Most Tragic Symphony (four choices allowed)

[Mirror Image]

Do you think I don't feel that way?  I believe that the Ninth is a profound and beautiful work and the fact that Mahler had no idea about his coming death does nothing whatsoever to diminish that.

My own view of the work as not being tragic is influenced by the way I hear the piece as ending in glorious and serene resolution of the piece's conflicts.

And, as I stated, a piece of music doesn't have to end tragically in order for it to be considered tragic IMHO.

[Androcles]

I don't think the 9th Symphony is Tragic, unless in a very general sense, if you think the human condition is tragic in itself. Too much existential angst to be tragic, at least in the normal way (I'm taking Greek tragedy as my guide there). Too much questioning about the meaning of it all etc. Its certainly very good though. The first movement is one of the most stunning things he wrote. I listen to Symphony No. 9 more than virtually anything else he wrote. I used to like Mahler a lot as a teenager - I enjoyed the angst. These days I prefer Sibelius.

But if you want to think Mahler 9 is tragic, thats fine by me. Music speaks in different ways to different people. Admittedly, my definition of tragedy is fairly narrow.

[Madiel]

I don't know Mahler's 9th. I just know that watching two avatars of him fighting it out is doing my head in.

[Androcles]

I don't know Mahler's 9th. I just know that watching two avatars of him fighting it out is doing my head in.

I can sympathise with that. My sense is that Mahler isn't really the most relevant composer to this thread....

Maybe we can have a separate thread for hypothetical arguments between Mahler as a young man and Mahler as an old man (well, 50 ish).

[Mirror Image]

I don't know Mahler's 9th. I just know that watching two avatars of him fighting it out is doing my head in.

No longer fret my friend, your aspirin has been administered.

[Mahlerian]

Now Shostakovich 8 - that's tragic,

There is an example of a work that I would point to as having a bleak ending despite finishing in C major and outwardly conforming to the "darkness to light" archetype.  The violence of the earlier movements is never resolved in the finale, and in fact it reappears just as before.

[vandermolen]

I'll have to revisit RVW's 9th (his symphony cycle is one of the best to have ever been written IMHO). To make a further side note, I think it's an absolute shame that RVW's symphonies haven't really traveled all that well. I'd love to hear the Scandinavians tackle these symphonies. Are you reading this Sondergard, Dausgaard, Aadland, or Lindberg?

No, they haven't travelled well unfortunately. Amazingly there is a cycle, however, with Rozhdestvensky conducting the soviet Ministry of Culture SO on the Melodiya label - a really extraordinary set.

[Mirror Image]

No, they haven't travelled well unfortunately. Amazingly there is a cycle, however, with Rozhdestvensky conducting the soviet Ministry of Culture SO on the Melodiya label - a really extraordinary set.

Yeah, I still haven't hear that particular cycle. In due time. Thanks for the reminder. I imagine Rozhdestvensky actually being good in this music.

[Ken B]

Also, I will admit that I think that Bernstein's view (his expressed view, not his musical interpretation) cheapens the work by narrowing its meaning, as well as by distorting Mahler's personality and aesthetic.

Actually that's generally my view of Lenny's interpretation of Mahler. He said he wants the music to give him an orgasm, or what's the point. A very unbalanced view of the music that buries many of its merits IMO. I'll tale Boulez's detached approach.

[Chronochromie]

Actually that's generally my view of Lenny's interpretation of Mahler. He said he wants the music to give him an orgasm, or what's the point. A very unbalanced view of the music that buries many of its merits IMO.

+1

[zamyrabyrd]

I'll add that the first performance of the 9th I ever heard was Tennstedt's on EMI. This was seven years ago. Even as I sat listening to this symphony, I was overcome with the feeling that this symphony was much more notes affixed to a piece of notation paper (to paraphrase a great Takemitsu quote). I sensed some kind of resignation in this music. Whether it was Mahler's own resignation from the world or merely a musical statement on the grand cycle of life, I didn't know and I'll never know. I knew nothing about Mahler's life except a little biographical information, but I certainly did not know where he was at this point in his life and I certainly didn't know what kind of mindset he had upon the writing of the 9th. I simply took away from the music what I perceived to be there. I would never make a ridiculous assertion that these thoughts of my own were, indeed, factual. I will, however, say that these thoughts about what I had experienced are simply my own feelings towards the music and reading Mahlerian's own thoughts and reading what Mahler actually did indeed say during this time of writing his 9th, doesn't, and will never, change my view of the symphony as being one of the most profoundly tragic pieces of music that I know hence why I chose it.

As might be said of Beethoven, after his 9th Symphony, what is left for him to add?  Instead of glorious joy and triumph over fate, however, Mahler ends his 9th in a fade out similar to his Song of the Earth. It would be very difficult to construe the endings of the two works as being anything but tragic resignation. So I do believe musically and conceptually they are linked. There is an actual quote (I think the same notes) of the "Ewig, Ewig" by the French horn shortly after the opening of the last movement of the 9th. 

What joins the two on a micro structural level are the descending major 2nds which appear right from the beginning. This is not the pathetic minor 2nd but something more poignant similar to Schubert's heartbreaking passages in major keys.

Leonard Bernstein was particularly devoted to Mahler and I don't think his commentary on the 9th Symphony was nonsense. If not literally true, there is much on the emotional level that is valid for this piece. I saw him conduct the 9th in 1985, after that I fairly wore out a cassette tape with Barbirolli also excellent, who in fact made a year long study of the work before conducting and recording it.

Just thinking about this symphony gives me a feeling of awe.

https://www.youtube.com/v/wWxX-kf-2MI

[Turner]

How about KA Hartmann Symphony No. 1, 'An Attempt at a Requiem'.

The intentions there are certainly very tragic. Does anyone see this as something that could fit on their list?

And his "Sinfonia Tragica" as well (1940-43):

http://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/hartmann-ka-sinfonia-tragica

It´s been a long time since I heard it, though.

[vandermolen]

Yeah, I still haven't hear that particular cycle. In due time. Thanks for the reminder. I imagine Rozhdestvensky actually being good in this music.

The BBC did a survey of the different recordings of Vaughan Williams's 'A London Symphony' on Saturday and they included an extract from the Rozhdestvensky Melodiya cycle. It was the march in the last movement which Rozhdestvensky made sound like something composed by Prokofiev! I found it fascinating. It is a most enjoyable set of live recordings - occasionally things go a bit wrong like the organ in Sinfonia Antartica which goes a bit hay wire at one point but this rather adds to the appeal of the set.

Incidentally, to bring things back to the thread topic, I think that there is an element of tragedy hanging over 'A London Symphony' not least the despairing cry which opens the last movement. The symphony can be seen as a requiem for Edwardian England on the eve of the First World War.

[Mahlerian]

As might be said of Beethoven, after his 9th Symphony, what is left for him to add?  Instead of glorious joy and triumph over fate, however, Mahler ends his 9th in a fade out similar to his Song of the Earth. It would be very difficult to construe the endings of the two works as being anything but tragic resignation. So I do believe musically and conceptually they are linked. There is an actual quote (I think the same notes) of the "Ewig, Ewig" by the French horn shortly after the opening of the last movement of the 9th.

There are certainly connections, although the one minor-key interlude with harp ostinato seems to me the clearest one between Der Abschied and the Ninth.

But I don't hear either work as the least bit tragic.  Das Lied ends with a full embrace of nature (in words Mahler wrote himself) and of eternity.  An added sixth chord, as he uses to end the work, was for him the harmony of ultimate repose, used also in the gentle ending of the Kindertotenlieder.  The Ninth ends very conclusively on a D-flat major triad, and there's nothing equivocal about the ending; the earlier specter of the first movement's second "D minor" theme appears and is clearly overcome.  The music then floats away into still repose.

For me, it's impossible to understand how there's anything tragic whatsoever about these works.  Wistful, melancholy, perhaps, but tragedy implies that something has gone horribly wrong.

[not edward]

Can almost do this using only 4th symphonies by composers whose names begin with S: Sibelius, Schmidt, Shostakovich.

[Mirror Image]

As might be said of Beethoven, after his 9th Symphony, what is left for him to add?  Instead of glorious joy and triumph over fate, however, Mahler ends his 9th in a fade out similar to his Song of the Earth. It would be very difficult to construe the endings of the two works as being anything but tragic resignation. So I do believe musically and conceptually they are linked. There is an actual quote (I think the same notes) of the "Ewig, Ewig" by the French horn shortly after the opening of the last movement of the 9th. 

What joins the two on a micro structural level are the descending major 2nds which appear right from the beginning. This is not the pathetic minor 2nd but something more poignant similar to Schubert's heartbreaking passages in major keys.

Leonard Bernstein was particularly devoted to Mahler and I don't think his commentary on the 9th Symphony was nonsense. If not literally true, there is much on the emotional level that is valid for this piece. I saw him conduct the 9th in 1985, after that I fairly wore out a cassette tape with Barbirolli also excellent, who in fact made a year long study of the work before conducting and recording it.

Just thinking about this symphony gives me a feeling of awe.

https://www.youtube.com/v/wWxX-kf-2MI

It's an extraordinary work no question about it. As I said many times now, I find the symphony to be a tragic because, for me, there seems to be a sense of Mahler foreseeing the future and it's uncertainty. Then there's this sense of him 'throwing in the towel' so to speak. I can't help but to hear it in the music. Both Das Lied von der Erde and the 9th have this tragic element that is so appealing and, at the end of the day, completely human. That's my interpretation of these last works. Desolation and the inevitability of death run deep within these works and these elements might not always manifest themselves in full fruition, but I do believe they are there just lying below the surface.

[Jo498]

If there is tragedy in the Mahler 9th it is played out in the first three movements. But the first mvtm I'd also put rather as melancholy and resignation although without the "serenity" of the finale. The middle movements contain mockery and defiance and among them "longing", the idyllic passages in the Ländler, and especially the "vision" of the finale theme in the Rondo Burleske.
There are probably all kinds of stories to be associated with this piece, but overall I think it closer to some "redemptive" story, acceptance of mortality, longing for a better past, whatever, but not tragic defeat and catastrophe.

[zamyrabyrd]

If there is tragedy in the Mahler 9th it is played out in the first three movements. But the first mvtm I'd also put rather as melancholy and resignation although without the "serenity" of the finale. The middle movements contain mockery and defiance and among them "longing", the idyllic passages in the Ländler, and especially the "vision" of the finale theme in the Rondo Burleske.
There are probably all kinds of stories to be associated with this piece, but overall I think it closer to some "redemptive" story, acceptance of mortality, longing for a better past, whatever, but not tragic defeat and catastrophe.

The 4th movement in my opinion is still full of angst. Whatever it's worth, the resignation according to Bernstein comes at the very end, which I happen to agree with. I don't see any defeat or catastrophe either, mainly personal longing and suffering.

[relm1]

And his "Sinfonia Tragica" as well (1940-43):

http://www.gramophone.co.uk/review/hartmann-ka-sinfonia-tragica

It´s been a long time since I heard it, though.

I really liked this.  It sort of reminds me of Honegger's No. 3.  There is an urgency, virtuosity, and tautness to them both.  I actually realize I haven't heard anything by Hartman and must explore more.  What next?

[Ken B]

I really liked this.  It sort of reminds me of Honegger's No. 3.  There is an urgency, virtuosity, and tautness to them both.  I actually realize I haven't heard anything by Hartman and must explore more.  What next?

The violin concerto.