Mulling Over Mahler

August 22, 2012 at 12:38 AM

Most of my practice time lately has been spent prepping the forty-odd-page viola part to Mahler 6. I've listened to the piece once a day since I learned I'd be playing it, and I'm now wrestling with a very basic question: do I, or do I not, like this music? I listen again and again, trying to discern some kind of narrative in this ninety-minute mass.

Okay, kids. Gather round.

The first movement begins with a march. It seems to presage the Great War with its grandiose character of pomp, brass, and militaristic pageantry. The grandiosity, however, intimidates more than it inspires. The melodies seep a kind of brave, romantic defiance. They are beautiful at first listen, unnerving at second, and terrifying by twentieth. A strange, listless chorale comes and goes. After five long minutes, just when the thirst for musical violence finally seems to have been quenched, the brutal opening is...repeated. And not just partially so: it is completely, totally, turn-the-score-back-to-the-beginning repeated, with all the strength and savagery of the first go-through. Eventually, a full ten minutes after starting off, we finally move on, but even then the same vicious mood persists for quite a while. After a long protest the music slides into a kind of dreamy moonscape, lit by high tremolo, soft woodwinds, magical celesta. But the dream's seductive beauty never feels quite right; the memory of that march is always lurking. When the dreamer is awoken, abruptly and without mercy, the militaristic sounds returns, apparently inescapable, inevitable. Things come to a terrifying head at 16:50, when one of the majestic primary themes is twisted in the grandest, most terrifying manner imaginable. As the movement comes to a close, the moods wildly seesaw between heavenly and hellish, wrapping up with a manic, wild-eyed sprint to the end.

At this point, twenty-five minutes into the symphony, an emotional respite would be more than welcome. (Hint, hint, Mr. Mahler.) Chances are, however, you're not getting one; many conductors opt to move on to the weighty mid-tempo scherzo instead. (I questioned this decision when I first listened to this piece. Surely the slow movement should be put here, I thought, so I can take a breather from that massive introduction! But then when I found out - spoiler alert! - that the last movement was even bigger than the first, I quickly changed my mind.) At first glance the score looks relatively simple...until you realize that every line contains a new rhythmic pitfall with the capability to derail your whole performance. The emphasis hops from first beats to third beats; fourth beats are sprinkled throughout; the tempo yanks back and forth. The only way I've found to keep it all halfaight is by screaming "ONE!!! two three ONE!!! two three" in my head in an attempt to ignore that frequently off-balance third (or fourth) beat. Mahler's wife Alma famously compared the rhythm of this movement to children playing. As you listen, the metaphor seems apt, even charming...until the orchestra's bows begin playing a spooky col legno passage, conjuring up the image of little clattering skeletons.

Well, you might say. Bleak ambiguity only goes so far. Things have to start feeling a little more optimistic in the third movement (at 39:30). Right? Wrong. Here we get a theme that is neither major nor minor, neither happy nor sad, neither hopeless nor hopeful, neither yearning nor satisfied...neither black nor white. The only indisputable thing about it is that it is achingly, impossibly beautiful.

So. Apparently Mahler was waiting until the last movement - roughly an hour into the symphony - to express the inevitable heroism, certitude, catharsis, that we've come to expect from our monumental symphonic music post-Beethoven.

...Right?

It certainly seems that way when, at the beginning of the final movement, an emphatic line rises from a misty tremolo (55:00). The stage seems set for a grand resolution indeed. However, before long we realize there will be no straightforward Beethovenian triumph. Instead we find ourselves skidding down the rails on a fast, frantic, frenetic ride, clearly uncontrollable (59:00). This is music determined to charge the gates of hell...regardless of the futility of the task.

Then the terrifying militaristic percussion from the first movement comes back...as well as the creepy celesta-laced dreamscapes. There are some uncomfortable moments of deja vu. We've tread a lot of water in the past ninety minutes, but you have to wonder: have we really gotten anywhere?

Then, if you were delusional enough to think you had any idea where this was all going, a percussionist raises a person-sized hammer above their head, and you realize, well, clearly all bets are off. At this point absolutely anything could happen and it wouldn't be surprising.

In case you haven't heard how Mahler 6 wraps up, I'll save you the surprise and stop there. Next time you have ninety minutes to spare, look it up. Just make sure you're not suicidal at the time.

I've read so many conflicting opinions about this symphony. Some feel it's Mahler's masterpiece. Others see it as seriously flawed: maybe fatally so. Some find it to be fatally flawed...and yet cite it as their favorite anyway. It is said that Mahler cried at the first rehearsals for it, unable to come to terms with what he'd unleashed. Alma alleged that the hammer blows prophesied the catastrophes that would later shake their marriage. Heck, even now, a hundred plus years after its composition, we can't even agree about something as fundamental as what order to put the movements in. I imagine I'll get a dozen comments on this post sharply disagreeing with my opinions, and with everybody else's. Because that's just the kind of conflicted reaction this massive music seems to engender.

Personally, I go from loving it to loathing it back to loving it again...sometimes within the span of a few measures. Nothing about it is clear. Everything is difficult. A forceful ambiguity reigns supreme. Mahler assembles us in the concert hall, asks humanity's most important questions, raises an envelope, announces all the answers are within, takes out a sharpened knife, carefully slits open the flap...

And then throws the envelope into a raging bonfire.

What to think?

***

Yesterday I said to my mother, impulsively, "I haven't felt well lately."

"In what way?" she asked.

"Mm," I said.

"How don't you feel well?" she pressed.

I thought for a moment. "I don't know," I said, and I didn't. I wished I hadn't even mentioned it.

A moment passed.

"Maybe it's all the Mahler I've been playing," I finally said.

I'd said it as a joke. But as soon as the words were out, I realized they had an uncomfortable ring of truth to them, and I frowned.

I thought she'd laugh at me, but she didn't. "That could very well be," she said, and we both fell quiet for a while.

From Emily Grossman
Posted on August 22, 2012 at 2:15 AM

Love this! Such a perfect description...

PS If I have 90 minutes to spare I will listen to Verdi's Requiem.

From Laurie Niles
Posted on August 22, 2012 at 5:31 AM

It's a haunting symphony, and yes it will haunt YOU and get under your skin. Particularly that seductive slow movement can lead one to the edge. Once, when I was feeling as you are now, I asked a critic friend, "How can you STAND it, all the concerts you go to, art you see?" He had no idea what I was talking about, it did not creep under his skin and try to sneak into his soul, as it does when you get so deep in it!

From jean dubuisson
Posted on August 22, 2012 at 8:45 AM

Great piece Emily (I mean your blog post).

From Scott Slapin
Posted on August 22, 2012 at 12:42 PM

I did a tour of South America (with the Sao Paulo State Symphony), and we played Mahler 6 several times. While I like listening to earlier Mahler, for me some of his quirks (that I don't really like) took over as he got older and are present in the 6th Symphony.

I enjoyed playing it though. It's a well-written part and keeps you busy. (I guess it's the opposite of Strauss' Salome. I'll listen to that any day of the week, but I get a headache just thinking about having to play it!)

From Tom Holzman
Posted on August 22, 2012 at 5:36 PM

Emily - if you send me an email through v.com, I will return it with something that I think will amuse you.

Tom Holzman

From Lisa Van Sickle
Posted on August 22, 2012 at 7:48 PM

Mahler could have used a good editor. Any of his symphonies, pared down to about 45 minutes, would be pretty darn good. Maybe even an hour for a couple. I tend to have the reaction, "Oh come on, Gustav, lighten up and get over yourself a little!"

From Laurie Niles
Posted on August 22, 2012 at 8:32 PM

Another thing, the opposite of love isn't hate, those are just two sides of the same coin. The opposite of love is apathy!

From Tom Holzman
Posted on August 23, 2012 at 1:28 AM

Lisa - if he had done what you want, he would not have been Mahler. I don't particularly like his music, but I do appreciate/understand (?) his personality as it comes through his music. Everything is a drawn-out, agonizing life and death struggle.

From Emily Hogstad
Posted on August 23, 2012 at 3:09 PM

Tom, I'll write you...

I also found out something very interesting the other day. We ALL know that Mahler was an "'ascetic'; a morbid and tormented neurotic; a despairing and sickly man for whom all pleasures were suspect; and a man whose constant overwork undermined an already weak physical constitution"...right? I mean, who would Mahler be if not for that? Someone who wrote all those tortured symphonies HAD to be like that, right?

Maybe not. The description above comes from the Wikipedia page on The Alma Problem, and it is definitely worth a read. I guess we don't know a tremendous amount about Mahler other than what came through his wife. And she created myths for her own purposes...

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Mulling Over Mahler

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