How to fix Mahler's second

[french frank]

before my time - do tell!!

Perhaps we should set up an Our History forum, down in a netherworld where the oldsters can gather and swap memories and 'younger' members can come to listen, hanging in rapt admiration on every word? There doesn't quite seem to be a place for it in the main forum.

[Martin]

Would Mr Grew perhaps like to take this one stage further and create a single ubiquitous Mahler symphony from the best bits of all the others? The People's Mahler, perhaps, available also in an eight-minute precis version for our dear Breakfast listeners.

[mercia]

create a single ubiquitous Mahler symphony from the best bits of all the others

wow!! - now there's an idea - the start of a whole new thread!!

[johnb]

Perhaps we should set up an Our History forum, down in a netherworld where the oldsters can gather and swap memories and 'younger' members can come to listen, hanging in rapt admiration on every word? There doesn't quite seem to be a place for it in the main forum.

The Great Purge (also known as The Great Turmoil)
Ludo's Battle
The Exodus, and
The Resurrection

We need a Homer to write of these tales of the ancients, or a Prokofiev to write a cantata.

[Bryn]

Or a Hollywood blockbuster: "The Wright Stuffing".

[mercia]

well I'm all ears (a birth defect)

[ahinton]

Would Mr Grew perhaps like to take this one stage further and create a single ubiquitous Mahler symphony from the best bits of all the others? The People's Mahler, perhaps, available also in an eight-minute precis version for our dear Breakfast listeners.

Heaven forbid that this be taken as the invitation that we (i.e. the rest of us here) assume it not to be - the second part in particular! Were this actually to happen, I have little doubt that it would raise vociferous protest from Frères Matthews...

[Uncle Monty]

I don't subscribe to all the guff about "the sanctity of the text", and I've never been above rewriting bits of music if I think it might make them sound better, but on the other hand Mahler 2 has been going on quite happily for well over a century, so even though I believe Mahler himself was known to play the movements in a different order, I wouldn't touch it now. It's OK :cool2:

[johnb]

I blame it all on Beethoven.

Everything went downhill from when he decided to write the EU Anthem as a choral finale to his ninth symphony. Poor deluded, half crazed, deaf fool.

[PJPJ]

mahlerei!



all round

[BBMmk2]

A Mahler synthesis in 10 minutes?

[ahinton]

I blame it all on Beethoven.

Everything went downhill from when he decided to write the EU Anthem as a choral finale to his ninth symphony. Poor deluded, half crazed, deaf fool.

When you or anyone else starts to blame Beethoven for giving Sydney a reason of his (their?) own to make the kind of remark that opened this thread, there is surely a big problem - and, since this is really about Mahler, why should we blame someone who was Jewish for the absurd lucubrations of one who is merely Grewish?

[Mahlerei]

mahlerei!



all round

Hi PJ

Good to see you here. Hope all's well with you.

[johnb]

When you or anyone else starts to blame Beethoven for giving Sydney a reason...

(I did wonder about adding a smiley)

[Sydney Grew]

When you or anyone else starts to blame Beethoven for giving Sydney a reason of his . . . own to make the kind of remark that opened this thread, there is sreuly [surely, surely] a bug [big, surely] problem . . .

No Member ahinton, if you take the trouble to think about the matter a little, you will see that Member johnb is right to blame Van Beethoven. Once again Geoffrey Sharp that reliable man backs him up. Continuing on the question of "the homogeneity that a work must have in order to merit the term 'symphonic'" (see message 1), Mr. Sharp writes the following:

"This is precisely why, in my opinion, Beethoven's Choral Symphony, after three magnificent movements, comes such a cropper at the end. Even Mahler who excelled as a song-writer (as Beethoven did, notably in An die ferne Geliebte) could not dovetail song into symphony without leaving scars and blotches which become evident to the least tutored listener, who is prepared to use his ears and remember what has gone before. Mahler's Eighth Symphony escapes this general condemnation because it is genuinely a choral symphony, not an instrumental work with a choral 'bit' tacked on for effect."

It cannot be denied that Mr. Sharp shows tremendous penetration there and every word is right!!

Dr. Williams's Sea Symphony is a considerably better effort than Mahler's Second we find, because the chorus, coming in with a big shout right at the start, is much more integrated into the symphonic form. In fact it is the best of all Williams's symphonies.