BaL 23.09.23 - Mahler: Symphony no. 8

[gradus]

I don't know the 8th but the solo sung by Lucia Popp was utterly beautiful. I was put off the work when I attended an RFH performance under Tennstedt that was deafeningly loud and uncomfortable to hear.

[edashtav]

Really, Ed? because (IMO) both of those works suffer from being distended far beyond any duration their somewhat slight materials can animate, whereas Mahler's 8th is almost literally bursting with memorable ideas, in a state of constant evolution, while at the same time embodying a vast sense of perspective between massed and delicate sonorities, and is much more subtly scored than either of those pieces (unless you count Strauss's farmyard impressions) and visionary in a way that Strauss couldn't manage and Shostakovich wasn't concerned with. But I think (though this was millennia ago) that it was the first Mahler symphony I ever heard a recording of, and those experiences cast a long shadow.

I’ve never listened to the Mahler with a score, so, perhaps,I’ve missed the wonders that your superior ears and mental acuity have revealed, Richard. I’ve always appreciated Havergal Brian’s Gothic Symphony and have attended several performances and wrote to Robert Simpson straight after Chas. Groves ground almost to a halt during his performance of Part 1 (orchestral mov’ts) as I thought Charles looked ill. Bob confirmed that Charles had suffered a heart attack but… true grit… he beat on.


I’ve never listened to Mahler’s 8th or Resurrection Symphony live.

”Ed must try harder!”

[RichardB]

I’ve never listened to the Mahler with a score, so, perhaps,I’ve missed the wonders

I really don't think it has anything to do with superior ears, or following a score or anything like that! - it just appealed to me immediately when I first heard it and set off a lifelong involvement with Mahler's music, at an age when I wouldn't have been able to make much sense of an orchestral score. But it does seem that quite a few people who otherwise admire Mahler's work find it problematic.

[smittims]

I came to know Mahler8 at the same time as Gurrelieder and couldn't help comparing them. Schoenberg's work is, for all its size, simpler, less problematic and more straightforward than Mahler's , which raises questions that stay in the mind; I find it more profound.

I can understand such remarks as 'poster art'. Unusually for a 20th-century work it tackles its subject head on, boldly, instead of giving what Poulenc would call 'a detached rendering' which I found in, for example, Alexander Goehr's The Death of Moses or Elgar's touching on the crucifixion in his Apostles. Mahler is more like Handel in his Messiah or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, an I think its all-out, heaven-storming air is very much what Mahler wanted in what was always going to be a very public piece. Some people, especially in the modern age, may find this off-putting, even embarrassing,, like the 'show-stopping' moment in a glitzy musical when the full cast faces the audience in the big chorus. But I think this is as much a part of Mahler as the private moments in the NInth: he did after all say that the Symphony should be like the world. In Alma's biography she relates an incident where Mahler came across a workers' procession and instantly joined in , leading and 'conducting' them. Even the sometimes vulgar Richard Strauss would never have done that.

[RichardB]

[Mahler is more like Handel in his Messiah or Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, an I think its all-out, heaven-storming air is very much what Mahler wanted in what was always going to be a very public piece. Some people, especially in the modern age, may find this off-putting, even embarrassing,, like the 'show-stopping' moment in a glitzy musical when the full cast faces the audience in the big chorus.

I don't agree at all. The implication is that Mahler simplified and vulgarised his musical language in this work, which is not the way I hear it. What I hear is a music that, to use Xenakis's demand of music in general, attempts to draw the audience "towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous and perfect". As you say, it isn't a way of looking at things that Poulenc would have found appropriate, but then Poulenc was a dilettante compared to Mahler, for whom there was much more at stake.

As for incidents in Mahler's life recounted by Alma, there is overwhelming evidence that much of what she wrote about him was "unreliable, false, and misleading" (quoted from the website of the Mahler Foundation), so I'm not inclined to take much notice of that!

[Ein Heldenleben]

I think the symphony has suffered in this country from the nickname “Symphony of a Thousand “ when it isn’t. The British traditionally have also had a Faust blind spot - except when it comes to Gounod. It’s a much more subtle work than the phrase “poster art “ implies. I’ve only been to one live perf by Rattle which although very well played and sung it sounded a bit synthetic to me compared to the Solti and Abbado excerpted recordings used on Saturday. One Mahler anecdote I want to believe is that he set the Veni Creator without the final text only to find it fitted perfectly when it arrived . The creative effort he put into the work’s composition must be one of the most remarkable in music.

[RichardB]

The British traditionally have also had a Faust blind spot - except when it comes to Gounod.

What about Marlowe? (Not much redemption there however!)

[Ein Heldenleben]

What about Marlowe? (Not much redemption there however!)

Exactly . Having sat through a half filled audience for this masterpiece once I speculated that Faust seems to resonate more with Germans than Brits. Except for the stratospherically popular Gounod version.

[richardfinegold]

Really, Ed? because (IMO) both of those works suffer from being distended far beyond any duration their somewhat slight materials can animate, whereas Mahler's 8th is almost literally bursting with memorable ideas, in a state of constant evolution, while at the same time embodying a vast sense of perspective between massed and delicate sonorities, and is much more subtly scored than either of those pieces (unless you count Strauss's farmyard impressions) and visionary in a way that Strauss couldn't manage and Shostakovich wasn't concerned with. But I think (though this was millennia ago) that it was the first Mahler symphony I ever heard a recording of, and those experiences cast a long shadow.

Yes, that was an unlikely troika and I wish Ed would clarify what he meant by “Poster Art”. Fwiw, I think RB’s description of works being distended more than their slender frames can support applies more to the Strauss than the Shostakovich, although the 5 priceless minutes in the Alpine Symphony are what keeps it in the repetoire.

[smittims]

Well, I didn't mean to suggest that Mahler was simplifying or vugarising, but that he wanted to create an all-embracing experience; seid umschlungen, millionen, usw...

Rather than a Faust blindspot, I think there's a Goethe blindspot. It can be difficult for Brits to understand the special regard in which he was (is?) held in German-speaking countries. Otto Klemperer, for instance , is said never to have travelled without a volume of Wilhelm Meister in his pocket.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Well, I didn't mean to suggest that Mahler was simplifying or vugarising, but that he wanted to create an all-embracing experience; seid umschlungen, millionen, usw...

Rather than a Faust blindspot, I think there's a Goethe blindspot. It can be difficult for Brits to understand the special regard in which he was (is?) held in German-speaking countries. Otto Klemperer, for instance , is said never to have travelled without a volume of Wilhelm Meister in his pocket.

Yes indeed with the exception of Werther and the odd art song . I think we like our Goethe with soda, tonic, or sweet mixer rather than neat.

I remember once sitting in a music practice studio at school when two A level German students walked in with the language assistant and they chatted away in German. At one point he asked them to name a work by Goethe . They couldn’t. I was able to ( in English that is ) purely because I’d seen the ROH Faust a few months previously.

[silvestrione]

I don't agree at all. The implication is that Mahler simplified and vulgarised his musical language in this work, which is not the way I hear it. What I hear is a music that, to use Xenakis's demand of music in general, attempts to draw the audience "towards a total exaltation in which the individual mingles, losing his consciousness in a truth immediate, rare, enormous and perfect". As you say, it isn't a way of looking at things that Poulenc would have found appropriate, but then Poulenc was a dilettante compared to Mahler, for whom there was much more at stake.

As for incidents in Mahler's life recounted by Alma, there is overwhelming evidence that much of what she wrote about him was "unreliable, false, and misleading" (quoted from the website of the Mahler Foundation), so I'm not inclined to take much notice of that!

Marvellous, thanks for that.

[silvestrione]

I think I am right in saying that the Rattle/CBSO disc was one of his last with the orchestra, made after he left, and before he went to Berlin, so Gillian More was wrong to say the hall 'had only recently been opened' (1991 in fact). Marvellous sound of course, and one I owned once (victim of a CD downsize). A musical 'peak experience' for me was the Mahler 8 prom Rattle did with the NYO, and choirs from all over the world.

[Serial_Apologist]

The British traditionally have also had a Faust blind spot

In more than a musical sense, I was going to say before reading RichardB's post, if one thinks of how the general public falls for dishonest politics time and time again.

[gurnemanz]

Yes indeed with the exception of Werther and the odd art song . I think we like our Goethe with soda, tonic, or sweet mixer rather than neat.

I remember once sitting in a music practice studio at school when two A level German students walked in with the language assistant and they chatted away in German. At one point he asked them to name a work by Goethe . They couldn’t. I was able to ( in English that is ) purely because I’d seen the ROH Faust a few months previously.

I did German A Level, admittedly over 50 years ago, and Goethe poems were on the syllabus, but agree that generally speaking, Goethe is indeed a bit of a blind spot in this country. The play Faust hardly ever gets staged. I've only ever seen it in Germany.

I went on to do a German degree where he obviously loomed large and in my final exam I chose an essay title along the lines of: 'Trace Goethe's life through his poetry'. I'd love to know whether it was any good, squeezed out of me under exam conditions but never seen again. I do remember reconstructing some poems to quote by singing to myself certain well-known Goethe settings, such as Schubert's Ganymed and Willkommen und Abschied. By the time I got around to teaching German A Level, which I did for about 30 years, he was not on any syllabus I taught. I suspect he doesn't figure that prominently even on today's BA German courses.

I was interested to be reminded in the BaL that Thomas Mann attended the premiere of Mahler 8. Later, at a time when his homeland had entered a Faustian pact with National Socialism he of course went on to write the novel Doktor Faustus where the composer Adrian Leverkühn is writing a Faust oratorio.