Order of movements in Mahler 6

[Barbirollians]

Jayne, I think you have here put the very thought process that must have gone through Mahler's head as he dithered,

Incidentally, regarding your final point: In the talk that comes with his recording of the Sixth, Benjamin Zander does indeed invite the listener to change the order of the middle movements as preferred. Moreover, his recording comes with two whole performances of the finale, one with two hammer blows and the other with three. You can thus have your Mahler 6 cake AND eat it.

Do you like Zander's performance though ? I note that neither Walter or Klemperer recorded it - did either conduct it and if so do we know in what order ?

[Richard Barrett]

Discussions of "theoretical argument" are discussions of the sounds that result in performance: Music Theory is what is heard, the sounds given "names", a vocabulary to describe and discuss the physical experience of a work in performance.

Right. It's true that the vocabulary of "music theory" is sometimes found offputting, but also that there's often an assumption that this is the fault of the music theory and not an indication that using that vocabulary might express the experience more precisely, indeed more viscerally. The major/minor transition is a way of pinpointing a structural/expressive feature that others might experience emotionally without knowing exactly why, which is fine of course, even those of us who spend our lives thinking about such things often have to plead speechlessness before some ineffable musical phenomenon or other, but there's nothing to be lost from demystifying the emotional experience, it makes the central mystery more astonishing, not less.

[Barbirollians]

It seems that neither Walter or Klemperer did conduct it judging by Tom Service's Guardian piece that can be found easily online .

Interestingly, Barbirolli is quoted by Michael Kennedy as also preferring the Andante Scherzo order due to the fact that there is a great deal of slow music in the finale and the Scherzo makes a more effective contrast before it .

[Richard Barrett]

Barbirolli is quoted by Michael Kennedy as also preferring the Andante Scherzo order due to the fact that there is a great deal of slow music in the finale and the Scherzo makes a more effective contrast before it.

And contrasts of tempo, and different kinds of balance between them, are of course a central factor in Mahler's structural/expressive thinking elsewhere.

Having mentioned "Blumine" in the Mahler 1 thread that's just started, I hope I'll be excused for seeming to have an obsession with "alternative versions". The thing is that where they exist they do open up a deep insight into how music is conceived and realised, I think, over and above the concerns and indecisions of one composer or another. It's probably no coincidence that such issues arise in the case of Mahler's music, poised as it is between the (relative) consensus on structural/expressive certainties in the cultural era coming to an end during his lifetime, and the pervasive presence of doubt, anxiety and incompletion in the one about to begin. I wasn't entirely unserious in suggesting that the seed of "open form" might be found here, leading to the idea that "alternative versions" are composed into the fabric of the music, as in Berio's compositions which add and subtract layers and instruments (and there can be no doubt of Berio's involvement with Mahler's music of course).

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I wasn't entirely unserious in suggesting that the seed of "open form" might be found here, leading to the idea that "alternative versions" are composed into the fabric of the music

Well - the "seed" goes back further to Bruckner. (And I believe that Schoenberg saw [to his horror] the potential "dangers" of open Form in his Fourth Quartet - if not earlier in Moses and Op33a.)

[Richard Barrett]

Well - the "seed" goes back further to Bruckner.

I'm certainly not suggesting that Mahler was the first composer to be affected by such indecisions - even Bach can be seen changing his mind about things. But uncertainties about the number and order of movements do open up somewhat in Mahler's case. Bruckner may have been indecisive but he seems to have been pretty sure about the number of movements a symphony should have, for example, and about most other larger structural aspects of his work.

I have to admit that I wouldn't know Schoenberg's Fourth Quartet if it jumped up and poked me in the eye, but your comment encourages me to get to know it a bit better!

[ahinton]

And contrasts of tempo, and different kinds of balance between them, are of course a central factor in Mahler's structural/expressive thinking elsewhere.

Having mentioned "Blumine" in the Mahler 1 thread that's just started, I hope I'll be excused for seeming to have an obsession with "alternative versions". The thing is that where they exist they do open up a deep insight into how music is conceived and realised, I think, over and above the concerns and indecisions of one composer or another. It's probably no coincidence that such issues arise in the case of Mahler's music, poised as it is between the (relative) consensus on structural/expressive certainties in the cultural era coming to an end during his lifetime, and the pervasive presence of doubt, anxiety and incompletion in the one about to begin. I wasn't entirely unserious in suggesting that the seed of "open form" might be found here, leading to the idea that "alternative versions" are composed into the fabric of the music, as in Berio's compositions which add and subtract layers and instruments (and there can be no doubt of Berio's involvement with Mahler's music of course).

Interesting thoughts again, but I do wonder if the "idea of alternative versions" might in this instance run counter to what Mahler believed his intentions to be at any given time. The symphony was apparently conceived and written down with the Scherzo-Andante order and then Mahler decided in rehearsal to reverse the order of those two movements; the fact that no evidence appears yet to have come to light that Mahler had a second change of heart on this seems to suggest that Mahler had only one order in mind for those movements at any one time and that, having changed his mind once, that was it. I'm not suggesting that the notion of alternative versions never entered his head, of course; it's just that there appears to be no evidence that he ever contemplated the possibility that his Sixth Symphony might have a possible life as a "two-version" work.

[ahinton]

I'm certainly not suggesting that Mahler was the first composer to be affected by such indecisions - even Bach can be seen changing his mind about things. But uncertainties about the number and order of movements do open up somewhat in Mahler's case. Bruckner may have been indecisive but he seems to have been pretty sure about the number of movements a symphony should have, for example, and about most other larger structural aspects of his work.

That's right.

I have to admit that I wouldn't know Schoenberg's Fourth Quartet if it jumped up and poked me in the eye, but your comment encourages me to get to know it a bit better!

Shame! - but it won't do that, so yes, do get to know it better!

Mention of this work in the context of "open form" brings to my mind a related question raised here, namely about what might influence composers' decisions as to how many movements a work ought to have and, whilst the Blumine arguments aren't far from this issue, what occurred to me was the example of Schönberg's First (numbered) Quartet which has the outlines of a traditionally structured four-movement work but the movements are played without a break and the thematic and motivic inter-relation in the whole is so pronounced that the sense of overlap between those "four movements" is sufficiently palpable as to threaten to undermine the sense of division into movements; much the same might be said for Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio which, though often thought of as being in three movements, is in reality in just two, the allegro "finale" being another variation on the theme that opens the second movement and, again, follows the other variations without a break.

[jayne lee wilson]

It seems that neither Walter or Klemperer did conduct it judging by Tom Service's Guardian piece that can be found easily online .

Interestingly, Barbirolli is quoted by Michael Kennedy as also preferring the Andante Scherzo order due to the fact that there is a great deal of slow music in the finale and the Scherzo makes a more effective contrast before it .

That is interesting - just the sort of thing I was looking for - thanks. Seems so obvious, and yet.... gives me a fresh impulse to hear it that way (should I ever feel I can face it again...).

[ahinton]

That is interesting - just the sort of thing I was looking for - thanks. Seems so obvious, and yet.... gives me a fresh impulse to hear it that way (should I ever feel I can face it again...).

But I don't think that this argument works. Whilst the tempi of all the music in the symphony are vitally relevant, they're not the only consideration. Think of how the Scherzo's music ends up on an A pedal point and simply disintegrates into nothing - and then consider how the finale's opening condenses that notion into a much smaller space in which the movement, having only just opened and burst back into the original tonal landscape, does just the same - disintegrates until all that's left is that A - from which an entire half hour of deeply troubled music has no option but to make every possible effort to grow. When this happens in the finale's opening measures when immediately following the Scherzo, the sheer inherent power of that passage is weakened by something by no means entirely dissimilar having just happened there - yet when it happens after the serenity of the Andante and succeeds in wrenching us back to the terrors and fears of the A minor tonal region that informs so much of the symphony's first two movements, the effect can be ovewhelming and usually is.

Moreover, when the very hard won A major conclusion of the opening movement is peremptorily shattered, as if a mere myth, by the opening of the Scherzo in A minor, the ultimate pessimism of the symphony seems to become set in stone in a way that simply never occurs anywhere else in Mahler's symphonic output; it's a very powerful moment, for me, at least - all that build up to an affirmative conclusion just razed to the ground in seconds.

As the finale approaches its end, the A major build-up seems even more powerful than at the close of the first movement and really does sound as though the entire symphony's trials and tribulations are about to be overcome on a mountain top of sunlit positivity until they, too, are shattered into the fragments that give way to the resigned tragedy in which the four trombones stand as commentators on the hopelessness of it all; that passage reminds me of the tragic and hopeless nature expressed by Shostakovich in the remarkable coda to his Fourth Symphony, likewise predicated on a long pedal point (C in this instance, rather than Mahler's A).

I have other thoughts on why Scherzo-Andante is part of what makes the frightening power of Mahler 6 what it is, but never mind about that.

Time for me to shut up, even though the Sixth is the Mahler symphony that I've heard the most often.

[Barbirollians]

But I don't think that this argument works. Whilst the tempi of all the music in the symphony are vitally relevant, they're not the only consideration. Think of how the Scherzo's music ends up on an A pedal point and simply disintegrates into nothing - and then consider how the finale's opening condenses that notion into a much smaller space in which the movement, having only just opened and burst back into the original tonal landscape, does just the same - disintegrates until all that's left is that A - from which an entire half hour of deeply troubled music has no option but to make every possible effort to grow. When this happens in the finale's opening measures when immediately following the Scherzo, the sheer inherent power of that passage is weakened by something by no means entirely dissimilar having just happened there - yet when it happens after the serenity of the Andante and succeeds in wrenching us back to the terrors and fears of the A minor tonal region that informs so much of the symphony's first two movements, the effect can be ovewhelming and usually is.

Moreover, when the very hard won A major conclusion of the opening movement is peremptorily shattered, as if a mere myth, by the opening of the Scherzo in A minor, the ultimate pessimism of the symphony seems to become set in stone in a way that simply never occurs anywhere else in Mahler's symphonic output; it's a very powerful moment, for me, at least - all that build up to an affirmative conclusion just razed to the ground in seconds.

As the finale approaches its end, the A major build-up seems even more powerful than at the close of the first movement and really does sound as though the entire symphony's trials and tribulations are about to be overcome on a mountain top of sunlit positivity until they, too, are shattered into the fragments that give way to the resigned tragedy in which the four trombones stand as commentators on the hopelessness of it all; that passage reminds me of the tragic and hopeless nature expressed by Shostakovich in the remarkable coda to his Fourth Symphony, likewise predicated on a long pedal point (C in this instance, rather than Mahler's A).

I have other thoughts on why Scherzo-Andante is part of what makes the frightening power of Mahler 6 what it is, but never mind about that.

Time for me to shut up, even though the Sixth is the Mahler symphony that I've heard the most often.

I think it does indeed work - and to be frank Barbirolli's explanation of why he thought A-S works is just as valid , if not more as unlike the latter pair he was a great Mahler conductor , as David Matthews and Norman del Mar's view to the contrary .

The fact remains that Mahler decided on Andante-Scherzo in 1904 , insisted on an erratum slip being placed in the printed score and did not change his mind in the six years that followed .

[ahinton]

I think it does indeed work - and to be frank Barbirolli's explanation of why he thought A-S works is just as valid , if not more as unlike the latter pair he was a great Mahler conductor , as David Matthews and Norman del Mar's view to the contrary .

The fact remains that Mahler decided on Andante-Scherzo in 1904 , insisted on an erratum slip being placed in the printed score and did not change his mind in the six years that followed .

Then, like so many others here, we must beg to differ on the matter other than that we're all agreed as to the undeniable history of what happened. It is perhaps curious that Sorabji, who promoted Mahler's work in the 1920s and 1930s and beyond in England as fervently as anyone, made no mention of the reversal of central movement order when publishing his brief introduction to Mahler's symphonies in a book in 1932, despite his edition of the Sixth having that erratum slip (to which he made no reference therein) - and I know the edition that he had because it's just a couple of metres way from where I'm typing...

[Beef Oven!]

I think it does indeed work - and to be frank Barbirolli's explanation of why he thought A-S works is just as valid , if not more as unlike the latter pair he was a great Mahler conductor , as David Matthews and Norman del Mar's view to the contrary

Barbirolli's explanation is valid, albeit a tad superficial. It hardly matters that Barbirolli is a better Mahler conductor than ahinton et al - Bernstein was an even better Mahler conductor than Glorious John, and he goes Scherzo-Andante. I don't think any of that matters.

[ahinton]

It hardly matters that Barbirolli is a better Mahler conductor than ahinton et al

No, indeed it doesn't, not least because I am not a conductor...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I think it does indeed work - and to be frank Barbirolli's explanation of why he thought A-S works is just as valid , if not more as unlike the latter pair he was a great Mahler conductor , as David Matthews and Norman del Mar's view to the contrary .

"As valid" if you value mood pictures as much as Tonal manoeuvrings. And, setting aside missing Horn solos in the Fifth, mistuned Glockenspiels in Kindertotenlieder and reorchestration in the Ruckertlieder, why did this "great Mahler conductor" omit the Exposition repeat? For all the composer's ditherings over Movement order and Hammer blows, he never for a moment had any doubts that the repeat is essential.

The fact remains that Mahler decided on Andante-Scherzo in 1904

1906 - in 1904, he put the Scherzo before the Andante.

insisted on an erratum slip being placed in the printed score and did not change his mind in the six years that followed .

Or, rather, did not leave written indications of any such change of mind (if any there was).