Music Chat: Stupid Musicology Wrecks Mahler's First Symphony
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- Опубликовано: 29 июл 2020
- Here's a particularly telling example of musicology run amok--the ridiculous decision in the latest critical edition of Mahler's First Symphony to assign the iconic, muted double bass solo at the start of the third movement Funeral March to the entire section, thereby ruining Mahler's intended effect. How could this happen? Let's explore this lamentable phenomenon.
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"A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it." - Thomas Beecham
Toscanini said musicologists know about everything--except music.
I love this video! 😅 I also have books with “no!” scribbled in my handwriting next to musicological nonsense.
This must be the most informative and entertaining classical music channel on RUclips. Brilliant demolition!
I think that the fiddle solo in Scheherazade should be for the full 1st fiddle section. Rimsky didn't have a clue. Can I be a musicologist please?
I think that solo should be played by the entire Trombone section rather than the violins. Can I also be a musicologist?
@@mogmason6920 Yes you are now a musicologist. Very well done!!
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 Let's also play the cello theme of the 2nd Brahms piano concerto by the entire brass section in unison fortissimo. I am a musicologist if you could tell
@@nihilistlemon1995 Hello fellow musicologist.
Morning David - thanks for this - great fun. Your argument again proves the point of “context is everything”. Please do a programme on the best Rigoletto!
I am so glad you brought this up and you are spot on about this. I love the otherworldly effect of the solo, which is completely ruined when a full section is playing. I immediately discount performances that do not take this into consideration.
I know...it's just unbelievable. These people have way too much time on their hands.
@@DavesClassicalGuide and Bruno Walter and others must have hear it play under Mahler himself, so he would have known if it would be otherwise
@@hiphurrah1 For sure.
The solo first double bass sounds so.. well.. logical and fittingly creepy and sad. I won’t ever buy any recording that does otherwise. “SOLO der Kontrabaßgruppe, nicht des ersten Kontrabasses”? I mean, where do they get the idea that Mahler would indicate “SOLO” and not really mean solo? (At figure 4 Mahler indicates “Alle” (“everyone”, or, “all”) for the double bass, which, I would think, indicates that what has gone before was for the solo first double bass. I guess.) I sure am no musicologist, but to me it sounds like too much “hineininterpretieren”.
The proof of the pudding in in the eating and the passage in the Alsop recording is so bland and utterly without character. How could she not hear that and reject it? Says something about her as an artist and conductor.
Your longtime spirited and sympathetic advocacy of musical common sense in this and other issues (Bruckner editions, vibrato performance practice, even the "dirtiest secrets") is so much appreciated. As a musicology PhD holder myself (sorry, impossible not to sound like a shameless plug!) I understand the risk of losing sight of the point of the scholarship on which one is working! Unless the point is merely differentiating oneself from the welter of critical theory and counter-theory, of course...
Thank you very much for your kind appraisal. It may not sound like it, but I appreciate the work that scholars are doing very much--it just seems that here, as in music performance itself, there is too much of everything and consequently room for some spirited criticism now and again. I'm glad you agree.
David you are the absolute Number 1 ! Thank you for the entertainment
You are welcome!
Thanks for this really interesting chat. I had never thought about this wonderful mahlerian "verdism"!
I agree completely! It's a bizarre decision in the recent edition, particularly as the sources published during Mahler's lifetime of the (revised) symphony have SOLO in block capital letters, leaving us in no doubt. Love your point about the passage in Rigoletto.
Late to this video but bravo to you. Grateful for the insight on the Verdi influence.
There's no such thing as late. They are there to be viewed whenever.
I must agree with you. Moreover: you're a better comedian than most comedians too. I'm not enough of a musicologist to completely understand every change Mahler made to every one of his symphonies, but I do know that the movement you used as an example proves your point. Moreover: one must understand the context of the composer's experience. But you didn't just hit the nail on the head: you did it with such levity and humour as well. Keep it up, you're an inspiration to TRUE Mahler lovers out there. Thank you so much for this: It made my day!
You're very welcome.
I really appreciate your linkage of Mahler to Italian opera. The andante after the wild intro in the finale of the 1st sounds to me like it could be a fraught tenor aria straight out of Verdi.
I feel like swearing helplessly. So many music-UNlovers in the "scholar" community are making too much damage. Thank you for sharing the insights and the examples.
So many times i run across a video on this channel where by the title i think it's going to be interesting, but kind of niche, but turns out to contain a rather important and universal point.
Thanks for jumping on the barricades, Dave... This kind of BS is simply dangerous and despicable. Yes, critical editions are of course a good thing, if done sincerely and respectful of the sources. But here we see commercial, contemporary interests at work. The switching of the movement order in the 6th is indeed another grotesque example of this. It honestly makes me very sad... Keep them coming!
The worst offender in this is Roger Norrington who actually performed Mahler 9th without vibrato claiming it wasn't used in orchestras until 1940. Has he ever heard any recording before 1940? I listened to it for a few minutes and couldn't believe how anemic and lifeless it sounded. Happily, we have an exception: Deryck Cooke who assembled Mahler's 10th symphony while making it sound like Mahler. There is a wonderful set on Testament that shows the process he went through to work with it.
Do you have a link to that please?
Love the Bruder Martin rendition David. I've heard that solo done out of tune so many times, but that Naxos rendition was nice!
Has Norrington recorded it? I can hardly wait.
He did the Blumine version in Stuttgart. Here's the slow movement. It's not bad.
ruclips.net/video/7-RXW3D-FBQ/видео.html
Well, he needs to record the new critical edition…on period instruments!
@@ThreadBomb was it bloomin' awful?
Had EMI not cut off Norrington's mass of "original practice" works I can imagine a few more disks. Maybe we would have heard the Tchaikovsky ballets, Dvorak's last three symphonies, Elgar's Enigma Variations, Saint-Saens' "organ" symphony, Debussy's La mer, Scheherezade, the Rach Second (both the symphony and the piano concerto!), Daphnis et Chloe, and perhaps the Verdi Requiem with perhaps a Tosca thrown in... Mahler would have surely been part of it. EMI cut it off because it wasn't profitable. Sometimes the free market serves well.
We can wonder what a set of Mahler or Sibelius symphonies by Norrington would have sounded like. Do you care?
I await the next edition, in which we will be informed that, as Mahler never explicitly said that this symphony was NOT to be played by a solo piccolo.................
Sie haben Recht, ich stimme Ihnen voll und ganz zu.
Vielen Dank. Ich schätze ihr Zuschauen.
Somehow I missed this one last year. Mahler 1 has been my favorite symphonic work for over 50 years. My normal reference is Mahler's final 1909 NYPO performance score, which can be found at the NYPO online archives. It has numerous pen & ink notations made by Mahler, as well as a few others by Walter and Bernstein. The score is quite clearly marked "SOLO" for contrabass at the beginning of the 3rd movement. For me, that settles any discussion regarding Mahler's intent.
A printed score with scribblings by the composer is a very useful document indeed. Not to say that Mahler didn't change his mind every so often. But you'd need a good reason to do something different.
@@RModillo Conductors often take a few liberties with the score in shaping their interpretations. Mahler did so himself in many of his concert performances. Some conductors add bass drum to the closing notes of Mahler 1 and some have 2 or more Contrabasses open the 3rd movement. Those are interpretive choices, which is fine if they prefer. That is the conductor's intent, which should not be equated with the composer's intent, particularly if the score specifically indicates otherwise. Not of huge importance really, but worthy of noting the difference.
@@leestamm3187 Well, you seem to be thinking of Mahler as two separate people-- composer and conductor. And that may be somewhat useful. There is a perfect Mahler 1 out there in the void [even though Klemperer would probably disagree], and Mahler the conductor had to figure out how to make it work with the guys he had in front of him that day.
Anyway, I don't think we disagree too much here. The NYPhil score captured and clarified his thinking at least once in his career. If it doesn't contradict other versions floating around out there, it is definitely worth using as a starting point.
Great video !
No idea why Mahler says it's called “Bruder Martin”. Nobody knows it under that name in Germany, here it's definitely called “Bruder Jakob” and according to Wiki it was always called that. However, I did find a version with “Martin” instead, and it's the Croatian one... Since Middle Europe was such a melting pot in those days, it's not surprising that a Slavic version might have been what Mahler heard. Maybe somebody else here knows more?
I'll buy that. I knew it as "Hermano Teodosio," but then those were the words used by Sephardic Jews fleeing the Spanish Inquisition in the late 15th century, before settling in Galicia (Poland) by way of Vilnius, with a stopover or two in Riga and Prague.
I think Mahler's first or second conducting post was in Slovenia, which is a Slavic country and right next to Croatia. So that might be where Mahler picked up the name “Bruder Martin”.
@@ThreadBomb Yep. Laibach, which is now Ljubljana.
That's from german Wikipedia, unfortunately no sources are named there:
"Ein bekanntes Zitat des Liedes findet sich im 3. Satz der 1. Sinfonie von Gustav Mahler. Der Komponist, der als Titel für seine Vorlage „Bruder Martin“ angibt, zitiert das Lied nicht in Dur, sondern in Moll, was dem Stück einen Trauermarsch-artigen Charakter verleiht. Die Transposition nach Moll scheint allerdings entgegen landläufiger Meinung keine Erfindung Mahlers zu sein; vielmehr war dies die im 19. und frühen 20. Jahrhundert verbreitete Fassung in Österreich."
rough english trandlation by me:
"A well known citation of the song [Frère Jacques] is found in the 3rd movement of the 1st symphony of Gustav Mahler. The composer, who indicates "Bruder Martin" as his template, doesn't cite the song in major but in minor, which gives the piece a funeral march type character. The transposition to minor seems to be, against common opinion, not an invention of Mahler; rather this was the more common version of the song during the 19th and 20th century in Austria"
ooh can you do andante-scherzo for mahler's sixth next?
I sorta did, if you look at my vid on Mahler's 6th.
@@DavesClassicalGuide ah i missed that one, i'll check it out! you picked the barbirolli i assume? (j/k)
@@howlingfantods1969 Watch and see...
I have a parallel from another discipline which you may find interesting. In the classical Pilates world, there is some interest in teaching certain "archival" exercises which sometimes have interest and may benefit certain clients, but more often that not there are other exercises in the Pilates system which work better. I took a few workshops with one of Pilates' last protegees who in general didn't have much use for these archival exercises. He said "don't go through Joe's trash. He threw these away for a reason." Maybe there is a similarity here with certain musicologists going through Mahler's trash.
Thank you for sharing that story of yours! It does bring up a very good point. I think the root problem is our fascination/obsession with geniuses: We put brilliant people on pedestals and ascribe quasi godlike status to them(Bach is maybe the foremost example of a composer who gets this kind of treatment). We tend to forget that people like Mahler and Bach, although brilliant, were human as well. They weren’t perfect. They were able to change their minds. And they worked and contended with their compositions.
What does a composer, who is a conductor too? - He tries out. Even if he's not a conductor, he does so. I remember the rehearsals for the first performance of Schnittke's "Faust"-cantata with Rozhdestvensky in Vienna, when Schnittke wanted solo instead of tutti and vice versa, a motiv played on the oboe instead the clarinet aso. Why shouldn't Mahler thought at one point: Let's do this with full contrabasses? Maybe, he scribbled down something about this idea, and afterwards he said (without scribbling): No, solo is better. I mean: If Bruno Walter did it with solo bass, then solo bass is correct. Moreover: like you pointed out - it's the right timbre. The whole movement is a dark grotesque. The well known happy melody turned to minor AND played by a pale instrument in uncomfortable tessitura is a stroke of genius. It's "Verfremdung" (alienation), one can hear the quotation marks. When it's played with the full section, this moment loses it's dark and bitter comedy. Besides - musicologists... I remember a symposion about Schoenberg: One theme was Schoenberg and Mahler, so one guy referred about the texts of "Das Lied von der Erde"; yes, about Bethge, not about the music. He detected that Mahler must have used a misprinted copy because of some words. Then, a quarrel erupted between three musicologists about the question, which copy Mahler used, if it was a misprint or if Mahler had changed the words aso. It lasted - I'm not lying - more than half an hour. Afterwards, I knew that musicology wasn't the right profession for me...
I once got caught between a "fascinating" discussion about Mahler's eyeglass prescription that went on through an entire lunch.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Some people have WAYYYYYYY too much time o their hands.
Amen!...Preach it brother!!!
Santayana's quote about fanatics also comes to mind in referring to self-important musicologists who take any composer's work out of the context in which it was written. "A fanatic redoubles his effort when he has forgotten his aim."
Phew ,I thought that you were going to bring up the issue of the haunting Blumine movement which I feel , when included, not only logically completes Mahler's First , artistically and makes it a more superior work ...
Yeah! Go Dave!
BRAVO!! What about the gratuitous bass drum thwack at the end of the symphony? Is that in the Titan score? I think the weaker ending is very appropriate after all the clamor preceding it! Mahler’s sense of humor.
Is the BD thwack in this new critical edition? I always figured it for a Lennyism.
Lenny and others. It is not, and I agree that it is pointless.
Can't believe Alsop fell for it. It's a strange mindset: we've done something successfully for years, let's change.
Whatever happened to "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."
Where do you get your Mahler scores from?
I've had them forever. All different places, but sheetmusicplus.com is a good source if you're in the USA.
“I’ve got something new to show you in this score!” Translation: I want to publish a new edition and make money!
Agree 100%!!!
Same thing what they did with Mahler 6!
That’s not Mahler or at least, what Mahler wanted.
I have about half a dozen sacds of the Maher 1 and only one of them gets this wrong - Vanska. The rest of them, including Nott, Zander, Zinman, and Stenz get it right. My favorite is Thierry Fischer on Reference Recordings - probably an unconventional choice, but a terrific sounding disc.
Pretty sure I remember hearing an obscure live Walter recording here on youtube a year or two ago in which the basses played it as a group, and the comments were full of speculation as to why. The consensus seemed to fall on simply the combo of the venue & particular orchestra somehow making the lone bass so quiet as to be too hard to hear (perhaps specifically for the engineers if nothing else, it was certainly a rudimentary old, old live recording). The solo cello doubling is definitely the more authentic solution to this problem, which no contemporary conductor is ever likely to encounter at all. Certainly no justification for the new publication's claim.
I feel like some bassists might (or should) play it in a more laborious fashion than they’re capable of, to give the right impression. But it’s definitely a solo voice, to me. Like a lonely organ grinder during the winter.
Honestly I have listened to this piece of music in complete performance, the entire symphony, at least 200 times, more than any other I have listened to. However, I guess David has more than 200 different recordings of Mahler 1.
I'm from Germany and I've never heard of "Bruder Martin" I've only ever heard of "Bruder Jakob". Maybe Martin is a regional thing?
It's "Bruder Jakob".
Idk in Croatia (ex Yugoslavia in a broader sense) people sing it "Bratec Martin". I guess it's just dependant on the region.
@@gorankatic40000bc what?
That’s what I was thinking, Jakob sprung to mind. (Though I’m not German so I thought “what do I know, my memory must be bad.”)
Then, why did they do it?
Because they can.
As a tuba player, what's interesting to me is if one of us tubaists came to a rehearsal and played that solo with the same lack of precise tuning as solo double bass players frequently exhibit, we'd be fired at the end of the rehearsal! It must be that the hand position up high is next to impossible. But don't get me wrong - I think the off tuning of intervals adds to the 'rustic' character of the Mahler 1 solo. Mahler must have understood that. That solo is just a whole step, then half step (D, E, F natural). Frequently, solo bass players play the E-natural a bit too high, which sometimes forces them to play the minor third (F natural) a bit too high as well. I also think they're terrified of possibly being flat, so they over compensate. I don't know. Then it goes F, G, A; F, G, A. Invariably, the G is too sharp. Go figure! It's interesting. Unison double basses sounds a bit like buzzing bees. I kind of like it, but it's wrong - no argument.
Do you mean someone can actually hear whether or not the tuba is in tune? How can they tell?
@@DavesClassicalGuide Got me there!
Dear David,
What you will not have got from my two previous responses is that I trained as a classical double bassist.
My last teacher was Dave Daly, the still current first bass in in the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra and a virtuoso of the instrument ... Student of Ed Meyer from Boston SO.
My previous teacher gave me to David as he thought he had nothing more to offer [and he was once in the Liverpool Philharmonic]. David and I kicked off my first lesson with some "orchestral highlights" like the Scherzo from Beethoven Five, which I had under my belt. AND this Funeral March from Mahler. I am no Mahlerian. Like many players it is about playing and counting the rests when you don't quite get the swing. Observing the marking and being well in tune. But I did get "this" music, and I am also sure that there really is a bit more glissando/portamento here!
My main musical loves were JS Bach and FJ Haydn, where I had a real feeling for the terraced dynamic with human mini adjustment of dynamic and timbre, and the flow of the whole thing. I was eventually crippled from playing by a repetitive strain problem in the left hand, but my love of music is not reduced. ... I miss playing like a lost leg.
One thing David Daly showed me was how to play Mozart [another mystery to me] and the development of the Great G Minor symphony [the hardest bass music yet written because there is nowhere to hide] causes me to listen with exceptional attention [to the basses in this music] so that mostly modern performances fail. Klemperer with the Philharmonia manages this! I still remain a greater enthusiast for Bach and Haydn than Mozart. Does that make me a fool?
Best test wishes from George
You have every right to like what you like--you clearly know what you're talking about and what you listen for, and the only thing that really matters is that it gives you pleasure. And you can do much worse than Bach and Haydn.
@@DavesClassicalGuide What has struck me about the few posts I have seen is your honestly held view.
Thanks for your reply.
My musician [performer] heroes are Helmut Walcha, Adolf Busch, Otto Klemperer, Edwin Fischer, Vaclav Talich and Bruno Walter. Because mostly they make the music both clear and emotional, but also within stylish constraints. Is that wrong?
Love what I have seen of you channel so far.
Best wishes from George
Out of curiosity, what is the editor’s justification?
In a later performance in NY Mahler "may" have used the full bass section. There really is no justification--it's wholly speculative and ridiculous.
to me that beginning sounds as if Mahler was sort of painting in music something similar to Marc Chagall's paintings of poor Jewish musicians like on "fiddler on the roof" and both contra-bass and tuba should sound like Kleizemer band musicians (out of tune and poor sound). later in that movement there are typical Jewish style wedding music but when we played it with Kurt Masur he said that it was influenced from the Oktoberfest in Munich.
Yes or like a character from a Bruegel painting or something.
We can do it that way, but first add 3 more bassoonist and 3 more Tubas 😁
For me, the solo double bass imparts a feeling of austerity, almost lonliness. True Mahler conductors must be laughing at these antics.
Sounds like them Mahlerians just can't take a joke.
The Mahler 1 contrabass solo is perhaps the best symphonic solo on that instrument. The effect is totally ruined by making it a section solo. Even if that was what Mahler intended (and it’s not), I wouldn’t care because it sounds so much better as a solo than as a group passage.
Yep!
The double bass solos on stravinsky songs of nightingale are more fun tho
Somebody here can probably confirm this, because I don't have the scores in front of me, but I believe when the Universal critical edition of the First Symphony was originally published in the 1960s, it was indeed a double bass solo, and was only amended sometime in the 1990s to say it should be the whole section. As you say, it never caught on and nobody does it that way (well, except Alsop, apparently). In the new critical edition by Christian Riedel for Breitkopf that came out last year, the score indicates a solo player.
Yes, that is correct. But quite a few conductors have done it "tutti" and recorded it that way, frustratingly.
@@DavesClassicalGuide Do you know which conductors (besides Alsop) have recorded it the wrong way?
@@luukmarcus Vänskä for sure, but if I hear it I usually prefer to ignore it rather than review it, so I really haven't kept track.
There is a transcription of the Mahler Adagio from Symphony #5 for choir. When I heard it I was shocked,. It had entirely changed the character of Mahler's use of strings to achieve a sublimely deep resonance from the very opening bars. Much as I love the sound of the human voice and choral music in general I immediately found the human sound totally inappropriate and criticised the perpetrator of such an insensitive crime against Mahler's intentions.
I love it.
“A musicologist is someone who can read music, but can’t listen to it” - Thomas Beecham