Another Mahler Thread: 10th Symphony

[Nick Armstrong]

Interesting and thoughtful post, waldo, after an oddly tetchy thread!!

I enjoyed reading that.

Some performers are concerned about that issue of authorial purity too, aren't they? My only conversation with Claudio Abbado... (he says, as though we were discoursing for hours - in fact, it was a quick one at the back of the RFH after I spotted him waiting for his limo) ahem.... well, it consisted of me asking him if he was going to perform or record the whole of Mahler 10. When I made a and said 'oh dear' when he replied No he wasn't, he explained that he wouldn't do so any more than he would record a 'finished' version of Schubert's 'Unfinished'... His limo then arrived, so any deft riposte I could have made was wasted

[waldo]

I have often wondered about Abbado and Mahler 10. As others have pointed out here, he doesn't seem to have any problem with the Mozart Requiem, so he can hardly reject Mahler 10 on the grounds that it is not pure Mahler. Apart from a few die hard purists, I don't think anyone really cares who wrote what bit of the Requiem anymore. It is what it is - a great work of art. (Though plenty of people like to console themselves with the "fact" that Mozart gave Sussmayr detailed instructions on his death bed.......the dead hand of the master acting through his devoted pupil.)

At some level, I suppose Abbado just isn't convinced by it as a piece of music. It is just too hard to believe he wouldn't have performed it if he had thought it was good enough.

Moving sideways a bit, I read an interesting interview with Ricardo Chailly a few months ago in which he said that he was summoned to meet Karajan in the mid eighties. Karajan had heard Chailly do Mahler 10 and wanted to ask him how difficult it was to pull off. Chailly told him it was really effing hard - especially the scherzos. As hard as the Rite of Spring, he said. Karajan turned pale and said, in that case, I had better leave it. I am too old for that kind of challenge.

[Nick Armstrong]

I have often wondered about Abbado and Mahler 10. As others have pointed out here, he doesn't seem to have any problem with the Mozart Requiem, so he can hardly reject Mahler 10 on the grounds that it is not pure Mahler. Apart from a few die hard purists, I don't think anyone really cares who wrote what bit of the Requiem anymore. It is what it is - a great work of art. (Though plenty of people like to console themselves with the "fact" that Mozart gave Sussmayr detailed instructions on his death bed.......the dead hand of the master acting through his devoted pupil.)

That was going to form the essence of my response had his Merc not pulled up at that moment

[waldo]

Next time, Caliban. I am sure you will sock it to him next time.

[richardfinegold]

Pity, Joseph Wheeler, Clinton Carpenter, Remo Mazzetti, Rudolf Barshai, Nicola Samale & Giuseppe Mazzucca, Yoel Gamzou
Michelle Castelleti, and even Ronald Stevenson for all their efforts at 'realising' this symphony. According to this thread their efforts never even left the stalls and Cooke won by 10 furlongs.

Every recording that I own is Cooke. I had asked in my OP about other versions but you are right, Cooke seems to be ubiquitous. I've read that one difference between these versions is the sound or the Orchestration. Cooke has been characterized as making the rest of X sound more like the Wunderhorn Symphonies, and some of the other versions sound more like 5-7, and yet others more like the sound world of 9. And who is to say that GM would not have evolved into still a different type of chromaticism had he lived to finish the Orchestration?

[richardfinegold]

I seem to have got into this thread just as the debate is disintegrating........

Reading the comments, it is interesting to see how many of them are about the "authenticity" of the work. Is it really Mahler? Did he finish it? Did someone else - Cooke or whoever - add anything important? And so on.

But that is really only one way of thinking about the work. The other, obviously, is to take it as it is - in whatever version you like - and judge it as a work of art in its own right. Either it is good or it isn't. Either it is a great work or it isn't. But for some reason this is not easy to do. Most of us can't listen to it properly until we have settled the question of authenticity, or at least formed a preliminary view of some kind. We don't feel compelled to do this with other works of art. When we watch a film, for instance, we don't worry about the fact that several hundred people were involved in making it. We just watch it. Who did what, doesn't matter. But with music - and Mahler 10 - we feel as if we have to know just who is responsible for just what bit of it. Did Mahler specify the flute in that passage? Did he want one or two drum strokes? Who wrote that line in the brass section? And unless we can settle these questions, we don't feel as if we can properly appreciate it. We want pure 100% Mahler - and nothing else.

I was reading an essay on Bruckner the other day - another composer bedevilled by questions of authorial authenticity. It wasn't especially insightful, but one of them contained an interesting digression on the "Romantic conception of the creator". The basic theory, which I can't be bothered to elaborate, is that our contemporary obsession with authorial origins has its roots in the idea of the artist as genius. The lone genius walks the hills, locks himself in a remote shack and produces a masterpiece. Anything added to this - by, say, a later editor or the hand of a helpful apprentice - is dismissed because only that which issues from the transcendent mind of the master carries any value. But that is silly, really. How the work came into being shouldn't really be all that important. All that ought to matter is the intrinsic quality of the piece.

But as I said, it is hard to think like this. In the long run, I suppose the work will stand or fall on its own merits and future generations will lose interest in the question. But right now, it seems important to know just who is responsible for the piece.........

Very interesting. I too can't stand listening to any completion of Bruckner's Ninth. The 3rd movement is so perfect, IMO, and represents such a wonderful leave taking, that any completion spoils it. The 9th has always been my favorite Bruckner because AB himself didn't spoil it with one of his interminably repetitious last movements. This attitude says more about my relation to AB than any antipathy towards his "completers".
Schubert's Unfinished "completed"? I'd rather sit through 8 consecutive hours of speeches by George W. Bush. It's a magnificent torso that should be left alone, IMO.
My favorite recording of Mozart's Requiem is Hogwood, which is just Mozart, thank you. I think the quality drop off in the remaining music just doesn't do any favors to Mozart.
Returning to Mahler/10, I think it is fantastic that GM left enough of a fleshed out skeleton for us to enjoy the realizations with only a bit of doubt concerning the authenticity of what is on offer. It took me a while to shed some prejudices and just listen to the music, and perhaps I haven't been entirely successful at shedding those prejudices. It does whet the imagination that there may have been another 4 or so symphonies destroyed in Dresden. Could that really have been possible?

[Julien Sorel]

The (obvious, I guess) point about Schubert's 'Unfinished' is he abandoned it, not it him. So the lyrical, song based model ... he felt another solution was required (as in the 'Great C major'). And Schubert does this: the wonderful C major sonata fragment D 840 - I think he's responding to formal issues (or can't wait for the answers). Also there is the Romantic fascination with the Fragment (theorised and enacted in the Schelling's Athenaeum-Fragmente).

Of other completions of Mahler 10 I know Barshai's. The performance is much admired, I know, but somehow I've never got into it. And my recollection of the differences is a bit hazy.

[waldo]

My favorite recording of Mozart's Requiem is Hogwood, which is just Mozart, thank you. I think the quality drop off in the remaining music just doesn't do any favors to Mozart.

Just Mozart! But that's impossible. Only the first movement - the Requiem Aeternam - was completed by Mozart. The rest of the work was unfinished. Sometimes there were voices and continuo, sometimes a line of strings........sometimes nothing at all. The Lacrimosa, for instance, stops after about eight measures. So there is really no way that the Hogwood is "just Mozart". It can't be. I just listened to the Lacrimosa: it is certainly a lot longer than eight bars. Who wrote that? Who orchestrated it? Who wrote the Agnus Dei?

As it happens, I've never had a problem with the Sussmayr completion. I think the Benedictus (supposedly all Sussmayr's work) is really lovely; one of the highlights of the work. He was, after all, Mozart's apprentice. Not a genius, but a very gifted composer and thoroughly schooled in the techniques and styles of the day. There are things he would have known and felt that only someone who lived and worked at that particular time and in that particular place could have known and felt. I would take his work over some bearded musicologist any day.

Also (irrational bit coming up), Mozart may well have discussed this work with him and passed on important themes and so on.........

[Barbirollians]

I always find it very hard to believe that the Benedictus does not have Mozart 's fingerprints all over it .

As for completions of Bruckner 9 I felt the same way until hearing the magnificent Rattle recording of the new completion of the finale.

[waldo]

Also......the Bruckner 9 finale is just too good not to get to know. I don't mean the "completion", but the actual music that Bruckner himself wrote. The whole movement was completely composed by the time he died and was almost entirely orchestrated. Another four weeks and it would be have been done. But parts of the manuscript went missing after his death (stolen, probably) and some have never been recovered.........But it was finished; there is no doubt about that. The difference with Mahler 10 is that Mahler never reached the point of orchestration and probably hadn't finished the "short score" itself. Unlike the Bruckner, however, the score he left is a continuous piece of music: sometimes there is just a single melodic line, but it does run from beginning to end without a break. In some ways, therefore, it is probably much easier to "complete" the Mahler than it is the Bruckner, because there is always something to work from. Up to a point, you know just what Mahler was doing in each and every bar, so it is possible to fill out the missing bits without too much guesswork. With Bruckner, you have, as I said, these missing pages and no idea what you are supposed to put in them.

But if you have trouble with the idea of a completion of Bruckner 9, which involves a small but crucial act of real composition, then you can listen to Harnoncourt's performance of the unadulterated fragments.(Included on his 2-disc VPO Bruckner 9, with an excellent lecture). There is an awful lot of continuous, fully orchestrated music (one fragment is more than 10 minutes long) and it is absolutely wonderful.

[waldo]

I always find it very hard to believe that the Benedictus does not have Mozart 's fingerprints all over it.

Absolutely. I think there is a lot about the Sussmayr completion we don't know and never will know. Mozart could easily have sung it too him, or even sketched out the main parts. Contrary to what many think, he did make sketches - especially in the last years of his life.

In any case, it is absolute madness to ditch it on the grounds that it might not be Mozart's work. A lovely piece of music that has been loved for centuries - out the window, because it doesn't fit our contemporary obsession with authenticity..........

[amateur51]

Next time, Caliban. I am sure you will sock it to him next time.

I doubt there will be a next time, there's been stalking legislation passed since then

Picture the scene: Abbado, 5'7 exhausted from giving his all in concert stands waiting nervously for his car. Out of the murk lurches Caliban, 6'4, complete with trombone (he never travels to concerts with it,- well you never know when a bumper emergency will arise ) and hails the diminutive maestro with his discourse on Mahler 10. Abbado mutters to himself "Lennie warned me there'd be nights like this". Nuff said

[Nick Armstrong]

I doubt there will be a next time, there's been stalking legislation passed since then

Picture the scene: Abbado, 5'7 exhausted from giving his all in concert stands waiting nervously for his car. Out of the murk lurches Caliban, 6'4, complete with trombone (he never travels to concerts with it,- well you never know when a bumper emergency will arise ) and hails the diminutive maestro with his discourse on Mahler 10. Abbado mutters to himself "Lennie warned me there'd be nights like this". Nuff said

[aeolium]

That is an interesting idea about simply responding to a work of art in its own right rather than being overconcerned about its authenticity, waldo. I sometimes have that thought when seeing a painting which requires the minute analysis of art critics and historians to verify whether it is by a Great Master or not. But the problem with an unfinished work by someone like Mozart or Mahler or Bruckner is that their listeners may have built up an understanding of their compositional style and development based on extensive listening to many (or all) of their works in many performances, and this understanding encompasses the detail of the work - the orchestration, instrumentation - not merely the musical argument. In Mahler for instance this detail can be fantastically precise - as in the orchestration of the 3rd symphony. And this all forms part of the character of a work by Mahler, its musical personality, reflecting his own personality. To the extent that that is absent or incomplete part of that personality is absent or incomplete. This is not at all to diminish the superb efforts of Deryck Cooke and others who have worked to make performing versions of the 10th symphony and to bring to life the music left by Mahler, but those versions must inevitably lack the final detail from the mind of the composer in a way that earlier symphonies did not. To that extent they cannot fully reflect the development of his musical style. Of course they can be very rewarding to listen to, but I can understand those who are reluctant to hear a work including composition and orchestration by hands other than Mahler's.

[Barbirollians]

That is an interesting idea about simply responding to a work of art in its own right rather than being overconcerned about its authenticity, waldo. I sometimes have that thought when seeing a painting which requires the minute analysis of art critics and historians to verify whether it is by a Great Master or not. But the problem with an unfinished work by someone like Mozart or Mahler or Bruckner is that their listeners may have built up an understanding of their compositional style and development based on extensive listening to many (or all) of their works in many performances, and this understanding encompasses the detail of the work - the orchestration, instrumentation - not merely the musical argument. In Mahler for instance this detail can be fantastically precise - as in the orchestration of the 3rd symphony. And this all forms part of the character of a work by Mahler, its musical personality, reflecting his own personality. To the extent that that is absent or incomplete part of that personality is absent or incomplete. This is not at all to diminish the superb efforts of Deryck Cooke and others who have worked to make performing versions of the 10th symphony and to bring to life the music left by Mahler, but those versions must inevitably lack the final detail from the mind of the composer in a way that earlier symphonies did not. To that extent they cannot fully reflect the development of his musical style. Of course they can be very rewarding to listen to, but I can understand those who are reluctant to hear a work including composition and orchestration by hands other than Mahler's.

So can I but I think the best way to approach it is on the basis that it is a performing version and not a completion and Cooke was adamant about that according to Colin Matthews notes to the BPO/Rattle recording . I have just listened to that and as always I am really glad that the version was made as it enables us to hear Mahler's music even if only his original thoughts .