{"id":1550,"date":"2011-04-04T18:02:47","date_gmt":"2011-04-04T17:02:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/?p=1550"},"modified":"2016-04-23T23:39:23","modified_gmt":"2016-04-23T22:39:23","slug":"another-perspective-peter-davison-on-mahler-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennethwoods.net\/blog1\/2011\/04\/04\/another-perspective-peter-davison-on-mahler-7\/","title":{"rendered":"Another perspective- Peter Davison on Mahler 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mahler<\/a><\/p>\n

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Guest blogger Peter Davison will be a symposium speaker at the 29th annual Colorado MahlerFest<\/a> on Saturday the 21st of May. The MahlerFest Orchestra will be performing Mahler’s 7th Symphony under their newly-appointed Artistic Director Kenneth woods on the 21st and 22nd of May. Details available here.<\/a><\/p>\n


\nHow Wagner leads us to\u00a0Mahler’s Seventh Symphony<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n

In\u00a01909, Mahler was invited by\u00a0Willem Mengelberg\u00a0to perform several of his symphonies at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.\u00a0 A performance of the Seventh Symphony, premiered in Prague a year earlier, was scheduled for 8 October, and Mahler pondered what to perform alongside\u00a0his vast five-movement work. He proposed to Mengelberg a first-half devoted entirely to Wagner; his early\u00a0Faust Overture<\/em>, his\u00a0Siegfried Idyll<\/em> and the Overture to\u00a0Die Meistersinger.<\/em> Mahler\u2019s symphony would\u00a0follow after the interval.\u00a0In the end Mahler simply preceded the symphony with just the\u00a0Meistersinger<\/em> Overture<\/em> \u2013 due to limitations of available rehearsal time and presumably also the audience\u2019s stamina. But Mahler’s original proposal remains\u00a0interesting\u00a0to us, because of what it tells us about the symphony. Whenever he conducted his own works, Mahler always designed programmes to illuminate his music in some way. So what was he thinking of on this occasion?<\/p>\n

The Seventh Symphony picks up on many of the issues confronted in the Fifth and Sixth. Mahler was exploring the Viennese symphonic\u00a0tradition, especially Beethoven’s symphonies, as models for expressing\u00a0idealistic aspiration. The Fifth had asked the question \u2013 can the idealised musical logic of\u00a0the Beethoven\u00a0symphony\u00a0relate to\u00a0the fundamental existential\u00a0questions which confront us through\u00a0our experience?\u00a0He left the answer open. In the Sixth, the question\u00a0found a brutal \u201cno\u201d for an answer. Beethoven\u2019s visionary optimism and transcendence were found wanting, and without compromise Mahler\u00a0presented\u00a0the\u00a0tragic circumstances of the human condition. But this was not\u00a0the end of everything for Mahler. In fact, it proved a platform for a new burst of creative originality, for the Seventh\u00a0Symphony is among the most innovative and complex music which Mahler ever wrote. If it appears to mimic aspects of the Fifth, its musical idiom and orchestral technique mark a\u00a0huge stride in his creative and technical development.<\/p>\n

But let us return to Mahler\u2019s Wagner programme and speculate\u00a0upon what in these three pieces can throw light upon the meaning of the Seventh Symphony. Wagner was, of course, a towering figure in musical life at that time and someone whose music\u00a0Mahler adored. However, the\u00a0Faust Overture<\/em> is not well-known today. It was a relatively\u00a0early work based on\u00a0Goethe\u2019s famous story. Faust makes\u00a0a\u00a0cynical pact\u00a0with the devil to ensure his success in the world. For Romantic artists, this story\u00a0showed that Man was alienated from the forces of life because of\u00a0his lust for dominion over Nature. In another sense, the Romantic artist also bargains with the devil to pursue his creative vision against the claim of ordinary life. Interestingly, Faust makes his pact with\u00a0Mephistopheles\u00a0when he is at his lowest ebb\u00a0and contemplating suicide, and it is this mood which characterises Wagner’s overture. At the head of the score, he quotes Goethe’s play: “So is\u00a0my whole being a burden, and hateful life makes<\/p>\n

You may know that Byron\u2019s Manfred partly inspired Mahler\u2019s Sixth, and Byron had been inspired by\u00a0Goethe\u2019s Faust\u00a0to create the character. Manfred\u00a0has grown disillusioned with life and his fellow man. He has committed some fearful crime against Nature for which he deserves to die. Mahler\u2019s Sixth belongs in this psychological territory and, if the end of the work is not quite suicidal, it marks a loss of hope and surrender to fate. We know that Mahler felt empty and unable to compose for a while after the composition of the Sixth, as if it had exhausted him creatively. But one day rowing across a lake, he got an idea for the opening of the Seventh. The first movement of the Seventh is profoundly engaged with the dark side of Nature; its wildness, its unwillingness to be contained and the way in which it disrupts human life and conventions. There is (appropriately enough) a volcano of energy in this movement which threatens destruction. Mahler struggles to contain it, and we\u00a0sense a creative birth\u00a0full of labour pains. The\u00a0movement seems to ask \u2013 how does man live in harmony with Nature, indeed with the Nature that is in himself? How does he find forms that make Nature civilised and bearable? The alternative, which is apparent at the movement’s end, is a Dionysian power that threatens to become aggressive and militaristic.<\/p>\n

So we can now understand why Mahler wanted to allude to Faust in his suggested first-half. But there is another reason. The\u00a0Faust Overture<\/em> opens with a slow introduction which is recapitulated in the course of the movement, much as Mahler\u2019s first movement does. In the Mahler, the struggle to contain his material yields a brief visionary\u00a0glimpse of paradise, but the funereal mood of the movement\u2019s opening\u00a0returns. The effect in the Wagner and the Mahler is a collapse of momentum; a falling back into\u00a0the murky gloom of depression with the mind\u00a0haunted by demonic powers.\u00a0We can even hear in\u00a0Wagner\u2019s stormy textures\u00a0some connection to themes\u00a0in Sixth and Seventh\u00a0symphonies.<\/p>\n

The relationship between the\u00a0Siegfried Idyll<\/em> and the\u00a0Nachtmusik: Andante Amoroso,<\/em> (the fourth movement\u00a0of\u00a0the Mahler) is much more obvious. Wagner composed\u00a0his work as a love-gift for\u00a0Cosima\u00a0after the birth of their son Siegfried, and its subtle expansion of the serenade\u00a0into a work of symphonic wholeness is remarkable. It also has a dream-like\u00a0narrative which influenced Mahler\u2019s whole conception of musical form. In fact, I should add that the\u00a0Siegfried Idyll<\/em> was the epitome for Mahler of inner contentment and redemptive love. The \u201cResurrection theme\u201d in Mahler\u2019s Second Symphony is even based on the main theme of the\u00a0Siegfried Idyll<\/em>. The\u00a0Andante Amoroso<\/em> of the Seventh takes up the idea of the serenade and views it with a fairy-tale nostalgia verging on irony. (The sound of guitar and mandolin are curious anachronisms which place the music in the past and also in the ordinary world). Mahler asks, can\u00a0we speak any longer with Wagner\u2019s idealized and elevated feeling or with the instinctive trust of coventions that we imagine was the case in the past? For Mahler such eloquence and sincerity\u00a0were always\u00a0hard-won, and he reminds us that Nature is always ready to disrupt human love\u00a0with forces beyond\u00a0our control.<\/p>\n

In the Seventh\u2019s Finale, we can hear\u00a0the most audible\u00a0link to Wagner.\u00a0There are festive trumpets and drums in\u00a0C major that could have come straight out of\u00a0\u00a0Meistersinger<\/em>; a work which\u00a0explores the relationship between the artist and the society around him. Wagner uses the opera\u2019s hero, Walther and\u00a0his Prize Song as symbols of the artist who expresses true Nature\u00a0in defiance of social convention, represented by the pedantic Beckmesser. The artist is compelled to follow his muse and that means living by different rules. Yet\u00a0it is by this expression of individuality that the divine spirit enters the world\u00a0to renew human society. This leads to the celebrations in last scene of\u00a0Meistersinger, <\/em>surely one of the most euphoric moments in all music. There is\u00a0a reconnection with true Nature, because\u00a0Walther\u2019s creative talent\u00a0has been\u00a0inspired by his musse, Eva and guided to fruition by\u00a0the wisdom of\u00a0Hans Sachs. It is an idealised paradigm for the artist’s contribution to\u00a0the\u00a0society around him.<\/p>\n

Mahler wanted to express something similiar in his Finale, but uses humour to\u00a0do so,\u00a0because he is less confident that this reconciliation of\u00a0 natural talent with the mundane world is really going to happen.\u00a0In his Finale, we are never quite sure whether he is celebrating his talent\u00a0entering the world or\u00a0poking fun at the outside world for standing in his way. The movement is titled,\u00a0Allegro Ordinario<\/em>. In what sense is this music ordinary?\u00a0The title\u00a0suggests that we are listening to the stuff of everyday life, not something deeply personal and transcendent. It is the hustle and bustle of daily business,\u00a0social chatter and laughter. These are the\u00a0modest pleasures and difficulties of the ordinary world,\u00a0in contrast to the profundities\u00a0of a\u00a0night filled with dreams, intimacy and\u00a0the dark forces of the unconscious.\u00a0Mahler hovers between the joy of his\u00a0creative exuberance and the feeling that\u00a0if he told the whole truth, it would bring him into conflict with his audience and critics. The night-time music of the Seventh doesn\u2019t really find resolution, rather\u00a0it\u00a0contrasts with the Finale \u2013 and when the main theme from the first movement emerges at the end of the work, its presence is for a time simply disruptive.<\/p>\n

But Mahler isn\u2019t taking all this too seriously. It\u00a0implies more\u00a0the comic atmosphere of\u00a0Die Meistersinger<\/em> than\u00a0the despair of the\u00a0Faust Overture<\/em>. At the end of the work,\u00a0Mahler is celebrating the paradox, viewing the duality of night and day with emotional\u00a0distance and acceptance. The scientist and philosopher, G.T. Fechner, a thinker who influenced Mahler deeply, observed that night and day only appear to be in opposition. If we were to view the world from outer space, he suggests (and we can, even if Fecnher could not) we would see that night and day occur at the same time, that they are part of an indivisible unity. Perhaps the message of this symphony is that the meaning of our human experience is subjective and always a matter of perspective. In that sense, what was tragic and hopeless in the Sixth can easily be reconciled with the visionary optimism of the Eighth. The Seventh is the bridge between them that shows us how this is possible. Mahler seems to say, it is not\u00a0 Creation that is flawed and split down the middle, but our limited perception of it which makes it seem so, and it is our unwillingness to accept this limitation which leads us into\u00a0Faustian bargains\u00a0and rigid Beckmesser-like ways of thinking.<\/p>\n

Peter Davison<\/p>\n

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