Order of movements in Mahler 6

[richardfinegold]

I remain a faithful member of that society having heard last week, for the first time live, a performance with the Andante second. It didn't work for me, logically or emotionally - the development from first movement to a more whimsical version of a similar 'strutting' march and thence to the idyll of the Andante and then the plunge into the final movement just works so much better, to my mind.

That is the perfect answer to Roerhe, who apparently has no use for the scherzo and deletes it when he listens. The Scherzo mocks the first movement and listening to it after the andante makes the contrast less meaningful . It is like thinking of a witty response to someone who has disrespected you 5 minutes after that person has left the room.

[Roehre]

That is the perfect answer to Roerhe, who apparently has no use for the scherzo and deletes it when he listens. The Scherzo mocks the first movement and listening to it after the andante makes the contrast less meaningful . It is like thinking of a witty response to someone who has disrespected you 5 minutes after that person has left the room.

That argument applies similarly to having the scherzo as 3rd mvt: a recollection of the march and the pastoral mood of the Alma-music before the real cataclysm of the finale unlashes. A person recalls a story, and others point out that THIS (the finale) by all means is the real thing after all....

[ahinton]

That is the perfect answer to Roerhe, who apparently has no use for the scherzo and deletes it when he listens. The Scherzo mocks the first movement and listening to it after the andante makes the contrast less meaningful . It is like thinking of a witty response to someone who has disrespected you 5 minutes after that person has left the room.

Yes - sardonic mockery characterises far more of the Scherzo than any other part of the symphony, yet there is one passage in the first movement that bears a striking premonitory resemblance to one in the Scherzo - for first instances of each, see the Kahnt edition, first movement, p.25, first bar (7th bar of development section that begins at fig.14 with the second time bar) and pp.28-29, 3rd and 5th bars from fig.17, each example scored for woodwinds trilling with xylophone - and then in the Scherzo, at fig.47, second bar of p.79, similarly scored. Note also how the opening figure in horns 1-4 from the second complete bar of the Scherzo remanifests itself in the first main theme of the finale announced by the bass tuba at fig.104 at the beginning of p.151 but whose relationship with it is perhaps a little clearer in the bassoons' and cellos' dotted figure beginning a beat before fig.109, Allegro Moderato, p.160.

It's also interesting to note that the first themes of all four movements begin by being confined to the first three notes of the scale - A minor in the first movement, Scherzo and Finale and E flat major in the Andante.

Another curiosity is the allusion (possibly unconscious, possibly subconscious) to the first movement of Schubert's Piano Trio in B flat at p.129, bars 2&3, four bars before fig.91, in flute, clarinet and second violins (joined in the second bar in unison by first violins)...

I mean I'm not obsessed with this symphony or anything, but...

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Mahler might have had strong musical grounds for his revisions - a possibility that has been generally discounted in this discussion?

(I've tried rewriting the following a couple of times, but it always sounds sneering, which isn't my intention): I'd genuinely like to hear somebody suggest what these "Musical grounds" might be. The essential Symphonic Tonal logic of the composer's first versions is weakened (there's no need for inverted commas) when the middle movements are reversed - that's why I offered the speculation with the proviso "I can only imagine that ...". (You see? It sounds as if I'm quaffing port in the SCR! I'm sincere in being baffled by why Mahler made such a decision, and would greatly appreciate someone offering a coherent, Symphonic, Musical - and I know that such thinking is considered "invaid" by some, but I think that nothing else will suffice here - reason.) The last two Tonal regions of the Scherzo (Eb minor to A minor) better prepare the arrival of the Eb major of the Andante than does the A major Coda of the 1st Movement; the Eb major ending of the Andante better prepares for the c minor start of the Finale than does the A minor of the end of the Scherzo. The C major to A major movement in the middle of the Andante is echoed in the next Movement only if the next Movement is the Finale (c minor - a minor). These are not "opinions", this is not conjecture or speculation; this is sound Symphonic Tonal logic, as witnessed throughout the Austro-German Symphonic tradition from Haydn to Mahler, enhancing the Thematicism of the whole work.


(Oh, and Mahler's "closest confidants" were surely Strauss and Schönberg - fellow composers - rather than his conducting colleagues?)

[aeolium]

(I've tried rewriting the following a couple of times, but it always sounds sneering, which isn't my intention): I'd genuinely like to hear somebody suggest what these "Musical grounds" might be. The essential Symphonic Tonal logic of the composer's first versions is weakened (there's no need for inverted commas) when the middle movements are reversed - that's why I offered the speculation with the proviso "I can only imagine that ...". (You see? It sounds as if I'm quaffing port in the SCR! I'm sincere in being baffled by why Mahler made such a decision, and would greatly appreciate someone offering a coherent, Symphonic, Musical - and I know that such thinking is considered "invaid" by some, but I think that nothing else will suffice here - reason.) The last two Tonal regions of the Scherzo (Eb minor to A minor) better prepare the arrival of the Eb major of the Andante than does the A major Coda of the 1st Movement; the Eb major ending of the Andante better prepares for the c minor start of the Finale than does the A minor of the end of the Scherzo. The C major to A major movement in the middle of the Andante is echoed in the next Movement only if the next Movement is the Finale (c minor - a minor). These are not "opinions", this is not conjecture or speculation; this is sound Symphonic Tonal logic, as witnessed throughout the Austro-German Symphonic tradition from Haydn to Mahler, enhancing the Thematicism of the whole work.

I am certainly not competent to attempt such a musical justification. There is a brief one suggested in this essay by Jeffrey Gantz (in the section discussing the movement order). And it's interesting to note that such a noted Mahler scholar as Deryck Cooke comments - in the essay by Jerry Bruck linked to by ahinton earlier - "I was interested to see that Norman del Mar insisted on playing the Sixth in the 'wrong' order: he told me that wild horses couldn't drag him into putting the Scherzo second. This is what Berthold Goldschmidt felt, and so do I." So there have clearly been prominent Mahlerians who have found powerful musical reasons for following the order that remained following Mahler's revision.

But my position is that whatever the musical merits of the different orders - and they are clearly debatable - what possible justification can there be for using this argument to override the composer's final known preference (leaving aside spurious 'evidence' of a change of mind that is so flimsy it would be thrown out of any court of law - come in Judge Caliban)? It seems to me almost like Brendel's refusal to play the repeat in the first movement of Schubert's D960, despite it being clearly marked with a linking section: a conviction in the rightness of one's own musical understanding as overreaching the composer's. Such a conviction certainly seems to have been present in Ratz, to the point where he barely bothered to adduce any historical evidence for justifying his decision to re-order the sequence of movements.

(Oh, and Mahler's "closest confidants" were surely Strauss and Schönberg - fellow composers - rather than his conducting colleagues?)

I was thinking of closest confidants in the matter of preserving Mahler's legacy in the performance of his works, and so of the conductors who Mahler knew would do this. Of course, if there is any evidence that Strauss or Schoenberg knew anything about a proposed change of mind in the order of movements to S-A, that would be highly significant.

[ahinton]

(I've tried rewriting the following a couple of times, but it always sounds sneering, which isn't my intention): I'd genuinely like to hear somebody suggest what these "Musical grounds" might be. The essential Symphonic Tonal logic of the composer's first versions is weakened (there's no need for inverted commas) when the middle movements are reversed - that's why I offered the speculation with the proviso "I can only imagine that ...". (You see? It sounds as if I'm quaffing port in the SCR! I'm sincere in being baffled by why Mahler made such a decision, and would greatly appreciate someone offering a coherent, Symphonic, Musical - and I know that such thinking is considered "invaid" by some, but I think that nothing else will suffice here - reason.) The last two Tonal regions of the Scherzo (Eb minor to A minor) better prepare the arrival of the Eb major of the Andante than does the A major Coda of the 1st Movement; the Eb major ending of the Andante better prepares for the c minor start of the Finale than does the A minor of the end of the Scherzo. The C major to A major movement in the middle of the Andante is echoed in the next Movement only if the next Movement is the Finale (c minor - a minor). These are not "opinions", this is not conjecture or speculation; this is sound Symphonic Tonal logic, as witnessed throughout the Austro-German Symphonic tradition from Haydn to Mahler, enhancing the Thematicism of the whole work.


(Oh, and Mahler's "closest confidants" were surely Strauss and Schönberg - fellow composers - rather than his conducting colleagues?)

Well said, sir!

[teamsaint]

So having them on Shuffle is a bad idea then?

[Nick Armstrong]

So having them on Shuffle is a bad idea then?

[teamsaint]

I deserve to get into trouble for that, really.
Apologies to all the people posting sensible and learned stuff.

[Alain Maréchal]

"I was interested to see that Norman del Mar insisted on playing the Sixth in the 'wrong' order: he told me that wild horses couldn't drag him into putting the Scherzo second. This is what Berthold Goldschmidt felt, and so do I."

I'm trying to follow this debate closely, but have become confused because of ambiguous usages. Did NdM mean he would never play the Scherzo as the second movement, or as the second of the two inner movements?

[aeolium]

I'm trying to follow this debate closely, but have become confused because of ambiguous usages. Did NdM mean he would never play the Scherzo as the second movement, or as the second of the two inner movements?

Yes, I agree that it's ambiguous, Alain, but in the essay Bruck's footnote makes it clear that in this context NdM was referring to playing the Scherzo as the second movement. Bruck prefaces his quote from Cooke by saying: "Among the conductors who did hold fast to their Andante-Scherzo convictions were Norman del Mar, Berthold Goldschmidt, Sir John Barbirolli, Sir Simon Rattle and Harold Farberman."

[amateur51]

So having them on Shuffle is a bad idea then?

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Many thanks, aeolie, for the link to the Jeffrey Gantz article, which is the first I've read that actively engages with the Tonal structure of the Syamphony. His repeated "it makes no sense" suggests that he doesn't fully grasp the Tonal theory that was the core of 19th Century Symphonic writing - a subject I'll try to summarize later this evening when I have more time.

I think it might be useful here, howeve, to look at the work of Erwin Ratz, whom RM-W characterizes as "neither a historian nor a scholar" ... and probably not a gentleman, either. Well, no; he wasn't a gentleman, he was the son of a baker - quite a successful one; he was a neighbour of Webern (and during the harsh Winter after WW1, supplied the economically-stricken Webern family with much-needed provisions). During the twenties, Ratz allowed Webern to use his home as a base for Webern's private teaching, and it was there, too, that Webern gave his public lectures on Music. Ratz also studied Music privately with both Schönberg and Webern and, after WW2, he became professor of Music Analysis at the Vienna Conservatoire . Furthermore, from 1933 onwards, Ratz' home was used to shelter Jews under threat of arrest.

So, not exactly the Ruythen Murgatroyd figure that might emerge from RM-W's summary. So what possessed such an all-round decent chap to make such dubious claims about the Mahler Scherzo/Andante? What were his (hoho) motives for such strongly-worded statements; his evidence for his convictions?

Well; there's the stronger Tonal structuring of the Sixth that emerges from the composer's first published version, which must have been uppermost in this non-scholar's Analytical mind - but there's also the connection with Schönberg - who was close(st) to Mahler during his last decade; visiting him regualrly, discussing Music (its past and future, its composition and performance - Schönberg was no mean conductor) in such a way that there was no need or occasion to write down what they spoke of (in the way that it was necessary in order to communicate with conductors in other cities and countries). It is entirely possible that, from such a discussion, Mahler realized that the Scherzo - Andante was, indeed, the better form of the work. This would only have been heard by those present - Mahler's wife, and Ratz' teacher.

All very suppository, of course, and in no way "admissable" evidence (at the very least, it would be hearsay) - but a good egg like Ratz' complete belief that the Scherzo - Andante was Mahler's latest view on the structure of the work has to have decent reasons behind it. Beyond that of the Musical superiority of that ordering, of course.

[Alain Maréchal]

.

All very suppository, of course,

How fundamental!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

This is probably a good point also to say how much I'm enjoying this Thread - it has raised many thoughts beyond that of individual performances of the symphony, bringing into focus questions that hadn't really occured to me before about the very nature of Austro-German Symphonic organism and its relationship to Stockhausen's Moment-form and mobiles. It's also provided concrete illustrations of ideas I struggled to express in the "Autobiography & Understanding" Thread.

It's no wonder I spend so much of my time on this wonderful Forum! all round, everyone.