by Kenneth Woods | Jan 18, 2007 | A view from the podium, Mahler
If this is your first visit to this thread, you may wish to start from the first song of the cycle, which you can read about and listen to here. One of the recurring literary themes of Kindertotenlieder is the notion of haunting. Wenn dein Mutterlein is the poem that...
by Kenneth Woods | Jan 10, 2007 | A view from the podium, Favorite posts, Mahler, Nuts and bolts
Music, even vocal music, is ultimately an abstract art form. Musical ideas, even those attached to words, are inherently abstract. Nevertheless, we all find ourselves searching for the meaning of musical ideas. Wagner went so far as to assign meanings to themes...
by Kenneth Woods | Sep 7, 2006 | A view from the podium, Mahler, Nuts and bolts
Being a one himself, Mahler knew better than to trust conductors to know his intentions. Sibelius, on the other hand, famously said that if a performer needed to ask too many questions, they probably shouldn’t play his music. Think for a moment of Mahler’s “versions”...
by Kenneth Woods | Apr 5, 2006 | Explore the Score, Mahler, Mahler 2 Notes, Nuts and bolts
Mahler’s Second Symphony is in five movements and was completed in 1894, but the first of those was composed and published several years earlier in 1888 (at the same time as the First Symphony) as a tone poem called “Totenfeier” or “Funeral Rites.” It wasn’t until...
by Kenneth Woods | Mar 28, 2006 | Explore the Score, Mahler, Mahler 2 Notes
After the highly-charged, dramatic and ultimately tragic arc of the first movement, it is natural that one would need some time to recover. After all, Mahler waited five years after completing Totenfeier before continuing on to the second movement. As it turns out,...
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