A guide to Mahler's music

[Alison]

Although Silvestrione said a book with music examples would be preferable and that one doesn't have any. I think it's written with a great deal of love for the music, and contains a much eloquent description (& is maybe prone to overinterpretation) but I have the impression the author has derived his impressions from listening to recordings and/or concerts rather then getting engaged with scores.

Yes fair comment. More coffee table than academia perhaps but still plenty to get stuck into.

[RichardB]

I’ve use the phrase Alma’s theme on the lengthy Mahler 6 thread but I’ve no idea who coined it or what basis it has.

It comes from Alma herself, in her Erinnerungen: "After he had finished the first movement, Mahler came down from the woods and said 'I have tried to capture you in a theme; I do not know whether I have been successful. You will have to put up with it.' " Maybe he actually said this, maybe he didn't. If he did say it maybe he meant it, or maybe he had other reasons for saying it. If he meant it, maybe this has implications for how the theme is further developed in the music, or maybe it was just a starting point for something that took on a life of its own, and imagining each recurrence or variation of this theme as in some way symbolic is a fruitless exercise. I would prefer to try to understand the music on its own terms, that's all.

[jayne lee wilson]

I don't have to - I have the book and I've read it!

I wouldn't want to be seen as unfair on Floros - I have the greatest respect for his writings, I think this is a very well-written book consisting of well-chosen information and insight. It is indeed more detailed than Cooke's volume but I would have preferred it to go further.
A more general point about most writing on Mahler (including Floros) is that it tends to lean too heavily on the idea that Mahler's music is basically an autobiography in sound, which I really don't think is the most interesting or appropriate way to look at it - every time I read about the 6th Symphony and see the words "Alma's theme" I feel like shaking the author and demanding that they pay more attention to score and sound than to gossip. But maybe that's just me.

Looking through those other Floros publications you referenced as "more scholarly", I see that, as (less expectedly) with his Bruckner writings, he says much about the programmatic nature of Mahler’s music (he has a certain obsession with the programmatic in Bruckner and Mahler and more widely; one chapter is actually headed: “False Doctrine: the view of Mahler’s Symphonies as Absolute Music”).
He analyses Mahler’s personality, at considerable length, from the emotional and psychological POV as well. So Floros does indeed find it impossible to dwell upon the music qua music much of the time (which seems to tell us something vital about the music itself, surely?).
But in his guide to the symphonies we’ve been discussing he does just this, alongside the historical-biographical dimension; and to judge from the chapter on No.1, very successfully.

It is precisely because I wanted more on the actual music - structures, movement shape and layout - that I liked it, and bought it. In an unfamiliar commentary there’s nearly always some thematic recurrence or cross-reference one has previously missed (I wonder how many pick up the 4th's finale theme in the andante's climax; I missed it for years); and I’ve always been fascinated by the evolution of classical models through the more explicit cyclic forms of 19th/20thC composers, from Schumann on.

*****
Floros’ book about the 19thC Symphonic context looks the most interesting - if it weren’t for the price…. thanks for the reference to these other Floros works Richard; I’ll keep an eye on this last one.
But it’s all about getting around to it, isn’t it? I read very slowly these days; I like to dwell and daydream and window-gaze….

[RichardB]

one chapter is actually headed: “False Doctrine: the view of Mahler’s Symphonies as Absolute Music”).

I am always guided by David Hockney's "Never believe what an artist says, only what he [sic] does." I don't believe there's really such a thing as "absolute music" - art is always the product of its time and circumstances and indeed the personality of its creator or creators, and not just how they were feeling about their loved ones at a moment of inspiration but also what they had for breakfast. Mahler famously said that his "time will come", indicating that he believed that posterity would appreciate his music in a way that his contemporaries didn't, which indeed has turned out to be the case: but where does this leave what are often interpreted as anecdotal references in it (like "Alma's theme", which, even if she was accurate in her recollection, wasn't something Mahler himself felt anyone but her needed to know)? I don't think of the music as in any way "absolute", but part of its appeal for me lies in the way it can be understood in many different and contradictory ways, even simultaneously. On the other hand, if I were a musicologist with a book to write, I might think that idea had less potential than finding relations between the work and its biographical context. Each to their own.

[LHC]

The Floros book looks interesting, so I too will get this when it comes back in stock.

I was also amused by the books that Amazon had identified as being ‘related to this item’. I’m not sure I understand how Brian Cox’s book on Black Holes, or ‘the Reginald Stinkbottom colouring book’ relate to a book on Mahler’s symphonies, but I suppose Amazon’s algorithms will have worked out some justification for this.

[RichardB]

I was also amused by the books that Amazon had identified as being ‘related to this item’. I’m not sure I understand how Brian Cox’s book on Black Holes, or ‘the Reginald Stinkbottom colouring book’ relate to a book on Mahler’s symphonies

Mahler did say that writing a symphony was like creating a whole world, so I guess that would include black holes and Reginald Stinkbottom, for better or worse.

[Sir Velo]

Mahler did say that writing a symphony was like creating a whole world, so I guess that would include black holes and Reginald Stinkbottom, for better or worse.

LOL!

It will undoubtedly be for the far more prosaic reason that people who bought Mahler discs (probably including that "song" on its own) will also have bought Prof Cox and Stinky's masterpieces as well.

[smittims]

I've always felt that the truth lies between two extremes, when it comes to 'interpreting' supposed autobiographical or political references in the symphonies of Mahler , Shostakovitch or Vaughan Williams. I don't think a sensitive creative artist can help being influenced subconsciously by the events around him, but that doesn't mean that he sets out deliberately to depict them bar by bar in his music.

For instance, it's often been said, not least by the composer himself ,that Stravinsky's 'Symphony in C' is detached form his life at the time, the 'time' in question being a year when his mother, his wife an done of his daughters died of tuberculosis and he himself was found to have traces of it. The climax of the first movement might be heard as convulsive coughing, if one were looking for parallels. Similarly, it's been suggested that Elgar's 'Falstaff' could have been called 'Edward Elgar: a Symphonic Study in C minor' without being too far-fetched.

Mahler was a questing intellectual, fond of debating all manner of topics, so it's most likely he was turning over in his mind various concepts at the time he was composing; but I think it too near wishful thinking to interpret his symphonies as if they were Straussian tone poems.

The Mahler/Sibelius conversational remark about 'inner logic ' versus 'the whole world' is often quoted without source. Does anyone know if there is actual verification for it? All I can recall is that one of Sib's biographers (Ekman?) related it from a conversation some years after Mahler's death. I've often wondered what Mahler actually said . Presumably the conversation was in German, which Sib. spoke as a third , if not fourth language, after Swedish, Finnish and French.

[RichardB]

The Mahler/Sibelius conversational remark about 'inner logic ' versus 'the whole world' is often quoted without source. Does anyone know if there is actual verification for it? All I can recall is that one of Sib's biographers (Ekman?) related it from a conversation some years after Mahler's death. I've often wondered what Mahler actually said . Presumably the conversation was in German, which Sib. spoke as a third , if not fourth language, after Swedish, Finnish and French.

The source is Ekman, to whom Sibelius recalled a conversation he had with Mahler in 1907. Sibelius quotes Mahler's words in German. But Mahler had already written to Natalie Bauer-Lechner in 1895 that "[t]he term symphony means to me: to build a world with all the technical means at my disposition" so his reported words to Sibelius are quite plausible.

[smittims]

Ah, thanks. That earlier letter does add authenticity to the remark.

[jayne lee wilson]

The Floros' Gustav Mahler The Symphonies arrived today, so for silvestrione and others I just wanted to note that there are in fact many musical examples in the descriptive analyses (the look inside Amazon excerpt didn't reach that far).

Scanning through, it looks very good indeed, ideal to move onto from Cooke, say, much longer with far greater background, detail and insight. The chapter on the 10th covers the history of its existence and reconstruction briefly and comprehensively, but concentrates on the structures of the movements themselves. The analysis of the 1st movement contains some very striking observations about the shape, dynamics and character of it***, often new to me. Usefully and unusually, Floros offers more than one view of it how it can be heard, quoting other writers. So do go for it if you find an affordable copy.

***..."based on two alternating themes that appear in innumerable variations, and that their alternations constitute the form..."
"..the dynamics of the movement move in a constant up and down, "on the way without ever getting there", in keeping with the idea on which the whole movement is based..."

This is from Eberhardt Klemm, after which Floros describes the movement himself in quiet different terms (then goes on to the rest of the work). As one who often feels that the Schumann Symphonies, say, can be described in different ways from various POVs, I find this fascinating.