Mahler and me

Today, May 18th, is precisely 100 years to the day since Gustav Mahler breathed his last.  This has chiefly been commemorated by musos through smart-arse Facebook statuses, something that I have wholeheartedly participated in. Top marks appear to have been taken by my former conducting teacher and doyen of Sunday-cricket , Levon Parikian (who maintains a superb blog, Runny Thoughts) for numerous witty gems.

But I'd like to talk seriously for a bit, if I may. I am, unashamedly, a Mahlerian. The core of his music contains a philosophy I agree with wholeheartedly (whilst still being just about able to appreciate why unenlightened people do not share my passion).  For a start, Mahler's famous exchange with Sibelius (whom I equally admire) about the symphony 'being like the world' is at the heart of his conception of music, their very reason for existence. His symphonies don't last for an hour and a half or more just because they can, it's because they need such a time-scale in order to contain the hugely important and transcendent ideas he is trying to articulate. A Mahler symphony really is a world of its own, and possesses both an 'architectural' quality of form and an emotional range that journeys over a huge expanse of space.  Interestingly, the equally lengthy symphonies of Anton Bruckner (who taught Mahler for a time) work in a completely different way, unfolding a concentrated nucleus gradually within a tight structural and colouristic scheme, rather than exploiting rapid changes from one particular extreme to the other as we are propelled through so many landscapes.

This last characteristic of Mahler's writing has been the cause of criticism, apparently too reliant on over-the-top, flashily orchestrated histrionics and 'ironic' symbolism within the musical material.  My response is that; firstly, every note of his output is carefully crafted and coloured with exceptionally skillful deployment of the instrumental or vocal resources used; and secondly, Mahler's heart-on-sleeve approach to - well, everything in his music - is both provider of the individuality in his voice and the reason he is able to compare to the pantheon of great composers, for to play or listen to his music is to be utterly drawn into something that cannot help but have a compelling and profound effect, and it is the greatest music which creates the greatest effect. The hammer blows in the Sixth Symphony are not cheap film-music clichés, nor are they merely colouristic effects like the wind and thunder machines in Strauss' Alpine Symphony, they are the actual force the composer wished to depict, the mighty blows of fate striking down defenceless mortals.

I am a little uncertain as to when I first heard, and then really fell under the spell of, Mahler. I knew the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony - probably the piece most people hear first - from when I was a teenager, but it was later before I became aware of the youthful exuberance and sweeping turbulence contained in the First Symphony, the Titan.  Later still I discovered the rest of the Fifth, and then in my first year at university ULSO, the intercollegiate orchestra which I would soon join, played the Third, a concert I shall never forget. Aside from the sheer length of the work, I was completely possessed by the music, music that was more epic and more encompassing of everything than any piece I had heard before. I was lucky enough to hear the Third live again at last year's Proms, and relived everything I had felt the first time - from the doom-laden opening march, to the night-world of the fourth movement, the chorus of angels in the fifth and the almost unbearable depiction of complete resolution in the finale. But I think my most compelling Mahler experience was earlier in that year, when ULSO performed the Sixth in Cadogan Hall. Even after the read-through there was a feeling that we had been possessed by some strange dream, that we had lived the sound that was being lifted from the page. There is a moment in the finale where the turbulence suddenly subsides and the violins, harp and celeste leap up an octave out of the storm.  It is as if one is suddenly lifted into the night sky and transported to a hillside under the stars, with cowbells and a solo horn glinting in the distance. I cannot think of any other composer who can paint so vivid a picture without the slightest mention of any actual programme in the score. 

Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to take part in a performance of the Ninth Symphony, so like and yet so unlike any of the others.  There was over a minute of silence after the last, faltering note in my section had died, the culmination (nearly) of not only eighty minutes of music, but a lifetime of vision as lofty as the mountains over the Attersee.