Order of movements in Mahler 6

[Barbirollians]

[QUOTE=ferneyhoughgeliebte;542020]"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.

If one has to resort to pedantry that rather underlines the paucity of the argument .

Are you really suggesting that the three points you make mean that Barbirolli was not a great Mahler conductor ??? 20th century conductors often touched up scores look at Szell in Schumann . It is rather ironic to use apparently liberties with reorchestration as a reason to prefer an order of movements directly contrary to the composer's instructions .

My point is a simple one - Matthews and del Mar give musical examples as to why they think S-A works better . Barbirolli gave an alternative musical reason which strikes me as equally valid .

There is no evidence whatsoever that Mahler changed his mind again after insisting on the erratum slip .

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If one has to resort to pedantry that rather underlines the paucity of the argument .

If you regard such features (a obviously missed Horn solo - a SOLO, not some third player doubled by the clarinets - an obvious mistuned glockenspiel SOLO) as "pedantry" then I can quite see why you find Barbirolli's point "equally valid".

It is rather ironic to use apparently liberties with reorchestration as a reason to prefer an order of movements directly contrary to the composer's instructions .

It would be "ironic" if I were so "using" it - as I wasn't, it isn't. The "reason" I prefer Mahler's 1904 version is entirely Musical - A minor immediately following A major. But perhaps this strikes you as "pedantry" also?

There is no evidence whatsoever that Mahler changed his mind again after insisting on the erratum slip .

"Whatsoever"?

[Beef Oven!]

Barbirolli wasn't a great Mahler conductor, he was average build and not tall.

[Barbirollians]

If you regard such features (a obviously missed Horn solo - a SOLO, not some third player doubled by the clarinets - an obvious mistuned glockenspiel SOLO) as "pedantry" then I can quite see why you find Barbirolli's point "equally valid".


It would be "ironic" if I were so "using" it - as I wasn't, it isn't. The "reason" I prefer Mahler's 1904 version is entirely Musical - A minor immediately following A major. But perhaps this strikes you as "pedantry" also?


"Whatsoever"?

1 The pedantry was in reference to 1906 rather than 1904 - it is difficult to see why it makes any difference that there is no evidence Mahler did not revert to the S-A order in the last five as compared with the last seven years of his life .

2 As for the wrongdoings of Sir John Barbirolli I note you failed to answer the question -are you saying he was not a great Mahler conductor on the basis of the three instances you cite ?

3 Accordingly , if so , are you dismissing his musical reasons for preferring the A-S order ( namely the tempo relationships ) as well as it being evidently the composer's intention on the basis of the missed four bars of horn obbligato in his generally celebrated recording of Mahler 5 and a mistuned glockenspiel . It seems that all the others involved in that Mahler recording ( made a year before Barbirolli's death ) also missed it .

4 The only evidence I have read of a change of mind after 1906 is Alma's telegram to Mengelberg whose score was missing the erratum slip - what other evidence is there ? Is there any evidence of him seeking to withdraw the erratum slip and have the original order restored ?

The reality is this - a generation brought up listening to the symphony in the S-A order come up with all manner of reasons why Mahler was wrong because they are wedded to how they got to know it .

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ah! I see. I have started using "1904" and "1906" as a shorthand for "S/A" and "A/S",'sall.

As for Barbirolli; no, I don't question his status as a great conductor of Mahler (although there are many others I much prefer) - but I don't think it is unfair to say that his studio recordings don't match the insights of his Live performances*, superior as those are in sound-quality. Barbirolli's observations of the details of the scores, and his attention to what the players were doing in the studio, nodded in the instances I cited (as did those of the technicians and those who "generally celebrate" those studio recordings).

The further evidence is the behaviour of Webern in his performances of the work. Why would he deliberately countermand the wishes of someone he revered (and Webern had an essentially submissive personality in practically all respects save that of his own compositions)? And Waldo's puritanical attitude of walking into the traffic even if Alma Mahler told him there was a lorry approaching at speed also ignores what would the point of her lying in this respect? Her lies always have the intention of revealing Mahler or (more frequently) herself in a glowing light - why make up the idea that he reverted back to his 1904 intentions; what does she gain from such an invention?

No; there is no written evidence from Mahler himself - but a casual dismissal of these points as "irrelevant" (as opposed to "inconclusive") is more a matter of convenience than scrupulousness. And there is the evidence of the score itself - for someone who heard it in the 1906 order several times before the 1904, the stronger Tonal connections proved the more valid decider: I happily divorced myself from what I'd been used to.

(* - true of so many performers, of course.)

[waldo]

And Waldo's puritanical attitude of walking into the traffic even if Alma Mahler told him there was a lorry approaching at speed also ignores what would the point of her lying in this respect? Her lies always have the intention of revealing Mahler or (more frequently) herself in a glowing light - why make up the idea that he reverted back to his 1904 intentions; what does she gain from such an invention?

That's a rather silly caricature of what I said. Nothing remotely puritanical about it. I was merely thinking in terms of Alma as a historical source. Since she is pathologically unreliable on so many counts, I think it requires a special leap of faith to build an argument on the back of any one of her claims. If there are special grounds for considering some of her claims to be more credible than others (as you suggest), then it is reasonable to expect Matthews to outline these, given the amount of weight he places on them in his overall argument.

[Barbirollians]

Is there any evidence that Webern's decision to conduct it S-A was as a result of anything Mahler said to him after 1906 ?

I know there were very few recordings before Ratz's 1963 edition but it seems all of them were A-S were they not ? Fried, Flipse, Van Beinum and Mitropoulos ( the latter's 1960 liv recording is amazing).

[waldo]

I hope I am not repeating something that has already been said.......but Matthews's argument was also stated in a letter to the London Review of Books, Nov 2015. Under this letter, there is a reply by his brother, Colin:

"I hesitate to disagree with my brother, David Matthews, about the order of the middle movements of Mahler’s Sixth Symphony, but we have long held opposing views, mine being that the scherzo should come third (Letters, 3 December). I believe there are equally strong arguments for this sequence, both in terms of tonality – two movements following each other in the same key (even if the first movement ends in the major) is unprecedented for Mahler – and of narrative: the andante is, to my mind, more properly seen as an interlude in the relentlessly downward progress of the symphony when placed second.

But the real reason for the disagreement is that the order of the movements only ever came into dispute because of the meddling of the obsessive Mahler editor Erwin Ratz, who, when he oversaw the publication of the Complete Edition in 1963, fabricated other reasons than the telegram from Alma (also an obsessively unreliable source) in order to have the score revert to the order in which Mahler originally composed and published the symphony. The power of the printed note has meant that many conductors have subsequently followed this edition without questioning it. Yet Mahler had had the score immediately republished in the order in which he first performed it and followed in his two subsequent performances – quite something to ask of the publisher if he still had doubts about the order.

My brother is of course correct to say that Mahler had a superstitious fear of the symphony, but to my mind the change of order of the middle movements was made for purely musical reasons: there are several instances of Mahler changing his mind about the placing of movements in other symphonies. We have no reason to think that he ever had any second (or, more accurately, third) thoughts; and to perform the movements in other than the order in which he performed them himself is no more justifiable than my fanciful thought that the Ninth Symphony would convey a completely different and possibly compelling narrative were the third and fourth movements to be reversed. And Mahler never heard that symphony."

[ahinton]

That's a rather silly caricature of what I said. Nothing remotely puritanical about it. I was merely thinking in terms of Alma as a historical source. Since she is pathologically unreliable on so many counts, I think it requires a special leap of faith to build an argument on the back of any one of her claims. If there are special grounds for considering some of her claims to be more credible than others (as you suggest), then it is reasonable to expect Matthews to outline these, given the amount of weight he places on them in his overall argument.

But that's the point; Matthews doesn't place the amount of weight on Alma's pronouncements and certainly not upon Ratz's, which he roundly discredits even though he agrees with what they say (as distinct from whether they're authentic, which he knows that they're not).

[ahinton]

Is there any evidence that Webern's decision to conduct it S-A was as a result of anything Mahler said to him after 1906 ?

I don't know and I'm unaware of evidence that it was (and, had this been the case, I'm sure that Matthews and other Mahler scholars would have know about and cited it!), but it seems reasonable to presume that he must have felt that he had a legitimate reason for performing it as he is known to have done and, in so doing, go against the tide.

I know there were very few recordings before Ratz's 1963 edition but it seems all of them were A-S were they not ? Fried, Flipse, Van Beinum and Mitropoulos ( the latter's 1960 liv recording is amazing).

I believe so, yes.

[waldo]

But that's the point; Matthews doesn't place the amount of weight on Alma's pronouncements and certainly not upon Ratz's, which he roundly discredits even though he agrees with what they say (as distinct from whether they're authentic, which he knows that they're not).

Well, my reading of his argument is that he does place a fair amount of weight on it. I know that his primary argument - or what he would call his primary argument - is the musicological/tonality argument. As such, he has to account for the fact that Mahler has made a decision that runs, in his mind, counter to the musical logic of the piece. Matthews explains this by positing a non-musical force: superstition. And his primary support for this contention is Alma's account.

Now, if you take Alma out of the picture altogether, Matthews may well say - well, I still think Mahler cocked up. My tonality argument still stands. The music sounds better this way, rather than that. Fair enough. But that "mistake" still has to be accounted for. After all, it might not be a mistake: it may well be that Mahler's decision was made on purely musical grounds and that he considered a different logic than Matthews. So the Alma claim does help (somewhat conveniently) to buttress his original tonality position. It also helps to protect Matthews from the standard claim that he is second guessing the master himself. In ordinary circumstances, who would dare do this? But Matthew's position - based on Alma - is that these are not ordinary circumstances: Mahler gave in to an irrational pressure. So we have every right to reverse it.

[Barbirollians]

Thanks waldo - Colin Matthews's response is compelling stuff .

[Barbirollians]

Curiouser and curiouser - Mitropoulos did indeed conduct it A-S in 1955 in New York but the performance in the Great Conductors of the Century series from 1959 described as a " live studio recording " is S-A four years before Ratz's edition . I remember it made my hair stand on end but have not listened to it for a while so I am not sure whether someone could have re-edited it but that seems unlikely .

[ahinton]

Well, my reading of his argument is that he does place a fair amount of weight on it. I know that his primary argument - or what he would call his primary argument - is the musicological/tonality argument. As such, he has to account for the fact that Mahler has made a decision that runs, in his mind, counter to the musical logic of the piece. Matthews explains this by positing a non-musical force: superstition. And his primary support for this contention is Alma's account.

That's not how I read it; his primary argument is indeed a musicological /tonality one and indeed also an emotional one and, had Alma's account not have surfaced and Ratz's not hought to justify itself on the unevidenced grounds of Mahler's supposed change back of mind or whatever, Matthews' argument would still stand - and I happen to agree with it on broadly the same grounds.

Now, if you take Alma out of the picture altogether, Matthews may well say - well, I still think Mahler cocked up. My tonality argument still stands. The music sounds better this way, rather than that. Fair enough.

Indeed; we're singing from the same hymn sheet so far!

But that "mistake" still has to be accounted for.

I don't see that it is amenable to being "accounted for" in tems of hard and incontrovertible evidence; that's the trouble. Because Alma's and Ratz's involvement have served only to muddy the waters because they're not based upon hard and incontrovertible evidence directly from the composer, one can only go by certain other considerations, including but not limited to
(a) Mahler wasn't infallible and didn't see himself as being so because he would otherwise not have changed his mind when putting his Sixth into rehearsal on the grounds that he came at that point to believe that he had made a misjudgment
(b) The tonal/musicological/emotional arguments put forward by Matthews (and others)
(c) Webern's decision to conduct the symphopny with Scherzo placed second, albeit for reasons that I am unaware have been officially documented.

After all, it might not be a mistake: it may well be that Mahler's decision was made on purely musical grounds and that he considered a different logic than Matthews.

It may indeed but, even if so, that "different logic" might not necessarily of itself preclude it from being a possible "mistake" of judgement.

So the Alma claim does help (somewhat conveniently) to buttress his original tonality position.

Given its lack of credibility, I don't think that it really "buttresses" anything, actually.

It also helps to protect Matthews from the standard claim that he is second guessing the master himself. In ordinary circumstances, who would dare do this?

Well, Herr Joseph Blöggschmidt probably wouldn't but Matthews is a distinguished Mahler scholar who has worked many years ago on the performing version of the composer's Tenth Symphony and is a symphonic composer in his own right.

But Matthew's position - based on Alma - is that these are not ordinary circumstances: Mahler gave in to an irrational pressure. So we have every right to reverse it.

It is not, I think, as clear as you seem to believe that Matthews' position is based - or even in any way dependent - upon Alma's pronouncements. That said, we cannot be certain that Mahler's decision at rehearsal was not the consequence of his "giving in to an irrational pressure"; such irrational pressures can have a variety of origins and manifestations and, in Mahler's case, if he really was in some sense fearful of what he'd written in his Sixth and of of how it might be received, he would not be alone in this; one has only to consider, for example, Scriabin's Sixth Piano Sonata and Sorabji's Third Piano Sonata which their respective composers feared to the point of refusal to perform them.

[ahinton]

Thanks waldo - Colin Matthews's response is compelling stuff .

It is indeed - and he knows his Mahler well, like his brother and has similar experience of working on the performing edition of the composer's Tenth Symphony, but I simply happen not to agree with it any more than David does - and, let's face it, the two brothers have hardly fallen out over their fundamental disagreement on this!