Wagner Siegfried Idyll

[BBMmk2]

I do find it quite interesting, actually, how composers 'doctor', their colleagues work, and make it sound quite different! I will have to listen to this. I think Abbado might be the man to listen!

[amateur51]

Many thanks for the Celibidache link, Beethoven'sQuiill - a remarkable reading, possibly not the way I'd always want to hear it played but full of fascinating Celi detail.

[RichardWagner]

What to me would be the main theme http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=891JUSQplzU the one that starts at 1:58 through to 2:11. In Mahler's 2nd he slows down the theme and extends the high note before coming back down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0Px44IuVKM i picked out the section from 5:50 to 6:01 the theme on the Horn. It turns up in various places in Mahler's 2nd. Whereas Wagner starts with a B minum tied to a B quaver then down to E with a quaver followed by a triplet to a crotchet and down to a minum, Mahler uses crotchets but his ascent starts with an extra note before reaching the highest note on a dotted minum before coming down to a crotchet.

What i meant by turning it into something greater was that im sure Mahler new the piece but he could hear that it could transformed into something that brings out the beauty of it a bit more rather rushing through with those triplets. But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. As i heard the Mahler first whenever i heard the Wagner theme my mind would just hear a rushed version of the Mahler theme and i couldnt shake the association.

OK, well you hear that connection, I do not. I suppose if you take any commonly used musical foundation, such as an ascending scale, you will hear it all over the place. You COULD then hear all sorts of resemblances, if you allow for such variables as rythm, extra notes, and differences of tonality. I think you are hearing a relationship that doesn't exist. I am sure that Mahler knew the Siegfried Idyll, but to suggest that he plagiarised/ "improved" it for the 2nd Symphony is far-fetched, to put it mildly.

[Pabmusic]

...very pleased to read that Life is slowly getting back to 'normal' ..

Thank you. Life remains - often to no little discomfort - quite full of surprises!