Order of movements in Mahler 6

[Daniel]

Fair enough, ah, thanks for laying all that out. Perhaps Mahler did consider five movements, then decide against it. Pretty intriguing line of speculation anyway, particularly when bolstered by what RB had sensed.

[teamsaint]

Can it only be four and a bit years?

Anyhow, the whole thing is solved by Edward Seckerson in this months Gramophone !!
Scherzo - andante it is then.
The clinchers for him seem to be :
first, that musically the mirroring of the first two movements , and the connections between them , make much more sense than the Andante coming second.
Second: Henry- Louis de la Grange claims to have ha a handbill showing that Mahler did return to the original order in Performance.
So there we have it.

[Alison]

Just for once I agree with Mr seckerson.

[Petrushka]

Can it only be four and a bit years?

Anyhow, the whole thing is solved by Edward Seckerson in this months Gramophone !!
Scherzo - andante it is then.
The clinchers for him seem to be :
first, that musically the mirroring of the first two movements , and the connections between them , make much more sense than the Andante coming second.
Second: Henry- Louis de la Grange claims to have ha a handbill showing that Mahler did return to the original order in Performance.
So there we have it.

Doubt if this particular tap will ever stop dripping, ts!

I'm always happy to hear it in whatever order the conductor decides but I did rather like Roehre's suggestion (on this thread?) that omitting the scherzo entirely would solve the problem at a stroke and the symphony would still make perfect sense. Not that I'd actually try it though!

[teamsaint]

Doubt if this particular tap will ever stop dripping, ts!

I'm always happy to hear it in whatever order the conductor decides but I did rather like Roehre's suggestion (on this thread?) that omitting the scherzo entirely would solve the problem at a stroke and the symphony would still make perfect sense. Not that I'd actually try it though!

I didn’t see that comment. It would be an interesting experiment!

[ahinton]

Can it only be four and a bit years?

Anyhow, the whole thing is solved by Edward Seckerson in this months Gramophone !!
Scherzo - andante it is then.
The clinchers for him seem to be :
first, that musically the mirroring of the first two movements , and the connections between them , make much more sense than the Andante coming second.
Second: Henry- Louis de la Grange claims to have ha a handbill showing that Mahler did return to the original order in Performance.
So there we have it.

Whilst I happen to concur with Mr Seckerson on this, I am curious about de la Grange and that handbill about which I knew nothing; what is the precise source of this information? Given that Mahler did not (as far as I am aware) conduct the work thereafter with Scherzo second (and I seem to recall that he only conducted it a further three times anyway), I wonder what significance this might have...

[Barbirollians]

I prefer Andante-Scherzo - and I find Mr Seckerson's recent evidence less than compelling.

[ahinton]

I prefer Andante-Scherzo - and I find Mr Seckerson's recent evidence less than compelling.

Well, we must beg to differ here but what interests me is the source ofthis handbill information and, for that matter, why it seems only recently to have come to light, so let's wait and see what that's all about!

[Pulcinella]

A reminder of the thread's original post, on 9 June 2011.

In the new Gramophone, in his review of Saraste's recording of Mahler's Sixth Symphony, Edward Seckerson states 'We now know that Mahler did revert to the original order', i.e. Scherzo before Andante. I am not aware of what it is we now know that is different from before. Has some new evidence just turned up?

Can anyone enlighten me?

So, surely the question is more: Did he (Seckerson) know of this evidence then?

[richardfinegold]

A reminder of the thread's original post, on 9 June 2011.



So, surely the question is more: Did he (Seckerson) know of this evidence then?

What if Mahler had lived another year, and gave another performance at which he yet again reversed the movements? And if after that performance he was still ambivalent? Would any of that mean anything?

[ahinton]

Knowing that Mahler conducted the symphony only three times, I contact an authority on him who replied
"The handbills for the 2nd and 3rd performances are reproduced in Knud Martner's Mahler im Konzertsaal and both give the order as Andante - Scherzo".
As the handbill for the première was presumably printed before Mahler made his spur-of-moment last-minute decision on the order of the middle movements, it would seem as though that was the only one of the three that showed Scherzo - Andante.

The question woud therefore appear to be about the source of Seckerson's evidence...

[Pulcinella]

I haven't read all the posts here but I have dug out my two recordings: Cleveland/Szell (Sony: Scherzo Andante) and BBCPO/Mackerras (BBC MM March 2005, Vol 13 No 7: Andante Scherzo), so I can choose which one I want without reprogramming my CD player!

The BBC CD liner notes include this comment from Mackerras:

It's well known that Mahler changed the order of the Scherzo and slow movement during rehearsals for the premiere, and that he never reverted to the original again in performance. But apart from that it strikes me as so much more effective that way. The Scherzo is a kind of ghastly parody of the first movement, and for it to come immediately after the thing it parodies strikes me as silly – they're too similar. Going from the beautiful pastoral slow movement into the finale doesn't make much sense, but it works well when the Scherzo goes down into the depths, with the contrabassoon and timpani, before that incredible chord that starts the last movement. It seems so obvious.

(Apologies if this is going over old ground, covered previously.)

[kea]

From all the musicological evidence I've read, Andante-Scherzo is the correct order, whereas Scherzo-Andante is argued for almost entirely on "musical" grounds ("it makes more sense that way" etc) rather than an actual restoration of the 1904 version with all its orchestration differences. (IMSLP has a copy of that original edition—it's interesting following along with any recording that uses Scherzo-Andante and noting the changes.)

Having now known the symphony for about five years (lol) and originally having heard it with a Scherzo-Andante recording, I do think Mahler was correct to reorder the movements. The issue for me with Scherzo-Andante is not the scherzo itself, which makes perfect sense whether placed second or third. It's largely the Andante itself. The end of the Scherzo feels like the end of a major division of the work; having the Andante placed afterwards causes my attention to wander, because the Andante's material is fundamentally that of an interlude (like the two Nachtmusiks of No. 7) rather than a prelude (like the Adagietto of No. 5) or a true slow movement (like the Adagio of No. 4). It wants in some sense to be surrounded by more "active" material and the first 4-5 minutes of the Finale do not work in that respect, being generally as slow or slower than the Andante itself. If the andante is placed second, the symphony then divides into two unequal halves of 3 + 1 movements (roughly 45 + 30 minutes) with parallel trajectories, the finale acting as an intensification and reflection of everything that happened in the first three movements.

I suspect part of why the change only took place at the last minute was because it took the rehearsal process for Mahler to absorb what could be called Chopin's Law of Musical Form: For the listener to perceive a musical form as balanced, the pace of dramatic musical events must get faster as the music progresses. [So for example Chopin's Fourth Ballade can start with 70 bars of its first theme, followed by a transition and 48 bars of its second theme; after the retransition that is shortened to 33 bars of the first theme and 25 bars of the second theme, followed by a 16-bar transition and 28 bars of coda, all matched by a gradual shortening of note values and increase in the dynamic level. This is usually perceived by listeners as more balanced than e.g. a sonata form movement where exposition, development and recapitulation are all the same length.] My assumption is that Mahler realised he had written a score that worked very well on paper but felt unbalanced in time, and adjusted accordingly. And many of the "musical" arguments for Scherzo-Andante feel to me like they make more sense when reading a score or listening to excerpts (e.g. end of first movement into beginning of second movement, etc) than when listening to the symphony as a whole.

That said I think the Scherzo-Andante order can work, just not as well, and seems to require faster tempi than Mahler himself used to be successful (at least in my experience, as the recordings I like the most are the ones by Kubelík, Solti & Szell)

[Bryn]

From all the musicological evidence I've read, Andante-Scherzo is the correct order, whereas Scherzo-Andante is argued for almost entirely on "musical" grounds ("it makes more sense that way" etc) rather than an actual restoration of the 1904 version with all its orchestration differences. (IMSLP has a copy of that original edition—it's interesting following along with any recording that uses Scherzo-Andante and noting the changes.)

Having now known the symphony for about five years (lol) and originally having heard it with a Scherzo-Andante recording, I do think Mahler was correct to reorder the movements. The issue for me with Scherzo-Andante is not the scherzo itself, which makes perfect sense whether placed second or third. It's largely the Andante itself. The end of the Scherzo feels like the end of a major division of the work; having the Andante placed afterwards causes my attention to wander, because the Andante's material is fundamentally that of an interlude (like the two Nachtmusiks of No. 7) rather than a prelude (like the Adagietto of No. 5) or a true slow movement (like the Adagio of No. 4). It wants in some sense to be surrounded by more "active" material and the first 4-5 minutes of the Finale do not work in that respect, being generally as slow or slower than the Andante itself. If the andante is placed second, the symphony then divides into two unequal halves of 3 + 1 movements (roughly 45 + 30 minutes) with parallel trajectories, the finale acting as an intensification and reflection of everything that happened in the first three movements.

I suspect part of why the change only took place at the last minute was because it took the rehearsal process for Mahler to absorb what could be called Chopin's Law of Musical Form: For the listener to perceive a musical form as balanced, the pace of dramatic musical events must get faster as the music progresses. [So for example Chopin's Fourth Ballade can start with 70 bars of its first theme, followed by a transition and 48 bars of its second theme; after the retransition that is shortened to 33 bars of the first theme and 25 bars of the second theme, followed by a 16-bar transition and 28 bars of coda, all matched by a gradual shortening of note values and increase in the dynamic level. This is usually perceived by listeners as more balanced than e.g. a sonata form movement where exposition, development and recapitulation are all the same length.] My assumption is that Mahler realised he had written a score that worked very well on paper but felt unbalanced in time, and adjusted accordingly. And many of the "musical" arguments for Scherzo-Andante feel to me like they make more sense when reading a score or listening to excerpts (e.g. end of first movement into beginning of second movement, etc) than when listening to the symphony as a whole.

That said I think the Scherzo-Andante order can work, just not as well, and seems to require faster tempi than Mahler himself used to be successful (at least in my experience, as the recordings I like the most are the ones by Kubelík, Solti & Szell)

I have been listening to Gielen's three recordings of the work currently in the catalogue. In the 1971 and 1999 recordings, he opted for Scherzo-Andante, based not only on the Ratz edition but on his own view of musical argument. However, for his final 'live' recordings of 2013, he accepted the fact that Mahler had definitively reversed the order to Andate-Scherzo. This despite Gielen's own continuing preference for Scherzo-Andante. Gielen was also one of the few outstanding Mahler conductors who, having long argued against performing versions of the whole of the 10th Symphony, was eventually won over by Deryck Cooke's work and, thankfully, recorded the work in such a performing version. Each to the three Gielen recordings of the 6th is very different, especially in terms of tempi. All three are well worth hearing.

[Roslynmuse]

When I have a bit more time I'll read and absorb this thread. I have to say that I prefer, on an emotional level, Scherzo as mt 2 - it's a bit like kicking a man when he's down, and I wonder if that's what Mahler's first thoughts were trying to capture? There's a parallel too with Beethoven 9, although the opening of the last movement of that piece is obviously quite different to the last movement of the Mahler. And I do wonder whether Andante as second mt feels like a safety too easily won; albeit an illusory one (depends whether you hear those cow bells as sinister and menacing, as I do). I'm now reflecting on how few composers' music I 'anthropomorphize' to the extent that I do with Mahler - and wondering why - maybe because I experienced the music for the first time in my teenage years when such associations are more readily laid down? And I can't imagine questioning any other composer's last thoughts on something as fundamental as order of movements on such emotional/ intuitive grounds... As I say, I need to have a good think about all this.