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

[amateur51]

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.

[gurnemanz]

This work will always have a special association for me, because at one point it constituted my entire CD collection. I bought a CD of it at the same time as I bought my first ever CD player in the mid-80s. The recording was Haitink with the Concertgebouw and Emily Ameling (not mentioned so far). It was bought on spec without reading any reviews. I enjoyed the recording but subsequently read a couple which weren't too enthusiastic. I have just listened to it again and still like it.

[Serial_Apologist]

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.

This question of whether music consists of codes accessible to deconstruction to explain what it is "in the tones" this person from this background responds to better than this other person, or whether certain musical vocabularies, let's say Tchaikovsky's, for the sake of controversy, have wider popular appeal than Schoenberg, is constantly on my mind as someone who seeks (with occasional success!) to elucidate "difficult" music for people unfamiliar with it. Somehow the "but it's one human being outpouring his emotions in a language that is beyond words, don't you get it?" argument comes across as disingenuous.

On the other hand, is it equally disingenuous for the likes of me to proclaim specific stages of musical development as corresponding to specific evolutionary changes in the brain - such that the 18th century brain, for instance, would have been constitutionally incapable of taking, for example, Shostakovitch's music on board? Assuming not is it also worth considering the development of brain capacity as corresponding to the technologies of any particular time, and of aesthetic respons-abilities within an given society as responses to the expressions of the technological and scientific advances within that society? It may "prove" as difficult to specify precisely what it is in, let's say, late Baroque conterpoint whose apperception by concert- and church-going people corresponds with such mass resonance as to make the music seem representative of its time, as it is to see why for instance Rachmaninov's appeal today is so much greater than even Britten's among the general CFM-level of classical music appreciation. Was Elliott Carter's aesthetic switch in the late 1940s from a "common" neoclassical vocabulary to a post-Schoenbergian one he felt corresponded better to the compexities of his times and his relationship to life indicative of a mind more authentically attuned to its age than someone still then coming to terms with Copland and mad on Glenn Miller? Is citing the mass exposure of the public to the former, and under-exposure to the latter in some hived off enclave of broadcasting, for purposes of ideological control by an elite ruling class, enough of an explanation?

I would like very much to read something about musical semiology - having been trying to figure it out for my own purposes without the benefits of any reading or course attendances on the basis of what I understand about linguistics - because those implying some universality to musical language PER SE fail to explain the "universality" of appeal of different kinds of music in different communities, cultures and classes. Any recommendations for reading materials, please?

S-A

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Great post, S_A

The "introductory textbook" that used to be used at Leeds Uni was by Raymond Monelle; Linguistics and Semiotics in Music, which is Vol 5 in the Contemporary Music Studies published by Routledge.

I have to say that I found it a frustrating read, probably because it is a general introduction to a wide range of studies, and seemed to skim superficially over complex ideas, giving a rather simplistic impression of the subject. I've been much more impressed by talking with students who have undertook deeper study of the subject (which is not to say that I feel very confident talking about it myself!)

[cloughie]

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!

Ferney, whatever you do or don't read the Sym Fant it's a great work and ahead of its time sonically. I always like to hear the cornet in the valse movement and I see that the forthcoming Slatkin recording on Naxos will have the option of with or without.

[doversoul1]

S_A

I would like very much to read something about musical semiology - having been trying to figure it out for my own purposes without the benefits of any reading or course attendances on the basis of what I understand about linguistics - because those implying some universality to musical language PER SE fail to explain the "universality" of appeal of different kinds of music in different communities, cultures and classes. Any recommendations for reading materials, please?

Some of these should be available from other sources. I’m afraid I cannot tell you about the books but this can be somewhere to start.

http://catalogue.library.manchester.ac.uk/items?facet%5B0%5D=displayaslanguagecode%3A%22eng%22&facet%5B1%5D=displayasrecordtype%3A%22bks%22&query=semiotic%2C+music&adv=t

[Serial_Apologist]

Many thanks, Ferney and doversoul.

Some useful names I've noted down. I've been re-reading the Christopher Norris-edited "Music and the Politics of Culture" (1989, Lawrence and Wishart), containing essays by 13 authors on various subjects including this one, and am just waiting for the sun to re-emerge and tempt me out onto the lawn again. Some of this stuff I can just about get my head around. Maybe it's time to get myself up to Foyles, and have a moze around the other bookshops in the vicinity.

[Alison]

How do you approach your music education then Gongers ??

Are you sure you don't tell the youngsters a little a bit about what they are going to hear ??

[jayne lee wilson]

Abstract patterns, emotional narratives, personal associations...
Are these Scott F's opposed ideas, or related ones?

I sometimes settle this with myself by a case-on-merits approach - that listening to, and understanding, Mahler or Shostakovich is hugely enriched by a knowledge of their historical and biographical background; Nielsen and Sibelius, perhaps less so? Yet when you look further...

Interesting how some listeners find Sibelius 4th baffling until they discover what had happened to him at the time; though I certainly didn't need to know that to find it immediately compelling, and my own Adventures in Brain Surgery haven't changed my apprehension of it...
You can enjoy and appreciate Beethoven's 3rd without knowing much about LVB, but isn't it incomparably the richer for knowledge of his life and times, and of his feelings about Napoleon?

It becomes harder as one reaches back to baroque and classical composers of great fecundity to make such connections; but personally I find knowing about Salomon and his subscription concerts does lend extra depth and colour to Haydn's London set, or indeed what Bach was about when composing a group of Cantatas fills out the abstract beauties of the biblical word-settings; but of course you don't need any of this to listen and enjoy.

I suppose I worry, somewhat after-the-fact of cultural change, that the completely subjective I-like-this-I-don't-like-that approach to listening, so ingrained from the pop radio which I once listened to for hours a day, will always be at war with the old (old-fashioned...) principle of active and close listening. But the more you know, whether musically or biographically, the more you understand. A girlfriend once told me that Mahler's 5th sounded like "the soundtrack to an awful very sentimental old film" - she couldn't hear anything beyond the distortion of her own associations. I've often come across that problem. No wonder I ended up preferring the company of cats.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

You can enjoy and appreciate Beethoven's 3rd without knowing much about LVB, but isn't it incomparably the richer for knowledge of his life and times, and of his feelings about Napoleon?

Weeeell; up to a point. Bernstein said once that he thought the last two Movements didn't live up to the first two; because he (LB) was thinking about his (LvB's) "feelings about Napoleon". Just imagine if we didn't know the Napoleon story "behind" the Eroica and just had that title as a "clue". Mightn't Lennie have paid more attention to the Finale, concentrated on the way that a frowzy little excuse of a tune grows from the humblest of origins into the noblest of themes? And, as somebody said (apologies: I can't find it!) knowing that Beethoven lived in a scruffy, dirty appartment "explains" nothing about the Late Quartets. (Mind you, listening to the Late Quartets explains why he didn't have time to do a spot of cleaning! )

And it's not a matter of wanting composers to be "inhuman automata", as aeolie put it: I love to read history books and biographies of composers. I find it incredibly touching to read extracts from Beethoven's conversation books (reminding himself to get a haircut before the premiere of the Ninth; pointing out to a friend "If you look at that girl from this side, you'll see she has the most amazing bottom!", the traumas with his cleaning maids, his disasterous attempts at cooking ...) They remind me of the man behind the glorious Music. But it's the Music that most grabs my attention: the construction, the rhythmic/harmonic surge, the timing, the logic ... and the bits that don't "fit"! (Oh, those especially!)

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Ferney, whatever you do or don't read the Sym Fant it's a great work and ahead of its time sonically. I always like to hear the cornet in the valse movement and I see that the forthcoming Slatkin recording on Naxos will have the option of with or without.

Sorry, cloughie, I missed this earlier.

Don't worry: I love the Symph Fant - great Music from one of my favourite Romantics. I just don't like having to think of witches cavorting round the fires of hell like the St Leonards-on-Sea Amateur Dramatics Society doing Macbeth whilst I listen to the Music!

[MrGongGong]

How do you approach your music education then Gongers ??

Are you sure you don't tell the youngsters a little a bit about what they are going to hear ??

How long have you got ?
given that music is essentially a non-linguistic art I would not necessarily use the "programme" or "story" as a "way in" to listening. The problem in my experience with the idea that music is always (sometimes it IS so this isn't a dogma !) about something other than sound is that it tends to lead to the idea that there is a "right" way to perceive a given piece. If I listen to (for example) La Mer and for ME I have an internal image of a steam train am I "wrong" ? So what I tend to do is to START with sound to "Listen without prejudice" and then share our ideas of what the music might suggest.
As music is a sonic art you can't really tell people in words (without speaking on a purely technical level) WHAT they are going to hear, what you can do is create an environment where listening, real listening, what Pauline Oliveros calls "Deep Listening" is possible. There was a recent article in the Independent about how great is was to hear Classical music in the corridors of a primary school suggesting that this would be a great way of introducing children to it, in my experience this is deeply flawed on many levels which i've gone into before so wont repeat myself endlessly. Sometimes one needs to give a "key" into what people are about to hear which MIGHT be to do with what it suggests to you (a colleague of mine refers to Messiaen's Turangalila as like a volcano) or even something about how it was constructed (from birdsong or machine sounds) but if you always start with something extra-musical you are (imv) denying the real power of music to evoke different things in different individuals.

This project is a good example of getting people in the right state to really listen (not plugging my own things but some of these sounds are from my work) http://www.minuteoflistening.org/

hope that makes sense ?

[aeolium]

And it's not a matter of wanting composers to be "inhuman automata", as aeolie put it: I love to read history books and biographies of composers. I find it incredibly touching to read extracts from Beethoven's conversation books (reminding himself to get a haircut before the premiere of the Ninth; pointing out to a friend "If you look at that girl from this side, you'll see she has the most amazing bottom!", the traumas with his cleaning maids, his disasterous attempts at cooking ...) They remind me of the man behind the glorious Music. But it's the Music that most grabs my attention: the construction, the rhythmic/harmonic surge, the timing, the logic ... and the bits that don't "fit"! (Oh, those especially!)

fhg, I don't think the incidental details of a composer's life are of great assistance for the purposes of listening to one of his works but I do think where there is clear evidence that a composer has sought to convey a particular meaning or story within a piece of music - most obviously in deliberately programmatic works - that evidence should not be ignored or dismissed. There may still be much more in the music than is consciously intended, and the listener may respond in ways not anticipated. But to be aware of the circumstances surrounding the composition of the 'Heiliger Dankgesang' in Beethoven's A minor quartet, the composer's purpose expressed in the title of the movement and clues within the score, and to deny that this quartet movement is (at least in part) 'about' something and that the composer has tried to make clear to the listener, and player, what it is 'about' - to deny that seems to me perverse. Of course you can listen to the movement in complete ignorance of any background and those composer's indications in the score, and hear something quite different and to that extent the experience would demonstrate the ambiguity and abstract nature of music, but surely there is some music where the composer has deliberately attempted to convey specific meanings and to limit the ambiguity.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Aeolium; you're quite right, it would be perverse to ignore such explicit information as given by a composer in the score - it would be like ignoring the dynamic or Tempo markings.

What I think should be treated with caution is discovering a biographical fact about a composer and leaping to the conclusion that this "must" tell us something about the Music. Mahler had terrible problems with haemorrhoids whilst he was composing the Resurrection Symphony - I'm not sure that a conductor trying to "express" this in his/her interpretation would help; even if it's an "interpretation" of Totenfeuer!

Best Wishes.

[Segilla]

I'm usually thinking: "Christ, there's still another 55 minutes to go."

In my case I don't even give it five minutes. For some unknown reason I can't abide it.

Does it have some subconscious link to Gramophone reviews of 60 years ago, when Mahler was very little known and critics were fond of complaining about his too frequent lapsing into Landler?

I recall another critic commenting, something like 'lots of braying horns and getting underway, like a batttleship in a millpond'. But that may have been a Bruckner symphony, these composers being bracketed together in those days - as witness the H F Redlinch Master Musicians Bruckner and Mahler volume.