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

[teamsaint]

I know three things about Mahler 4.
1. I got it for Xmas.
2. It sounds rubbish on my car stereo.(blaming that on the stereo at this stage).
3. This thread is going to come in really handy when I get round to listening to it properly.

[teamsaint]

Spending this PM giving it a proper listen. As always with Mahler, compelling, even if i don't always know why.
Mine is the CFM full works Concertgebouw/Chailly. (waits for incoming flak, But Bonneys singing is gorgeous !)

Regarding the OP, questions like this often make me think of an episode in one of the later David Lodge novels. He is at an art exhibition, where one exhibit is a piece of blank photocopy paper in a frame.
The piece is "explained"(in some notes in a guide to the exhibition I think). The point of this I assume is to show that context is vital , but that sometimes the context can become more important than the art itself. A sub text , presumably, refers to artistic charlatanism.

Of course, in the study of literature this sort of subject is meat and drink.....structuralist and post structuralist approaches kept university departments busy for decades. I think these tend to reflect the point that Lodge was making, that critical approaches can provide valuable insight, but that they can sometimes seem to become the end in themselves, perhaps to the detriment of the art. Perhaps he meant something else entirely.
Anyway, ramble over, my point or question was really whether the sort of approaches and critical techniques that are so central to and dominant in the study of literature, are so prevalent in music.There must be areas of criticism , and ways of approaching music, perhaps especially music of the last 100 years, that are something of a closed book to those like me groping their way (amateurishly but happily) through a world of sometimes difficult to understand sounds. If there are, I want to know about them. Would keep me out of mischief when the footy season is over !

[Alison]

This thread could be worth resurrecting ahead of the Henry Wood Promenade concert featuring the Mahler symphony on Saturday week.

[Alison]

31 Mahler messages and counting since last night, my God! they're at it again!

I do enjoy the 4th from time to time, if only because it's the nearest he got to Schubert.

And you've got some Schubert to go with it FF

[Ferretfancy]

This thread could be worth resurrecting ahead of the Henry Wood Promenade concert featuring the Mahler symphony on Saturday week.

You mean BBC Proms. Poor Sir Henry gazes down on the Arena, sometimes with puzzlement perhaps, but otherwise his memory does not exist, which seems a shame to me. Another gripe is that the word 'The' does not seem to be in the vocabulary of the organisers.The BBC Symphony Orchestra, to give one example, is now BBC Symphony Orchestra, and so for all the others.

[Roehre]

As this thread came around first time I missed it, as I was abroad at that time.

Returning to the original question: no-one seems to have made the remark that this first mvt was not meant to be [part of] a symphony at all. Mahler was composing a Burleske (as he called it in a letter to Nathalie Bauer-Lechner) , not a symphony. And it was about countryside life. [Note that of the first four published symphonies only no.3 was conceived as a such from the very beginning]

Schubert was on his mind, consciously or unconsciously: Piano sonata in E-flat D.568

Mahler 4 is a transitional work, a linking pin, looking back to 3 [finale] and forward to 5 [trumpet signals 1st mvt].
Have also a look at the third mvt, which is strongly looking forward to the Ninth's finale.

[cloughie]

As this thread came around first time I missed it, as I was abroad at that time.

Returning to the original question: no-one seems to have made the remark that this first mvt was not meant to be [part of] a symphony at all. Mahler was composing a Burleske (as he called it in a letter to Nathalie Bauer-Lechner) , not a symphony. And it was about countryside life. [Note that of the first four published symphonies only no.3 was conceived as a such from the very beginning]

Schubert was on his mind, consciously or unconsciously: Piano sonata in E-flat D.568

Mahler 4 is a transitional work, a linking pin, looking back to 3 [finale] and forward to 5 [trumpet signals 1st mvt].
Have also a look at the third mvt, which is strongly looking forward to the Ninth's finale.

...and also maybe towards the adagietto of No5?
I sometimes wonder if there are others like me who got to know Mahler 4 (And No1) far earlier than the other symphonies back in the early 60s for economic reasons. There were few concert performances of Mahler and 1 and 4 were readily available on reasonably priced single LPs.

[Lento]

Apparently, the "heavenly bliss" of the finale was Mahler's starting point. Deryck Cooke's description of the symphony's opening "celestial sleigh-ride" music and the "boy whistling" flute tune resonate with me. Being Mahler, death is often lurking.

[pilamenon]

I love the freshness and vitality of the orchestral writing - probably because its roots, as Roehre says, are in the countryside, as with all the wonderful Wunderhorn earlier works. It may be a transitional work, but for me the textures never get so cloyingly heavy as in some of the later symphonies - No 9 in particular, which I find parts of almost impossible to listen to. Give me No 4 any day over that one.

[Ferretfancy]

And you've got some Schubert to go with it FF

Thanks Alison, I certainly will be there, especially since it will be Haitink at the helm.Schubert's fifth and more than a touch of Schubert at the beginning of Mahler 4, I'd have a heart of stone to dismiss that !

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Apparently, the "heavenly bliss" of the finale was Mahler's starting point.

Yes - wasn't it originally planned as part of the Third Symphony ("What the Child Tells Me")?

[Roehre]

Yes - wasn't it originally planned as part of the Third Symphony ("What the Child Tells Me")?

Finale 4 was intended as Finale for 3, which would have made 3 a 7 mvt work lasting nearly 2 hours.

The penny of making Das himmlische Leben the finale of 4 dropped after the present mvt 1 had been sketched, but before either had been orchestrated.

[Alison]

As this thread came around first time I missed it, as I was abroad at that time.

Returning to the original question: no-one seems to have made the remark that this first mvt was not meant to be [part of] a symphony at all. Mahler was composing a Burleske (as he called it in a letter to Nathalie Bauer-Lechner) , not a symphony. And it was about countryside life.

Thanks Roehre, I wasn't aware of that. The countryside life does at least accord with my own hesitant out-of-doors suggestion in #1

[Petrushka]

Finale 4 was intended as Finale for 3, which would have made 3 a 7 mvt work lasting nearly 2 hours.

The penny of making Das himmlische Leben the finale of 4 dropped after the present mvt 1 had been sketched, but before either had been orchestrated.

Amazing that this song, Das Himmlische Leben, gave birth to two Mahler symphonies!

[bluestateprommer]

If you want to plan ahead for some Thursday night Mahler this week, the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig is offering a stream of Mahler 4 with Chailly and Christina Landshamer, available for 48 hours (I think). The next night, this Friday night, is Chailly leading the orchestra in Mahler 5.

https://www.gewandhausorchester.de/stream/