Mahler 4 (i): is it 'about' anything ?

[MrGongGong]

In my wretched ignorance I have always thought La Mer is at least partly about the sea.

Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima was originally called 8'37" and had nothing at all to do with Hiroshima
though when people hear it now they will associate it with it's second title which is how we now regard it.
So La Mermight have a title that is to do with the sea but the question is whether it really is "about" the sea ?

(incidentally I had to recently stay in Eastbourne but sadly to stay at the Grand Hotel where Debussy wrote much of the piece was far out of my price range even in March )

[cloughie]

In my wretched ignorance I have always thought La Mer is at least partly about the sea.

You know, I agree, at one point I can definitely hear waves crash, but even if it isn't about the sea I shall continue to listen to it frequently and as I haven't tired of it in the last 50 years I probably won't now!

[Alison]

Fair enough. I am happy for my original post to read

Is Mahler 4 (i) to do with anything ?

The 'about' in inverted commas sort of had that meaning anyway.

I like the Cavendish myself while there is a splendid Guest House called Beachy Rise in Meads.

Anyone tried the camera obscura on the pier ? Closed when I went there.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I like the Cavendish myself

- The Grand is over-priced and overrated. For a good cream tea, try Middle Farm near Charleston Farmhouse: and sample the very fine selection of Ciders and Perries.

Anyone tried the camera obscura on the pier ? Closed when I went there.

Is Mel Myland's Puppet Workshop & Museum still going strong? Fond memories of his George & the Dragon at the Tivoli Gardens in about 1994.

[Serial_Apologist]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fd_nopTFuZA

Sorry - just me being flippant. <coy>

[jayne lee wilson]

Dear me, of COURSE La Mer is about the sea; so is Glazunov's The Sea and Ciurlionis' The Sea. They all share certain characteristics of motion and texture too. If you've ever been thrown about in a small boat (a fishing boat crossing from Shetland to Fair isle, say...) it's easier to hear them - easier to hear than describe. When you ask "is it really "about" the sea" you are engaging more with linguistic or semantic concerns than musical ones. Are we going to suggest that "On hearing the first Cuckoo..." is "really" a Concertstuck for Oboe, Bassoon and small Orchestra? Or that only the fanciful hear birds in the cadenza for winds in the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 6th?

So as I said way back in msg.8, I'm amazed that some folk don't, or can't, hear children, fear and death, innocence and experience, in Mahler's 4th. (Even if you don't relate it to his own childhood). To me, it's all told out in the musical narrative and in all the detail of motion and sound.

To quote Peter Porter against myself,

"Within this principle of blemished air
we hear a God who isn't there"

But if you reduce all musical experience to those vibrations as they pass through the aural nerve and excite a neural reaction,
what happens to meaning? Is it all illusory? Or don't we have some responsibility to listen closely, to try to understand, instinctively or with more deliberation?

Deryck Cooke's long-forgotten The Language of Music gets pretty close to the heart of things, right down to the emotional code that is a single interval of a minor second.

Penderecki's Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima was originally called 8'37" and had nothing at all to do with Hiroshima
though when people hear it now they will associate it with it's second title which is how we now regard it.
So La Mermight have a title that is to do with the sea but the question is whether it really is "about" the sea ?

(incidentally I had to recently stay in Eastbourne but sadly to stay at the Grand Hotel where Debussy wrote much of the piece was far out of my price range even in March )

[MrGongGong]

Dear me, of COURSE La Mer is about the sea; so is Glazunov's The Sea and Ciurlionis' The Sea. They all share certain characteristics of motion and texture too. If you've ever been thrown about in a small boat (a fishing boat crossing from Shetland to Fair isle, say...) it's easier to hear them - easier to hear than describe. When you ask "is it really "about" the sea" you are engaging more with linguistic or semantic concerns than musical ones. Are we going to suggest that "On hearing the first Cuckoo..." is "really" a Concertstuck for Oboe, Bassoon and small Orchestra? Or that only the fanciful hear birds in the cadenza for winds in the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 6th?

So as I said way back in msg.8, I'm amazed that some folk don't, or can't, hear children, fear and death, innocence and experience, in Mahler's 4th. (Even if you don't relate it to his own childhood). To me, it's all told out in the musical narrative and in all the detail of motion and sound.

To quote Peter Porter against myself,

"Within this principle of blemished air
we hear a God who isn't there"

But if you reduce all musical experience to those vibrations as they pass through the aural nerve and excite a neural reaction,
what happens to meaning? Is it all illusory? Or don't we have some responsibility to listen closely, to try to understand, instinctively or with more deliberation?

Deryck Cooke's long-forgotten The Language of Music gets pretty close to the heart of things, right down to the emotional code that is a single interval of a minor second.

I think there is a big difference between the direct quotation of recognisable sounds as in Beethoven 6, Pines of Rome, Trans, Cantus Arcticus etc and sounds that one might associate with emotive concepts , fear, love, death etc. So the question about La Mer is interesting , stripped of its title and movement titles it can become something completely different. When I was a student my Sitar teacher came to a concert I was playing in where we played a Schubert Symphony, he thought it was hilariously simple music and couldn't understand why this music was thought of as profound given that it was so rhythmically simple. Some things that we hear in music are reflections of our own cultural and personal experience rather than intrinsic features of the music itself. Music is largely an abstract artform which doesn't make it any less profound and extraordinary in the same way that I don't have to believe in god to be moved by the sunset.

[Petrushka]

I'm amazed that some folk don't, or can't, hear children, fear and death, innocence and experience, in Mahler's 4th.

I share your amazement. It is made explicit in the words of the last movement. Couple that with our knowledge that the 4th is the continuation of the 3rd, the quotes from that, the 2nd and yet-to-be-written 5th and what we have is, I think, Mahler's most straightforward, easiest to understand symphony. Those amongst us, like me, who had siblings die in very early infancy, will instinctively relate to Mahler's narrative here. Thoughts of farmyard noises in this first movement are very wide of the mark!

Like FHG I first got to know the 4th in Bruno Walter's 1946 NYPO performance coupled with the 1947 5th which I bought as long ago as 1973 but the performance that really did the business for me was a Prom outing with the RPO and Danielle Gatti which had much more bite than we usually hear. Too many performances and recordings are way too easy-going, especially in the first two movements.

[kernelbogey]

[...] When you ask "is it really "about" the sea" you are engaging more with linguistic or semantic concerns than musical ones. Are we going to suggest that "On hearing the first Cuckoo..." is "really" a Concertstuck for Oboe, Bassoon and small Orchestra? Or that only the fanciful hear birds in the cadenza for winds in the 2nd movement of Beethoven's 6th? [....]

If it were possible now to hear LvB 6, or Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique innocent of the knowledge of their 'programmes', would the experience be different? Agreed the birdsong in the former is a bit of a giveaway, but I think it would be possible to put a wholly different interpretation on the whole work.

And would that be wrong? Surely we bring great subjectivity to the process of listening to music? There's a well-known passage of Tchaikowsky which, to me, conjures up railway journies across Europe as a child. My experience of listening to Mahler is of imposing my own perceptions of life onto his music.

[Serial_Apologist]

There's a well-known passage of Tchaikowsky which, to me, conjures up railway journies across Europe as a child. My experience of listening to Mahler is of imposing my own perceptions of life onto his music.

My experience too, KB.

Thus for entirely arbitrary reasons, listening to Nielsen 3 always evokes the park in Bristol near to where I was living at the time I first heard the work and bought an LP.

[vinteuil]

Music is largely an abstract artform which doesn't make it any less profound and extraordinary.

I am with M Gongs on this - and I wonder if the difference between those who are mainly drawn to baroque and classical and modern pieces as opposed to those who are mainly drawn to 'romantic' repertoire lies in this - that the former look to the music to provide - 'music' - whereas the latter look to the music to provide 'story', 'narrative'...

[Serial_Apologist]

I am with M Gongs on this - and I wonder if the difference between those who are mainly drawn to baroque and classical and modern pieces as opposed to those who are mainly drawn to 'romantic' repertoire lies in this - that the former look to the music to provide - 'music' - whereas the latter look to the music to provide 'story', 'narrative'...

I'm schizophrenic in that respect. Can't listen to, say, Stravinsky of the neo-classical period after, say, Mahler 6 or Schoenberg "Erwartung". Probably why I like Bartok and Prokofiev so much, combining the formal and the impulsive so well that they did.

[aeolium]

I am with M Gongs on this - and I wonder if the difference between those who are mainly drawn to baroque and classical and modern pieces as opposed to those who are mainly drawn to 'romantic' repertoire lies in this - that the former look to the music to provide - 'music' - whereas the latter look to the music to provide 'story', 'narrative'...

But isn't Bach's St Matthew Passion providing music to a 'story', or the music to any baroque or classical opera doing so? What about the end to Haydn's 'Farewell' symphony - if his patron had not recognised the 'story' in it, Haydn would have felt he'd wasted his time? It's almost as if those who want music to be pure, abstract, divorced from the vulgarity of human passions and emotions want their composers to be inhuman automatons, serenely composing above and apart from the mass of humanity.

[Richard Tarleton]

Music may have meaning, but not necessarily meaning that can be put into words. The cuckoo and quail are musical onomatopoeia, and beside the point. Music (to paraphrase Bryan Magee) is the one art which does not find its origins in perceptions of phenomena. It does not communicate knowledge of Platonic Ideas. And even music accompanying words - whether song, oratorio, opera or Mahler 4 - gives us insights into the inner nature of emotions and moods, beyond the mere meanings of the words (as the recent Schubertfest will have reminded us).

But if you reduce all musical experience to those vibrations as they pass through the aural nerve and excite a neural reaction, what happens to meaning? Is it all illusory? Or don't we have some responsibility to listen closely, to try to understand, instinctively or with more deliberation?

Jayne, are you suggesting that we ought to be able to express what we understand or feel in words? Music does not communicate knowledge of Ideas: it's an alternative to them, it goes beyond them. I couldn't possibly put into words what I understand or feel when listening to a Bruckner symphony, for example, let alone the Bach Chaconne or Var 25 of the Goldberg. With Mahler it is difficult to strip away one's knowledge or preconceptions and listen with the innocent ear - but much of what Mahler 4 is about, including the setting of the words, goes beyond what mere words can express. It's all in Schopenhauer!

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If it were possible now to hear LvB 6, or Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique innocent of the knowledge of their 'programmes', would the experience be different?

Well, I, for one prefer to hear Berlioz's First Symphony in C major without that third-rate, sub-Hammer Horror film programme he inflicted upon it for the purposes of attracting the attention of a sensation-seeking audience!

As for Deryck Cooke's Language of Music, I don't think it is "long-forgotten": Music Semiology courses tend to take it as a starting point. Personally, I think it's just an extention of the Baroque Affektenlehre made to apply to a corpus of European work written chiefly between 1700 - 1950. Narrow in scope and worthwhile chiefly because of the splendid discussions of Mozart and Vaughan Williams.

I think kernalb's last sentence hits the nail on the head: in order to make sense of a non-verbal grammar, some/many/most of us tend to "impose (our) own perceptions of life onto ... Music". Which is why the same sounds can create such (sometimes violently) opposing reactions from listeners; even listeners who love the piece - and even the same listener to the same performance on different occasions. It's Art, we're Human: that's what it does! LOVE it.