Mahler Mania, Rebooted

[Papy Oli]

Andrew Litton has done a Carpenter too with the Dallas SO:

[André]

Thanks, gents.

I have Barshai, Slatkin, Gamzou, Nézet-Séguin and Goldschmidt. The last two are my favourites, but I confess a fondness for Gamzou's extravagant conception.

[relm1]

This is so beautiful.  Mahler 10 ending (Mazzuca ending) in a new recording.
https://youtu.be/WKMlG5czgks?t=4493

This made me obsessed with Mahler 10 and I looked through the extant material and read about the differences between all the versions which seems to be 13 to date if you include the multiple iterations such as Cook I, II, III.  It seems the general take away is Cooke III is the most researched in that they didn't just review all the extant material and full score of movement 1, 2 but this included the sketches which in some cases the later short score copies incorrectly and Cooke/Matthews bros corrected for.  Barshai was the most informed in that he used Cooke III but revised the sketches and some cases makes judgements based on his experience as a Mahler conductor, what Cooke did, and what he felt Mahler intended based on the sketches.  In other words, everyone after Cooke benefited from the work Cooke did in that they had a completed version to use and compare with.  Mazzuca says he didn't refer to Cooke but returned to the original however it seems there is strong evidence of influence by Cooke.

Here is what exists of No. 10, all available on IMSLP:
* Composer sketches with lots of ideas some discarded some retained, some yet to be flushed out.  They are not in order.
* Short score draft of the entire work in order with some harmonic and counterpoint omissions.  As if there were place holders that Mahler would have flushed out.  All the melodic or principal material is there throughout.  The second movement has clear indications of instrumentation.  Not all the harmony and some good indications of instrumentation as it follows 4 staves so you can see generally first stave is winds, second is brass, third is perc/harp or third/fourth are strings.  Using this, you can definitely get a performance version but it wouldn't be exactly what Mahler would have done.  There are errors/discrepancies/second guessing which is one of the big differences between the various versions is how the arranger makes a judgement call.  Example: was something a copying error between the sketch and short score or a revision?  It isn't always clear.   Cooke might have felt it was an error and Barshai thought it was a revision for example. 
* Orchestrated full score of the first movement

After looking through the short score (which is complete except for a few gaps in harmony or simplified counterpoint and lacking dynamics), I still think it is far enough along that one could say this is where Mahler was going and it deserves to be heard rather than ignored.  The essence is there and it is convincing.  I also believe Mahler was an obsessive tinkerer and would have continued to refine and tweak the work even had he lived another 10 years.  I understand the latest revised version of the Mahler Symphony No. 2 was from just a few years ago for example so probably if Mahler lived, he would have revised his other works too.  A composer like this is never really done with his works and there is a point where others say its close enough to where it was going to be that this is the best possible version of that work unless further information is learned later and it is still worth hearing though it might be 90% what they would have given us as a first performance version. 

[SurprisedByBeauty]

This is so beautiful.  Mahler 10 ending (Mazzuca ending) in a new recording.
https://youtu.be/WKMlG5czgks?t=4493

This made me obsessed with Mahler 10 and I looked through the extant material and read about the differences between all the versions which seems to be 13 to date if you include the multiple iterations such as Cook I, II, III.  It seems the general take away is Cooke III is the most researched in that they didn't just review all the extant material and full score of movement 1, 2 but this included the sketches which in some cases the later short score copies incorrectly and Cooke/Matthews bros corrected for.  Barshai was the most informed in that he used Cooke III but revised the sketches and some cases makes judgements based on his experience as a Mahler conductor, what Cooke did, and what he felt Mahler intended based on the sketches.  In other words, everyone after Cooke benefited from the work Cooke did in that they had a completed version to use and compare with.  Mazzuca says he didn't refer to Cooke but returned to the original however it seems there is strong evidence of influence by Cooke.

The benefit of Cooke III is of limited use to anyone who tries to do their own version. (As is any other previous attempt... because you are not allowed to copy. And when word gets out that you are trying to complete the Mahler 10th (or Bruckner 9th), you have a cease and desist letter in your house before you've even put down a note. The authors and their publishers guard their versions like sharks on speed and are litigious and will make sure you don't even accidentally use some solution from a previous version.

All at the expense of the consumer, who would most benefit from an amalgamate "best-of" version.

[Mahlerian]

The benefit of Cooke III is of limited use to anyone who tries to do their own version. (As is any other previous attempt... because you are not allowed to copy. And when word gets out that you are trying to complete the Mahler 10th (or Bruckner 9th), you have a cease and desist letter in your house before you've even put down a note. The authors and their publishers guard their versions like sharks on speed and are litigious and will make sure you don't even accidentally use some solution from a previous version.

All at the expense of the consumer, who would most benefit from an amalgamate "best-of" version.

I get that music publishers are struggling nearly dead, but it seems unnecessarily punitive to do this in a case where the musical material itself is public domain, and especially because the original editor is gone.

[relm1]

The benefit of Cooke III is of limited use to anyone who tries to do their own version. (As is any other previous attempt... because you are not allowed to copy. And when word gets out that you are trying to complete the Mahler 10th (or Bruckner 9th), you have a cease and desist letter in your house before you've even put down a note. The authors and their publishers guard their versions like sharks on speed and are litigious and will make sure you don't even accidentally use some solution from a previous version.

All at the expense of the consumer, who would most benefit from an amalgamate "best-of" version.

Damn, I was so much hoping for a musicological response to my post and instead got this irrelevant response. 

[TheGSMoeller]

This is so beautiful.  Mahler 10 ending (Mazzuca ending) in a new recording.
https://youtu.be/WKMlG5czgks?t=4493

Thanks for posting! This disc seems to be a challenge to find for purchase at a decent price, or perhaps I'm not looking in the right areas.

[Madiel]

Damn, I was so much hoping for a musicological response to my post and instead got this irrelevant response.

How is it irrelevant? To me it seems directly relevant to what you're discussing. You said that everyone after Cooke benefited from Cooke. The response is that in fact people are not allowed to build on previous work.

[relm1]

How is it irrelevant? To me it seems directly relevant to what you're discussing. You said that everyone after Cooke benefited from Cooke. The response is that in fact people are not allowed to build on previous work.

Nah, I was just in a weird mood yesterday.  Cooke III is absolutely influential regardless of copyright.  One is reacting to it in their own versions and in some cases state that (Barshai) but use their own judgement on when to deviate from it or make a different judgement call when faced with ambiguity. 

[Mahlerian]

Leon Botstein says some interesting things near the end of an essay on Berg, primarily dealing with the opera Lulu:

In the immediate postwar era, while Helene controlled Berg's estate, critical reception focused on his distinctive place as a modernist, though in that regard there were many skeptics.107 But by the time a completed opera version of Lulu was performed in 1979, four major historical shifts had occurred that would ultimately favor the work, rendering irrelevant the misgivings of the late 1940s and early 1950s.108 The first, which began in the mid-1970s, was the turn away from modernism among composers. The residues of Expressionism, tonality, and the sound world of Mahler were revived and young composers embraced them as attuned to the times. Modernism between 1945 and 1975 had failed precisely where Berg had succeeded, in persuading audiences of the necessary link between musical means and expressive intent.

...

The last (and most parochial) shift was an irreversible by-product of the other three: the lasting success of the Mahler revival that began in the late 1950s. It elevated Berg's beloved composer from the margins to the center of public taste, paralleling a reassessment of the history of twentieth-century music in which Shostakovich
would emerge as central and Schoenberg as peripheral.109 Likewise, the drift at the end of the twentieth century toward cultural nostalgia helped spark a revival of interest in Wagnerian music drama and the music of post-Wagnerian late Romanticism. This augured well for a revival of the operas of Zemlinsky and Schreker. Insofar as Lulu rather than Wozzeck evoked that tradition (as would the Lyric Suite and Violin Concerto), its prospects were more promising.110

As many people here probably know, I'm one of those people who sees Schoenberg as central and Shostakovich as peripheral to 20th century music. I've wondered at the fact that so many seem to think of Mahler as primarily a Romantic figure, rather than a Modern one. To me, Mahler's music leads directly to Berg's, and the modern aspects of his writing, from the motivic saturation to the use of irony and satire or the klangfarbenmelodie orchestration that treats every player as a soloist in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of color, are an inextricable part of his music, inseparable from the substance of the writing.

I understand that many others feel the opposite, that the important thing about Mahler is his Romantic side, and the Modern aspects are either secondary or, perhaps, not connected to the Second Viennese School in any significant way. This is why I often see people say X composer is "like Mahler" and am baffled, because they are discussing music from a completely different perspective that locates Mahler's identity in other aspects of the music. For me, seeing Mahler allied with anti-modernism is baffling.

Which aspects do people here see as important?

[aukhawk]

I had to Google klangfarbenmelodie (thanks!) but yes - that is possibly the single most attractive aspect of Mahler's 'style' to me - it gets my attention and keeps hold of it.  I was collecting together various recordings of Symphony 7 Nachtmusik I the other day, for a possible blind listen - and that movement is a great example of this technique (and what I take to be a certain irony as well).

[Mahlerian]

I had to Google klangfarbenmelodie (thanks!) but yes - that is possibly the single most attractive aspect of Mahler's 'style' to me - it gets my attention and keeps hold of it.  I was collecting together various recordings of Symphony 7 Nachtmusik I the other day, for a possible blind listen - and that movement is a great example of this technique (and what I take to be a certain irony as well).

If you did that blind listen, I'd be interested to participate. Looking forward to it!

The Nachtmusik movements of the Seventh are wonderful character pieces; did you know he wrote them the same summer as he wrote the finale of the Sixth? I can't imagine much of a greater contrast.

[Madiel]

Leon Botstein says some interesting things near the end of an essay on Berg, primarily dealing with the opera Lulu:
As many people here probably know, I'm one of those people who sees Schoenberg as central and Shostakovich as peripheral to 20th century music. I've wondered at the fact that so many seem to think of Mahler as primarily a Romantic figure, rather than a Modern one. To me, Mahler's music leads directly to Berg's, and the modern aspects of his writing, from the motivic saturation to the use of irony and satire or the klangfarbenmelodie orchestration that treats every player as a soloist in an ever-shifting kaleidoscope of color, are an inextricable part of his music, inseparable from the substance of the writing.

I understand that many others feel the opposite, that the important thing about Mahler is his Romantic side, and the Modern aspects are either secondary or, perhaps, not connected to the Second Viennese School in any significant way. This is why I often see people say X composer is "like Mahler" and am baffled, because they are discussing music from a completely different perspective that locates Mahler's identity in other aspects of the music. For me, seeing Mahler allied with anti-modernism is baffling.

Which aspects do people here see as important?

It's not an either/or dichotomy. I certainly don't see the Second Viennese School as divorced from what went before them. But neither do I see them as representing the core of 'Modern' and Shostakovich as some random offshoot. The parallels between Mahler and Schoenberg are obvious but so are the parallels between Mahler and Shostakovich, especially before Shostakovich was forced to change his style.

[Herman]

Not sure many people listen to music with a sort of musical-historical score card, getting more enjoyment out of it as the composer does more historically 'important' things.

What people respond to (and a lot don't, by the way) is whether a composer (and any creative) is putting himself on the line. That may be in terms of pushing the musical envelope, pushing the language onwards, but then you get a big problem in the twentieth century, when "neo" schools popped up.

Stravinsky and indeed Shostakovich, constantly reinventing their language by borrowing gestures from past masters and putting them in a new frame.

[aukhawk]

The Nachtmusik movements of the Seventh are wonderful character pieces; did you know he wrote them the same summer as he wrote the finale of the Sixth? I can't imagine much of a greater contrast.

As a way of easing his writer's block, wasn't it?  He was having trouble formulating his 6th Finale, and turned to writing this contrasting material as a form of therapy?

After the 1st movement of the 9th, the Nachtmusik I is my favourite movement in all of Mahler.  But I am a sucker for all forms of nature music.

[Jo498]

I have been to the alps many times and have heard cowbells frequently as well but once I stayed at a hut at the end of some valley and in the early evening one got the somewhat disembodied sound not quite localizable cowbells in the distance but not that far away. It was both homely and strange at the same time and I can never hear Mahler's cowbells now without being remined of that particular mood.

[aukhawk]

Cowbells heard en masse as in the Alps are a fantasically complex and stimulating sound, especially the traditional squarish bells, not so much the bell-like bells that seem to be more common now - I could listen to them for hours.
I once cycled uphill (that is, up-mountain) on a road with cattle to the left and the right, for a complete surround cowbell experience - the thing is that each individual bell would doppler-shift downward in pitch as I rode past, as I say a fantastically complex uber-chromatic aural stimulus. I wish I had recorded it - though my heavy breathing might have spoiled the effect.

And I once stayed within earshot of the church bells at Beckenried on the south shore of beautiful Lake Lucerne - the entire peal of bells are that same squarish cowbell shape, and typically the highest not would ring first, and then progressively lower and lower notes added into the mix, until finally in the cacophany you get that bellowing booming CLONK like two supertankers colliding - and you look out to check if the church tower is really still standing.
I Googled 'Swiss church bells' looking for a recording of these bells, but all I could find was pages of hate mail by people who couldn't stand the sound of bells ringing at night.

[relm1]

This is semi-out of topic but I enjoyed this orchestrated version of Mahler's early quartet including the unfinished second movement arranged by Marlijn Helder.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=IrWrEs3mGqQ&

Sorry, I'll never learn how to do an embedded youtube video. 

[Mahlerian]

It's not an either/or dichotomy. I certainly don't see the Second Viennese School as divorced from what went before them. But neither do I see them as representing the core of 'Modern' and Shostakovich as some random offshoot. The parallels between Mahler and Schoenberg are obvious but so are the parallels between Mahler and Shostakovich, especially before Shostakovich was forced to change his style.

I don't see how any of this contradicts what I said. Shostakovich was a fine composer, and of course his music also responded to Mahler's. As I've said before on this site, I think the Shostakovich Fourth Symphony is one of the best musical responses to Mahler's Sixth, along with Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra. Nor do I think of Shostakovich as a "random offshoot" of 20th century music. He too was clearly influenced by Schoenberg, Berg, and Stravinsky (and Hindemith).

Not sure many people listen to music with a sort of musical-historical score card, getting more enjoyment out of it as the composer does more historically 'important' things.

Nor do I.  I don't think Shostakovich was less important because his music was less innovative. I enjoy the conservative music of Franz Schmidt (far more conservative for its time than Shostakovich) and actually I prefer Prokofiev, due in part to the latter's melodic gift.

What people respond to (and a lot don't, by the way) is whether a composer (and any creative) is putting himself on the line. That may be in terms of pushing the musical envelope, pushing the language onwards, but then you get a big problem in the twentieth century, when "neo" schools popped up.

Stravinsky and indeed Shostakovich, constantly reinventing their language by borrowing gestures from past masters and putting them in a new frame.

Stravinsky is absolutely at the core of my personal 20th century canon. The same language of reinventing gestures from past masters could be equally applied to Schoenberg, I feel.



My main point with responding to Botstein's "view of history that sees Shostakovich as central and Schoenberg as peripheral" is that I think sometimes people hear Mahler as leading, not to Shostakovich or Britten, but to a host of very conservative post-romantics like Schmidt (who, despite my enjoyment of his music, absolutely does not bear any resemblance to Mahler).

I'm still interested in hearing from both of you, though. Which elements in Mahler seem to form the core of his identity to you? My main question wasn't about history or influence, but about the parts of his music that are most characteristic.

[Mahlerian]

I have been to the alps many times and have heard cowbells frequently as well but once I stayed at a hut at the end of some valley and in the early evening one got the somewhat disembodied sound not quite localizable cowbells in the distance but not that far away. It was both homely and strange at the same time and I can never hear Mahler's cowbells now without being remined of that particular mood.

That was exactly what he was trying to evoke, that sense of distance and isolation which one can feel upon hearing some barely recognizable familiar sound without seeing the source.

So few writers on the Sixth Symphony seem to mention the way that the cowbells return at the climax of the movement, as if in a mocking reversal of their appearance at the E major section, where they were allied with that moment of transcendent tranquility, but to me it's one of the many fascinating touches of Mahler's music, where the meaning of a particular timbre shifts over time and takes on greater nuance.