Mahler's music style so different from other musics in same period?

[snoozer]

As far as I know, his music is inherited from musicians like Bruckner, but even his first symphony is so different compared to other music in same era. Did I miss something? or what happened?

p.s. would you suggest any good musicians with similar music style to Mahler or Shostakovich? thks:)

[DaveF]

Hello, Snoozer, and welcome to the forum.

Your question is an interesting one, and the answer seems to me to be that all major composers of the early twentieth century, and even most of the nineteenth, have entirely distinct styles.  You mention Bruckner as a major influence on Mahler, which is true, but nobody else sounds anything like Bruckner either.  And Debussy, Stravinsky, Nielsen, Sibelius, Strauss, Elgar, Varèse, Schoenberg, Rachmaninov... none of them could be mistaken for anyone else.  The time when composers wrote in a "period style" was a hundred years in the past by this time, in the classical era of Haydn and Mozart (who themselves became more and more individual as their styles developed).

To my ears, the composers who most resemble Mahler are Berg and Webern - at least, their music sound like what Mahler might have been writing had he lived to be 70 or 80.  As far as Shostakovich goes, there are more expert opinions to be found on this forum than mine, but Russians like Myaskovsky and Weinberg, and even early Schnittke, have a lot in common stylistically.

[Cosi bel do]

I concur with Dave's thoughts, composers of that period frequently had very distinctive styles.

But in order to find an explanation to the style of each of these musicians, it's a good thing to remember under which influences they have been placed. The fact is Mahler had very different but well-known sources of inspiration. Bruckner is one of them, but one could also cite most of the composers he liked as a conductor : Mozart, Beethoven Wagner of course, but also Verdi, Tchaikovsky or Smetana. And I find one way to describe Mahler's music is as a funny and unique cocktail of all those very different influences, made by one very specific creative personality.

[Ken B]

Was Mahler really that different from *searches for a name at random* Hans Rott?

[Jo498]

Rott seems like a "missing link" between Bruckner and Mahler. But I think most of this is already present in Bruckner (brass chorales, Laendler going amok etc.) and some important things in Mahler's 1st, e.g. the beginning with the "nature music" have not much to do with either Rott or Bruckner.
A big influence on Mahler is early romanticism as shown by his fondness of the Wunderhorn collection, fairy tales like in "Das klagende Lied" etc. Of course, this is not clearly musical (I am not sure if one could find obvious connections between Mahler and Schubert and Schumann), but rather different from your average refined fin-de-siecle-decadence.

[Cosi bel do]

Or course there are connections between Mahler and both Schubert and Schumann. He conducted their works and, also, let me remind you Mahler's reorchestration of Schumann's symphonies !

[Jo498]

Of course he knew their music well and there are connections, if only Mahler being in the same austro-germanic tradition. But I cannot think right away of anything obvious like Beethoven's 9th in Mahler's second (not only the choir, but even more the respective 1st movements).

[ritter]

I would add that, although being steeped in the Austro-Germanic tradition pointed out above, Mahler stands out because he incorporates a whole lot of popular influences in his music (ländler, marches, etc.). Theres' nothing really new in that, but the way he uses this material, retaining its essence but simultaneously treating it masterfully in strictly musical terms ("sublimating" it), is novel, and permits his music to speak to many people on many different levels. In the end, we have music that offers a unique mixture of "high art", vulgarity & kitsch, genuine emotional content, naivete, innovation, orchestral  virtuosity, and so on, and I'd go as far as to say that no other major copmpsoer has ever achieved something like this (like it or not, that's a different issue).

[Dax]

I would add that, although being steeped in the Austro-Germanic tradition pointed out above, Mahler stands out because he incorporates a whole lot of popular influences in his music (ländler, marches, etc.). Theres' nothing really new in that, but the way he uses this material, retaining its essence but simultaneously treating it masterfully in strictly musical terms ("sublimating" it), is novel, and permits his music to speak to many people on many different levels. In the end, we have music that offers a unique mixture of "high art", vulgarity & kitsch, genuine emotional content, naivete, innovation, orchestral  virtuosity, and so on, and I'd go as far as to say that no other major copmpsoer has ever achieved something like this (like it or not, that's a different issue).

Apart from Ives.

Mahler was due to conduct his 3rd symphony in 1911 with the NY Phil. Had he lived and researched a bit more Ives . . . (one of those pointless "what if" questions). Am I alone in noticing a tenuous link between the perpetual modulation at the beginning of Ives 3rd Symphony with that near the beginning of Mahler's 10th? Yes, I probably am.

[Cosi bel do]

By the way, I think we could also ask why Beethoven's music style is so different, so particular, when compared to close contemporaries as Eberl, Cherubini or Reicha. One's capacity to renew musical language is a sign of historical significance (what some people call genius).

[DaveF]

In the end, we have music that offers a unique mixture of "high art", vulgarity & kitsch, genuine emotional content, naivete, innovation, orchestral  virtuosity, and so on, and I'd go as far as to say that no other major composer has ever achieved something like this (like it or not, that's a different issue).

Sounds like a perfect description of Beethoven 9  (which, seriously, sounds like a huge influence on Mahler's orchestration, too).

[The new erato]

 Nobody mentions Jewish popular music, one of the distinct and pretty unique for the time, influences on Mahler.

[Ken B]

I would add that, although being steeped in the Austro-Germanic tradition pointed out above, Mahler stands out because he incorporates a whole lot of popular influences in his music (ländler, marches, etc.). Theres' nothing really new in that, but the way he uses this material, retaining its essence but simultaneously treating it masterfully in strictly musical terms ("sublimating" it), is novel, and permits his music to speak to many people on many different levels. In the end, we have music that offers a unique mixture of "high art", vulgarity & kitsch, genuine emotional content, naivete, innovation, orchestral  virtuosity, and so on, and I'd go as far as to say that no other major copmpsoer has ever achieved something like this (like it or not, that's a different issue).

Well, I agree with the first part. Mahler did find a new way to incorporate some of the popular even kitschy stuff of his time. Jewish music too, not until then not a major influence on art music.  This permeates his work, it's not just like inserting a quotation as Ives does.

The "no other major composer" not so much. Liszt. Monteverdi and the composers of his time certainly did I think.  Some of Bach's precursors, like Schutz or Buxtehude bringing protestant chorales in. I would count Satie maybe, or Milhaud, or just Les Six. Bartok.

[amw]

You have to look at the context of where Mahler lived and worked (in this case, Vienna & environs, 1880-1910 or so) and the other things that were happening around him. Certainly he was influenced by Bruckner but then Bruckner was influenced by Beethoven and Beethoven by Haydn and Handel etc, etc. That doesn't tell us very much. Among Mahler's own contemporaries we find figures like his heterosexual life-mate Hans Rott, friends/colleagues Zemlinsky and Schoenberg, sometime rival Strauss... not to forget the likes of Nietzsche and Freud. Stylistically, Mahler's not much of an outlier in this crew (even if he felt like one, due to being Jewish during a rather anti-Semitic time). There are of course composers he influenced as well, though unless they did something more individual later on they've tended to be forgotten (we don't really remember Pfitzner, Karg-Elert or Schoeck these days, whereas Berg, Webern and Shostakovich are famous). And there's some degree of 'concurrent evolution' due to cultural cross-pollination: Ives in America being the most notable example.

I might be the only one who thinks so but I find Nielsen's music to get progressively more Mahlerian over time. Don't know if that's conscious influence or not.

[Purusha]

By the way, I think we could also ask why Beethoven's music style is so different, so particular, when compared to close contemporaries as Eberl, Cherubini or Reicha. One's capacity to renew musical language is a sign of historical significance (what some people call genius).

This seems like the simplest explanation to me.

[ibanezmonster]

He got the most recognizable chunk of his idiom from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and then developed it.

[Cato]

Mahler conducted a fairly new work in his last months with the New York Philharmonic: the Third Piano Concerto of a younger contemporary named Rachmaninov.

The composer and soloist (who himself was no stranger on the podium) later told an interviewer:

...Mahler was the only conductor whom I considered worthy to be classed with Nikisch. He devoted himself to the accompaniment, which is rather complicated, had been practiced to the point of perfection...According to Mahler, every detail of the score was important, an attitude too rare among conductors.

A rehearsal of the Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique "dazzled" Rachmaninov.  And the new concerto was rehearsed until Mahler was satisfied with the performance, meaning that the players went into overtime.  Rachmaninov was rather amazed that no grumbling was heard from them.

Rachmaninov was not quite a generation younger, of course, and was about the same age as Schoenberg.  One can imagine that Mahler would not have conducted a contemporary work that he found wanting in quality.  So even though his style - especially c. 1910 ! - was quite different from Rachmaninov's, he obviously found things of great value in the score of the Third Piano Concerto.

See:

https://books.google.com/books?id=KM-dgfOaIIkC&pg=PA164&lpg=PA164&dq=Mahler+%2B+rachmaninoff&source=bl&ots=AVAe6vdWWk&sig=Q_zkjxc_x5LMYjcKKeyCSgdYQOI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=7neXVIXeLIf2yQSJn4KQAw&ved=0CEQQ6AEwBQ#v=onepage&q=Mahler%20%2B%20rachmaninoff&f=false

[jochanaan]

There is a rather charming story in Alma Mahler's biography of her husband Gustav.  Apparently, shortly before Brahms' death, he and Mahler took a walk up in the Austrian mountains.  Brahms was complaining about the younger generation of musicians as they crossed a bridge over a mountain stream.  Mahler pointed at the ripples in the stream and merely asked "Which is the last?"

[RJR]

I might be the only one who thinks so but I find Nielsen's music to get progressively more Mahlerian over time. Don't know if that's conscious influence or not.

I hope that you are the only one and that you will always remain the only one. I doubt that it even qualifies as an unconscious influence.