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Music open thread: Mahler symphony cycle order [1]
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Date: 2023-07-17
Under the Nazi regime, all of Gustav Mahler’s music was labeled “degenerate” (entartete Musik) and banned, as well as that of all Jewish composers. Understandably, the more sincere party members were a little puzzled. Abaigh McKee writes for ORT:
This caused confusion even within the Nazi Party because though the ideology argued that works were banned on the basis of their inherent ‘degeneracy,’ the real issue was not with the work of art itself but with the race or ethnicity of its creator. People could not necessarily tell from listening to music [that it was degenerate.]
I would be hard-pressed to find anything degenerate in the always elegant Mendelssohn. Mahler, on the other hand, thought a symphony should embrace the world, and the world does encompass some rather degenerate stuff.
Nevertheless, from 1942 to 1945, neither Mahler nor Mendelssohn were heard in Germany or Austria. After the war, Mahler’s music fell into oblivion. In the 1960s, Leonard Bernstein took credit for the Mahler revival, though there were other Jewish musicians, like Aaron Copland, helping in the effort.
And now, despite the length of his symphonies (No. 3 in D minor is in the Guinness Book of World Records), Mahler’s music is heard more often in concerts in America than Bruckner’s music.
One time I traveled to Cleveland to hear the Cleveland Orchestra play Bruckner’s Seventh. But for whatever reason, they decided to substitute Mahler’s Ninth. Okay, I came all this way, might as well stay for the concert even though it’s not the concert I bought a ticket for.
In the recent movie Tár, Cate Blanchett stars as Lydia Tár, a prestigious conductor about to complete a Mahler symphony cycle. The crowning glory of the cycle is to be a live recording of the Symphony No. 5, said to be in C-sharp minor. Leaving the Fifth for last strikes me as rather odd.
It’s not a rule that you have to go in numerical order. It’s not required that you have to end with the Tenth, left more incomplete than Bruckner’s Ninth. Though the completions of Mahler’s Tenth are not subjected to the same level as arbitrary skepticism as those of Bruckner’s Ninth.
Like, he left all this stuff written out that’s just missing a few details, but we’re supposed to reject it all because someone else filled in an implied doubling or added staccato dots on the basis of analogy? Give me a break. We do that with Beethoven and Brahms and all the others.
Bernstein did limit his performances of Mahler’s Tenth to the opening Adagio that Mahler did leave almost complete. So, if you’re like Bernstein, do you end a cycle with the Ninth? I don’t know, it’s not the kind of triumphant conclusion that I’d want for a cycle.
The Seventh ends in a more conventionally triumphant way, but it’s kind of obscure compared to Mahler’s other works. No. 1 in D major has the most unequivocally triumphant conclusion, but do you really want to end a cycle with the very first symphony?
The conclusion of the Fifth is joyous but not exactly triumphant. Still, maybe it is the best to end the cycle on, maybe more so if the sequence thus far has been something like 1, 9, 2, 8, 3, 7, 4, 6.
For practical considerations, it might be best to end the cycle with No. 8 in E-flat major, which requires a larger choir and a larger orchestra than No. 2 in C minor.
The Eighth is sometimes called “the Symphony of a Thousand.” The problem with the Eighth is that its second part rambles so much that the victory of the conclusion feels unearned.
In A Guide to the Symphony, edited by Robert Layton, Philip Coad suggests that the last ten minutes or so of the Mahler Eighth sound more convincing as an excerpt than listening to the whole symphony in one sitting.
But if the goal of a cycle is a boxed set, then maybe the order doesn’t matter, as listeners can choose whatever order they like if they choose to go through the whole set in consecutive listening sessions.
The open thread questions: What is the optimal order for a Mahler symphony cycle? Should Das Lied von der Erde be included?
Bonus question: Keeping in mind that she was saving the Fifth for last, what order do you think Lydia Tár went in?
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