Why Mahler?

Norman's Introduction:
Every era has a defining symphonist, an artist whose music makes sense of the epoch. For the 19th century it was Beethoven. For part of the 20th, it was Brahms. For England between the wars it was Sibelius. For France, toujours Debussy.

Since his rediscovery in the 1960s, and particularly over the past two decades, the composer most attuned to our times and most performed in our halls has been Gustav Mahler. Eclectic, inquisitive, neurotic, messianic, Mahler seems to many of his admirers to hold the meaning of life. His music has influenced creativities as diverse as Thomas Mann, Shostakovich and Visconti. Many Hollywood film scores bear his sonic thumbprint.

But why Mahler? What is it in his music that appeals to our time? Are we reading too much into his scores? Where has Brahms gone and why is Bruckner eclipsed. Why, indeed, does Mozart always outshine Haydn? Are we confusing a composer's personality with his music?

And who's next? Which composer will tell us what the 21st century means, if and when Mahler no longer applies?

Your comments:

From: Emanuel E Garcia MD 
Scriabin should be the composer to lead us into the 21st century.

From: Allan Evans
Hard to understand why Mahler has been foisted upon us as mascot for our collective angst. Musically he is repellent: mixing kitsch amidst straining for profundity, what the armchair Freudians attribute to having witnessed a fight between his parents and then hearing a marching band outside. Perhaps his need for someone like Freud explains his "relevance", that is if you agree that Freud and his theories can actually help one.
I find his cinematic unravelling of sound into imaginary scenarios an annoying but possible explanation for such popularity: had he lived longer, Hollywood would have enthroned him. The interest in him which extraordinary musicians such as Fried and Walter displayed can be attributed to his charisma and the novelty of a narrative music form which anticipated cinema.
And who's next? Which composer will tell us what the 21st century means, when Mahler no longer applies? Classical music no longer represents a culture. It is a glorious museum. One should look elsewhere. John Coltrane's A Love Supreme is the most emblematic work of the last 50 years. It was aired on a Jazz station here in New York as we witnessed the destruction of the World Trade Center and comforted more than one might imagine.

From: Robert Berkoff
Morton Feldman (as next composer to lead us in the 21st century)

From: Sarah Frater
It may be less Mahler and more us... Something about our current collective disposition that inclines us to him. Often thought this about Ashton/MacMillan in dance, with MacMillan currently streets ahead (although he has powerful advocacy in Lady M, and Ashton's heirs are many and dispersed...)

From: Mary Finnigan
I don't think any one composer will define the 21st C. Seems to me it will the age of the generalist. Maybe a common denominator will be a sustained re-emergence of spiritual values. Maybe spiritual practice (yoga/meditation) rather than passive or intellectual spirituality will generate fresh inspiration. But its early days and in my view, at this stage impossible to predict. 

From: Prof. Phillip Lederer University of Rochester
I strongly agree with the argument that Mahler's sound language was carried into the popular ear through film and TV. (My argument is not new, I picked it up from an essay in Mitchell's (ed.) Mahler Companion ). So many of the Viennese musical composing community went to Hollywood to compose for film and to teach, and the style they imitated (followed) was Mahler's.

In many ways Mahler's music is simply easier on the ear (despite its length) than other classical styles.

It is an interesting turnabout on the topic of Mahler as a Jew. Born into a society that viewed Judaism as a fossilized, relic of ancient days, and forced to convert to gain social acceptance, his popularity is due to the same antisemitic forces: His professional followers were Jewish and brought his sound to a new media that had world-wide distribution!

From: Nathan Lofton
 You bring up some interesting questions, and I'll give you the two reasons that seem to be most apparent to me for Mahler's popularity.

The first and most important reason for Mahler's popularity is simply that audiences can identify with the music. The world we live in is full of uncertainty: the average person has so little control over so many aspects of their lives that it's really frightening to think about. Mahler's music is also full of uncertainty and ambiguity, and I think it's that connection to the modern world that attracts people. The 6th Symphony, for example, is full of these sort of themes of fate: the very sinister march that begins the symphony, the hammer blows in the last movement. It's not difficult to draw parallels between this music and the world around us. One of the most powerful performances of the 6th Symphony I have heard (although by far not the cleanest) was recorded by the UC Berkeley Symphony in 1969, at the height of the student protests. Another extremely powerful recording of the 6th was the one made by the San Francisco Symphony just days after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

Mahler's music also has a lot of beauty in it emerging from the pain. The scenes of Heaven in the finales of Symphonies 2 and 3, and the introspective resignation of the Adagietto movement of the 5th Symphony, for example, remind us that (perhaps) everything will work out for the best no matter how difficult things may seem.

In this way, Mahler's music can be very comforting. I remember the National Symphony televising performances of the final two movements of the 2nd Symphony in 9/11/01 memorial concerts. I'm sure that those performances of what is some of the most profound and inspirational music ever written lifted the spirits of people watching.

The other reason I think Mahler is so popular right now is that musicians enjoy playing it. Here in the US, it seems like the two things young orchestral players are hired for is their technical virtuosity and their ability to be musical while being technical. There are few composers who blend those two elements together in a better way. In a Mahler symphony virtually every player has at least one challenging passage, and I can't think of any Mahler work that doesn't involve a huge amount of emotional depth.

As for the question of who the next big composer will be, that's very hard to say. If I had to pick one person (unlikely as this may seem) I would have to say John Cage. While to our ears Cage's music might seem to be dated commentary on 60's and 70's America (if we hear it as music at all, that is), I think there is a lot in Cage's music that hasn't been given much attention. Unfortunately, Cage's music is viewed by many today as absurdist trash and not taken seriously. While it certainly is musical absurdism, it is absurdism with a message and it is a message that I think will remain relevant for a long time to come.

From: Stan Ruttenberg, Boulder, Colorado
But why Mahler? What is it in his music that appeals to our time? Are we reading too much into his scores?
No! Mahler's music is so indiviualistic that it will cotinue to appeal to those listeners who really WANT TO LISTEN. I have been listening to Mahler for 63 years and never find that it does not say something new.

Where has Brahms gone?
A famous music commentator always wrote, "Brahms, Run for the nearest Exit." Brahms continues to speak in terms of "absolute" music, easy to listen to, raises goosebumps in a stirring performance, but generally does nothing for the mind. There are some exceptions, e.g., the Tragic Overture.

Why is Bruckner eclipsed?
Hard to play "right," and requires the listener to set the internal clock at half speed. Then the music flows like a song of nature. Denver Symphony (now Colorado Symphony) under deLogu playe several Bruckner's to nearly full houses with roaring approval. This coming summer program by the Colorado Music Fesrtival in Boulder will open with Bruckner 5, a daring program. We'll see how the audience reacts.

And who's next? Which composer will tell us what the 21st century means, when Mahler no longer applies?
BIG QUESTION! But Mahler will "never no longer apply."

From: David A. Pearl
It may be that to say that Mahler speaks to our time is to understate his appeal. He was discovered here some time before the 60's - one need only think of Kathleen Ferrier or Barbirolli. And in a wider context, listeners have often convinced themselves that he must have either (a) anticipated the First War or (b) foreseen the fascist second. He has, therefore, spoken to many who have stayed the course with him since ... well, really, since the works were written.

Part of the reason is the accessibility of the music, pre-modern and rooted in the nineteenth century. His skill in taking well known forms and transforming them, indeed turning them inside out, enables the listener to retain continuity with the familiar past. The musical wrecking of a military march or cafe waltz is highly accessible, especially when it is done with such wit and skill. I suspect that the conservatism of the music (which runs alongside its radical newness) is a large part of the constant rediscovery of Mahler. There is a a wealth of melody and tune and the music is animated by the strongest personal manifesto. Mahler's music, in retrospect, was always going to reach out to the 20th century in a way that other great composers could not quite achieve.

Will the appeal fade? Possibly not. Has Mozart? A composer whose works have dominated for so long might by now have established his claim to musical immortality.

From: Stephen Cviic
I have been listening to and loving Mahler ever since I was a teenager, and his music has always done something special for me. As I get older, I find that as well as continuing to be impressed by the emotional power of the music, I'm also more aware of the sheer skill he employs in creating his orchestral texture, and in his dramatic skills in identifying with the listener and judging the ebb and flow of climaxes and lulls. There are astonishing moments, such as the sudden unexpected burst of sound at the end of the third movement of the fourth symphony, and (my personal favourite) the climax of the last movement of the ninth, when the strings play a fortissimo descending figure in unison, before resolving into an enormous "exhalation" of horn and lower strings.
 I'm aware that there are people who don't like Mahler, and I think that's quite healthy. I can see that for some, the emotionalism is too overt and "schmaltzy", the scale of the works too overblown, the concerns maybe too morbid.
 But I suppose that's what I love about Mahler, that his emotionalism is so unembarrassed. He simply isn't ashamed to let it all hang out; he isn't trying to be cool or hard; he isn't pretending to be objective or to lack self-pity; he doesn't rein himself in because he's afraid people will call him self-indulgent. I also think the rapid shifts of mood in his music are more true to human experience than straightforward bursts of triumph or disaster. For that reason, the finale of the sixth symphony is not my favourite, as I find it a bit too much. The scherzo of the fifth, and the first movement of the fourth, have a constant interplay of light and shade. Perhaps that’s where he's at his best

From: Matthew Edwards, Surrey
There are certainly aspects of Mahler that sit well with our age - the sheer diversity of moods was unpalatable to an earlier generation, but the juxtapositions in Mahler's music are now something that we can easily accept, and even cherish. And we can revel in the sheer brilliance of the orchestral writing thanks to hi-fi.
But doesn't it come down in the end to the fact that this is simply great music which, for various reasons (including originality and difficulty of execution), audiences were late to discover? Not everyone likes Mahler of course, but great music wins through, regardless of the biographical details (with which our age is surely overly obsessed) and subjective matters of "taste". At some point Mahler may not be as "fashionable" as he is now, but like Beethoven, the music will undoubtedly continue to provoke and enthral us. (And let's not forget that he also wrote good tunes....).

From: Derek Robinson
What was it Vaughan Williams said about Mahler? "A very tolerable imitation of a composer." How prescient, how true! Why are we all supposed to be interested in Mahler's introverted, psychotic naval-gazing? He's not fit to be mentioned in the same breath as such symphonic giants as Sibelius and Nielsen, whose conceerns were humanistic, for the whole world!

From: Robert Nowell
In my teens (I was born in 1931) actually hearing Mahler was a rare privilege. (Come to that, we weren't allowed to hear any Schoenberg or Webern or Berg either.) Fortunately my father had the 78 records of Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth Symphony recorded by Bruno Walter in Vienna just before the Anschluss. The only trouble was that late 1930s recording technology meant there had to be a slight overlap between one side and the next. Then, either in the very late 1940s or the early 1950s, I remember the occasion when we were actually allowed to hear Mahler's 8th.

Bruckner was equally badly served. The first Bruckner symphony I heard was no 7 at the 1948 Edinburgh Festival.

One thing I always find slightly distressing is that Richard Strauss was born only four years later than Gustav Mahler, in 1964, yet lived on until 1949 (I even met him on one occasion in I think 1947, and shook hands with him) while Mahler died in 1911. Musically I think it would have been much better (and much more exciting) if Mahler had lived until 1949 and Strauss had died in 1911.

From: Christopher Smith 
Oh, come on. Mahler is not the interpreter of our times. Nor does he tell us anything about the meaning of life. Except perhaps his own. No, he's just lasciviously, lusciously, romantic. Unlike Beethoven or Brahms, romantic without the rules, and perhaps that's what appeals.

Of course, Debussy is also romantic without the rules. But, he doesn't quite have the sound. People like a Broadway show or an epic film. So that's why Mahler fits the bill: a Broadway show composer of epic proportions. And don't we love it. Oh! that Weltschmerz.

Who's next? Well, how about back to the roots? After Mahler rulelessness, maybe Johann Sebastian Bach will once again become the next big thing. Passion not splurged, but all bound up in the rules - even if he did make them up himself -, peeking out occasionally, but mostly just there, heard but not seen.

From: Leonard Allen, Norfolk 
I first heard Mahler 53 years ago on the evening of my 21st birthday. Right into the deep-end - the 2nd Symphony. I had been given what we used to call a radio-gram. The gramophone bit worked reasonably well, but the radio was unreliable to say the least, mainly because we didn't have a decent aerial.

I switched on, sat back, and entirely by chance, found myself listening, intermitently and through much distortion, to what I thought were the most marvellous sounds on earth. Until then I had thought that Thaikowsky's 4, 5 and 6 and Beethoven''s 9, the ultimate in symphonic experience but here was something so exciting that I held my breath in wonder of what might be coming next.

I can't remember who the performers were, or where it was coming from, or if it was a recording, or live. It was a rare occasion as I now know that the only works of Mahler I might have heardsat that time would have been the occasional song or two. Since then I have not been able to get enough of the music of this genius.

I think that Mahler has a particular appeal for the British. Our outwardly calm surface has hidden a very much more complicated set of characteristics than we appeared to possess. It is the very complexity of Mahler's music - the fact that all human life is there - that has appealed to us. But we are changing. We are now more likely to let it all hang out. Increasingly, we are not afraid to betray out emotions in public. What some people call the 'touchy-feely' society is here. I wonder if this will affect our love of Mahler.

From: Ilan Samson
Each time I hear a Mahler symphony I remember the best statement I heard
about this:
Certainly Mahler had a very tough life, but what is this MY fault... 

From: Steven Cruickshank, Newcastle-upon-Tyne 
Mahler is a tedious bore.  When I was a teenager in the sixties, I thought Mahler to be a great composer.  His music suited my maudlin adolescent gloom.  At that time I thought Schumann was a third-rate sentimentalist and Chopin wrote soppy music for girls.  How stupid one can be when young.

I now rank Mahler with Max Reger - overblown introspection masquerading as profundity.  Mahlerians should grow up.  His music is the musical equivalent of tuberculosis - rot from within.  The pairing of Bruckner with Mahler is incomprehensible to me - Bruckner is a god. Or give me the brilliant wit and exuberance of Jaques Offenbach - a true genius - in preference to the old misery any day.

From: Christin Jiang & Yinglong Tang, Yunnan University, China
Different eras produce great artists to express the spirit of the time. The defining musicians and symphonists change naturally as the social customs and history  progress. However, the genius like Mahler is avant-garde and is not accepted by his contemporaries in his lifetime. As we often say, all great people are lonely. Mahler is not fully recognized and understood by his contemporaries. Mahler has created his own era represented by his repeatedly rehearsed symphonies and valuable manuscripts.

Although Mahler is not widely appreciated in China, we offer some insights into the reason for Mahler's significance in Western music today. We are in the opinion that Mahler is the defining symphonist of our age because he changes the structures of classic symphonies, successfully enlarges the orchestra performance, and expresses the spirit of our time with his music. The development of electric technology nowadays helps with the performance and understanding of Mahler's symphonies.
First, Mahler is great and influential for his achievements in musical forms and structure. Just as Beethoven, who extended and perfected Haydn's tight and unified structure of movements and symphonies; and Brahms, who reconstituted with his fixed musical thinking the classic music structure, which had been broken by Romanticists. Mahler goes a step further to explore how to integrate double tonality into the symphonies with a dominant tone. He creates new music structures while keeping some classical forms. He employs every method, including wide range of instruments and voice, to bring about the monumental greatness of the symphony.
Second, the themes and spirit expressed in Mahler's symphonies represent the subject of our own age. Mahler's symphonies are autobiographies of his mind and spirit at different stages of his life. The themes of Mahler's orchestra are futuristic. The subject of death and associations of sorrow, inevitability, absurdity, and guilt coincides with the themes of the works today and the subject of our world at the turn of 21st century. This also explains Mahler's great genius of foreseeing the future and remaining obscure at his time. He is pious in objectifying the conflicts of his time into picturesque detail. He suffers from homeless Diaspora for his three-fold identities: as a Bohemian in Austria, an Austrian in Germany, and a Jew in the world. He expresses his unique experiences and conflicts in his symphonies in multiple ways, which appeal to today's globalization and multiculturalism.
Significant as Mahler is, he is not much discussed in China. China's education system of Western music is based on Vienna Classicism and the following Romanticism. Beethoven and Tchaikovsky are much more touted. Usually people just know that he uses Chinese poems in translation in his works.
Mahler's popularity may also be attributed to the development of electronic technology and his rediscovery in the 21st century. The developed electronic technology makes it easier to listen to and understand Mahler's multiple tonality and large-scale performances. We have two ways of theoretical analysis in the study of ancient Chinese literature: to read into the classical works or to read out of them. To read into them is to interpret their meaning in our own words, and to read out of them is to support our own viewpoints with quotations from the classical works. It is possible that we are putting too much of our own ideas into Mahler's symphony without finding enough evidences from the work itself in rediscovering Mahler in the 21st century.

From: Peter Marks, Manchester
Mahler's music speaks straight to the heart and soul in a way that other music simply does not. That does not mean to say that music from other composers cannot capture our emotions or imagination but with Mahler it is the raw feelings that are being communicated primarily rather than musical form (which is nonetheless adhered to).

In a Mahler score the whole breadth of human emotions can be felt - excitement, exhilaration, sadness, innocence, humour, sarcasm (perhaps this is why the British love his music so much), tragedy, grotesquerie (the list goes on).

These emotions are all relevant to current times and we can all identify with these. There is also something grittily real about his music and cynical (sarcasm and the grotesque) that makes the scores enduring when other music can become cliched.

Perhaps more than anything the symphonies in particular represent the pinnacle of what can be achieved in terms of sonority with an orchestra. Maybe we just get a thrill simply from hearing all the sound worlds created by such huge forces (and indeed seeing them on stage).

I, personally, will never tire of these scores and can listen quite happily to at least snippets of Mahler every day while there are others who could not contemplate such a thing. And, of course, endless different interpretations of the scores make for potentially new experiences each time you listen.

From: Chris Rouse
Why have we forgotten Brahms? Err, sorry. Bernard Haitink been conducting the LSO in Brahms symphonies as part of his Jubilee in London this month.

What on earth do you mean, why have we forgotten Bruckner? Who has? Titner, Goodall, Wand, Horenstein and Barbirolli still sell well on disc, thank you, even posthumously. There may be a shortage of truly great living conductors, but Messrs Rattle and Harnoncourt are doing fine in Bruckner, in case you had not noticed.  
 
From: Salem
I'm a teacher from the Department of English Language and Literature at Kuwait University. Surprised by your Mahler argument, I believe the debate should've been entitled 'Why Wagner?' instead.

A couple of years ago, I presented a free joint lecture at the University with a British colleague on Wagner and Mahler - he chose the latter. I noticed not only after but also during the lecture that the hearers were stunned by 'Tristan', whereas Mahler left them virtually cold and bored. The students connected more with the German than the Austrian composer, perhaps partly because I mentioned Eliot's allusions to 'Tristan', 'Gotterdammerung' and 'Parsifal' in 'The Waste Land', their favourite modern poem, during the public lecture and (always) in the classroom (where I also never fail to allude to Wagner in Joyce's 'Ulysses', their favourite modern novel). For them, Wagner's personality and art are more gigantic than Mahler's: the difference is like that between Joyce (Eliot or Pound) and Woolf (D.H. Lawrence or Forster).

I'm sure the Kuwaitis prefer 'The Ride of the Valkyries' to Mahler's Adagietto from his 5th Symphony. And I would happily give up Mahler's symphonies for any symphonic work from Wagner's operas, be it an overture or a prelude. But, this being only one Middle Easterner's opinion, I wonder what others from the region I come from think. 

From: Rob Weaver
I'm 17 and I'm a student. As a first violinist, I think playing Mahler is amazing. I play in an orchestra which learns a mahler symphony in just a weekend, and performs it on the Sunday. We do one a year.
I find I really have to prepare mentally before hand, because the symphonies are such an emotional journey. I feel I'm in heaven when I play, there is nothing better! My dream is to conduct it, so I can really interpret it the way I want. Mahler enables conductors to put so much of their own interpretation into the music, more than any other.

From: Chris Overton
Playing the cowbells part 'im fern' - luxury! In a recent Mahler 8 concert with Sinfonia in Edinburgh I chose to play the Tam-Tam. Eleven notes in the whole gig, as I remember - spread through several movements. Good feeling being in at the end though!

From: Richard Evans
I'm saddened that many listening may take the panel's comments as gospel. Anyone who thinks Brucker represents only "pure music" has clearly never understood the 7th, 8th or 9th symphonies - the 8th and 9th in particular radiate with tensions and neuroses that can only be described as Mahlerian.
The original version of the 8th sounds incredibly disturbing in its insecurity - the panel should listen to it before discussing Brucker in relation to Mahler (all IMHO as course!)

From: Donald Knox Richards
Sir Georg Solti said,
" As a conductor and musician, I have had the privilege, for more than 50 years, to explore in depth the major works of Gustav Mahler. There can be few composers whose complex personality is so comprehensively reflected in their music, whether it can be on the huge scale of the symphonies or in the intimacy of the songs. The pleasure for me is renewed every time I take one of his scores and start again the voyage of discovery into the life of this outstanding composer"