I was listening to a recording of Jascha Horenstein conducting Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 on Henry Fogel’s “Collectors’ Corner” last night on KWAX. Frequently identified as the “Symphony of a Thousand,” this is Mahler’s grandest statement, as if he took the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, dialed it up to 11, and stretched it more or less to 90 minutes. It is hair-raisingly thrilling.
“Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound,” Mahler wrote, in his characteristically overheated way. “There are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving.”
All the same, a man needs his sleep, and 11:00 (EDT) is already past my bedtime, especially if I want to do some reading. So I rose from my chair to turn out the lights and shut off my internet radio, when what did I notice on one of the speakers, but a spider with its legs splayed, unmistakably riding the grandiose waves of the music.
I couldn’t take that away from him. So I went back and sat down until the end of the first movement (about 25 minutes in duration).
I was reminded of Helen Keller, deaf and blind since she was a toddler, who experienced the thrill of Beethoven’s 9th purely through the vibrations of her radio speaker.
I waited until the end of the first movement to turn off the radio. I figured I’d allow the little guy his moment of ecstasy.
I’m not sure what I believe, exactly, but if I’m ever reincarnated, I hope someone will do as much for me.
I don’t care how jaded you are, there really is nothing like Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony. You can be sitting there, judging this, nitpicking that, and then all at once, the world vanishes, and it’s like you’re suspended in the middle of one of those enormous 19th century canvases. The awe inspired by chorus, organ, and orchestra in the work’s final moments is transformational and overwhelming.
I caught it yesterday afternoon with The Philadelphia Orchestra, since my weekend is jam-packed. Was it not my benchmark “Resurrection” Symphony? Who knows? Who cares? I’m just thankful to have heard it and that I was able to pull myself together enough to be able to drive home.
With soprano Ying Fang, mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato, music director Yannick Nézet-Séguin and the Philadelphia Symphonic Choir. Two more performances at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts this weekend, tonight at 8:00 and Sunday at 2:00. Build in time to emotionally center yourself afterwards.
As Oscar Wilde memorably observed, “… There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.”
Gustav Mahler’s unprecedentedly ambitious – and loud – masterworks caused his contemporaries to sit up and take notice. Reactions ranged from exaltation to confusion to outright hostility, and not necessarily in that order. Of course Mahler got the last laugh. Despite the high cost of presenting his symphonies, they are now more prevalent on concert programs than ever before. And the halls are packed.
You haven’t really made it until you are widely caricatured. You’ll find more examples by following the link below. Some of the portraits are affectionate; some are mean-spirited. Either way, it’s clear that Mahler was being talked about.
Charles Ives was the most nostalgic of avant-gardists. For the most part laboring at his music in isolation – in the evenings and on weekends, while earning his bread as an insurance executive – he managed to prognosticate, or at any rate, arrive independently, at some of the major developments of the 20th century. Some may perceive his grinding harmonies and clashing meters as a kind of temple of Moloch, on the altar of which beauty is sacrificed for effect. As Ives himself once remarked, “Are my ears on wrong?” But consider, the straw for his bricks was harvested from the music of the world around him, especially that recollected from his boyhood in Connecticut.
Ives could construct breathtaking musical edifices from the most diverse materials. Forget Moloch. Perhaps a better parallel would be the Tower of Babel. Only in Ives’ case, once the language becomes confused it actually seems to enliven his creative impulse. Consonance and dissonance are of no consequence to the composer. He listens past the cacophony to draw his energy from powerful associations. And he continued right on building, always grasping for the stars.
I find it fascinating that Gustav Mahler took an interest in Ives’ Symphony No. 3. Mahler discovered a copy of the score on his final visit to Manhattan as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1911, and presumably it was still in his possession at the time of his death later that year. In the 1950s, an aged percussionist recollected playing the bell-part in a read-through of the work under Mahler’s baton in Munich. Did it happen? Mahler’s score has never come to light. Ives claimed Mahler took it with the intention of giving the work its premiere. Unfortunately, Mahler died (at 50) before he was able to do anything about it. It’s mind-bending to contemplate the one-time music director of the Vienna State Opera (and by extension the Vienna Philharmonic) performing Ives in 1911. When worlds collide!
But really, were the artists so very different? Mahler famously stated (to Sibelius), “The symphony must be like the world: it must embrace everything!” Mahler demonstrated this by filling his symphonies with fondly recollected folk material, rustic and courtly dances, children’s songs, hymns, and klezmer riffs. Ives leaned into hymns, patriotic marches, parlor songs, and quotations from the core classical repertoire he loved. Their music may have come out completely different, but both composers yearned to express, through these everyday human associations, universal truths that often reached beyond our terrestrial concerns.
Ives heard Mahler conduct in New York, but as he became more deeply involved in composition, he largely stopped going to concerts of other composers’ music. He found that it interfered with his recall of ideas in development, when he was still carrying them around inside his head. He said he could listen to Beethoven or Brahms, any of the music he grew up with, and it wouldn’t be an issue. But taking in new music could muddy his thoughts. Whether or not he ever heard any of Mahler’s symphonies, I do not know.
In the event, like most of Ives’ output, his Symphony No. 3 was not performed until years after it was written. Composed in 1908-10, it was finally given its premiere (in New York, under Lou Harrison) in 1946. The next year, it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Ives passed along half the prize money to Harrison and commented gruffly, “Prizes are for boys, and I’m all grown up.”
Ives may come across as something of a tinkerer, and he often portrayed himself as such, but like the greatest modernists, he had mastered the basics of his craft. His studies with Horatio Parker at Yale gave him a sound foundation in the rules of composition. Just as Picasso or Schoenberg demonstrated that they had mastered traditional forms before blazing their own trails, Ives was capable of writing within convention. But he was always irrepressibly Ives. He was always chafing and often pushing, and you just know Professor Parker had his hands full.
Ives, the cranky Yankee, often got his back up against the musically complacent, whom he derided in his writings as “Rollo” – a named borrow from a popular children’s book character in the decades preceding the American Civil War.
He also played baseball for Yale. Whether on the field or in his study, throughout his career, he kept right on swinging for the fences.
Remembering Charles Ives, with admiration, on the 150th anniversary of his birth!
The Symphony No. 3, subtitled “The Camp Meeting,” is actually one of Ives’ most immediately accessible scores. The three movements: “Old Folks Gatherin’,” “Children’s Day,” and “Communion.”
For Ives at his cumulatively cacophonous best, try “The Fourth of July.” No composer understood as well the holiday from a boy’s perspective!
I remember the first time I encountered the music of Anton Bruckner. It was in the middle of the night in an attic bedroom in Easton, Pennsylvania.
While growing up in Easton in the 1970s and ‘80s, I always regarded it as a small town. Technically, it’s classified as a city, the third largest in the Lehigh Valley, but the downtown is not all that large and most of the population was distributed across what was then several semi-rural townships. A drifting snow would be enough to close the schools for days.
Easton is about 70 miles outside Philadelphia. In the car, WFLN, Philadelphia’s 24-hour classical music station, when it still existed, would sometimes cut in and out, depending on where you were driving. But I always had the radio antennae in the house trained to pick up 95.7 FM. And as a teenager, my brain was absorbent enough that I internalized most of the standard repertoire.
Back in the day, WFLN used to broadcast its overnights ad-free. So other than the distinctive voice of Henry Varlack, it was non-stop music from midnight to 6 a.m. This made it easy to sleep with the radio on, and I did so out of habit in those days, my consciousness rising to the surface now and again to take note of the music.
On one of those occasions, I emerged right in the middle of an insinuating, sinister scherzo. It made such an impression that I hung around to hear the back-announcement: Bruckner’s Symphony No. 9.
The word “scherzo” literally means “joke.” In Bruckner, there are no jokes. The early symphonies may flirt with folksy ländler. But once Bruckner knows what he’s about, these are transmogrified into supernatural gallops across moonless skies, Odin leading his warrior band in the Wild Hunt. The symphonies are often compared to “cathedrals in sound.” Bruckner was an organist; once you know that, it’s easy to imagine his structures and textures elucidated on the King of Instruments. But there is nothing sacred about the scherzos.
From that first encounter, I’ve always been fond of them. So ferocious can these become, so terrible in their sublimity, that it’s hard to associate them with the man who, on the one hand, aspired to convey the ineffable in his heavenly adagios, and on the other, could be so malleable as to allow anyone to make changes to “improve” his music. He was almost perversely humble. Because of this, there are multiple Bruckner performance traditions, with some conductors and scholars divided between the Haas and Nowak editions and others groping toward elusive Brucker urtexts.
For the Bruckner faithful, no matter how it’s been processed, the music transcends human tampering. With its hypnotic repeating cells, its punctuating silences, its spiritual depth, and its breathtaking grandeur, Bruckner’s art communicates with an unwavering clarity. But as with his instrument of choice, there’s always a lot going on behind the scenes and beneath the surface.
Still, I’m aware not everyone is a convert. I think wryly back on Simon Roberts, who stocked and held court in the basement of Nathan Muchnick’s (a Philadelphia audio store with a superb classical music compact disc selection), and his withering dismissal of “deranged Bruckner fanatics,” which I recall now, even decades after he uttered it.
Gustav Mahler, who took lessons with Bruckner at the Vienna Conservatory and considered him his precursor and friend, described him as “half simpleton, half God.”
Those who love Mahler don’t necessarily feel the same way about Bruckner, and vice versa. So if Grandpa loves his cycle of Bernstein Mahler symphonies (Sony or DG), don’t expect him to turn handsprings for your generous gift of Eugen Jochum’s Bruckner set (EMI or DG). Unless Grandpa happens to be me. I love all these recordings!
I can’t believe that today marks the 200th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth. I remember when 200 years ago meant powdered wigs.
In any case, thank you, WFLN, God rest Henry Varlack, and happy bicentennial, Anton Bruckner!
Bruno Walter conducts Bruckner’s 9th (my first Bruckner recording). The scherzo begins about 24 minutes in.
