on beyond Mahler

[calimac]

The mystery is: so long as the world still contains great hymns to wholeness like Brahms's First Symphony, what need is there for noisy disintegrated crap like Alban Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra? The San Francisco Symphony played both last night, and one could only surmise that Berg, who wrote his work in 1915, had been driven mad by a century of uninterrupted Romantic music. Mahler's fractured compositions, which jump around hysterically, trying futilely to evoke emotions that they've done nothing to prepare for or to earn, were bad enough, and Berg tried to take up where Mahler left off. The thematic patterns described by the program notes were undiscernible by the casual ear, and I think by this time I have a fairly experienced ear. MTT, speaking before he conducted it, said he found it fascinating, but he's been studying the score. Augenmusik at its purest. Fortunately unlike Mahler, Berg was fairly short-winded. Despite its (lack of) length, this wad of loud crumbling sticky mess is a perfect example of the heat-death, or possibly the gas giant, phase of post-romanticism. It's trying to proclaim that nothing could possibly come after it. In the event, history offered a choice between the cool austerity of neo-classicism, and the tiny purity of strict serialism, vitamin pills instead of music.

But the Brahms was very fine. Instead of a massive edifice of sound, this was balanced choruses of instruments responding to each other. No heavy imposition on the grand moments, even the grand "Ode to Joy"-like theme in the finale curled up in a gentle wisp of melody. Naturally with this approach, the pastoral middle movements were even more appealing. Brahms created a beautiful thing.

For a rarity, pre-concert I dined with others at a real restaurant, rather than my usual hasty SFS-night fare of a Korean rice bowl or a Mission District burrito. My food was as puzzling as an Alban Berg composition. It was supposed to be seafood chowder, but it had not a trace of liquid nor of cream. A heap of shellfish (mostly mussels, ehh) on top of a layer of pollock, in turn on a layer of pulverized potato mush. It wasn't bad, exactly, but not what I was expecting at all. I'd expected I'd be sorry I had a big lunch (the dinner wasn't planned until the afternoon), but instead I was glad of it.

Comments

[ron-drummond.livejournal.com]

You trash Mahler so eloquently! It's quite thrilling to read, and gratifying too, as there are so many Mahler snobs out there. Myself, I have not made up my own mind on Mahler yet as I haven't yet been willing to trouble myself with it. I mean, I'd have to spend all that precious time actually listening to his music! Perhaps I'll take your word for it on this one.

As for Brahms, I haven't much listened to his symphonies either, though you are almost as eloquent praising the Brahms First as you are trashing Mahler. Of Brahms's Four which is your favorite? Care to mention a (relatively recent) integral recording you admire?

And do you hate all of Berg, or only the Three Pieces?

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

You should try some Mahler for yourself. Listen to his Second Symphony. (But for ghu's sake avoid the Gilbert Kaplan recordings. Try MTT.) It starts out like agitated Bruckner, but if you make it all the way to the end without getting annoyed at the composer, you're a Mahler fan.

My favorite Brahms symphony is the Second, but they're all good, the odd-numbered ones being more formal and declamatory than the others. None of the recordings I know are as good as the best live performances I've heard.

Berg's Lyric Suite is interesting, just not much to my taste. But this was repellent. I haven't tried his operas.

[(Anonymous)]

If music is supposed to reflect the age in which it is written (as postmodernism believes even more fervently than past ages), then music after the Great War is very likely to reflect the philosophy of the age, i.e. that disintegration and chaos are now our lot. (This even explains Mahler, if like Bernstein you take him to be a prophet!)

In any case, chaos and holism are both possible artistic philosophies, in my book.

You should probably try Berg's violin concerto: it's been known to impress tonal listeners more than most serialism, it's a much more holistic work, and it even has a consoling tune (borrowed from Bach) in the final section.

Don Keller

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I've heard the Berg Violin Concerto, but I didn't mention it because it falls too squarely in the "I don't like most violin concertos" buckets, so my opinion on it vis-a-vis a lot of other modern violin concertos is meaningless.

If music is supposed to reflect the age in which it is written ...

Bernard Levin had the response to that:

"What these people forget is that the world has always been ugly, cruel and capricious, yet only in very recent times has art begun to insist that those qualities are the most significant and that art must take on their nature. Do you suppose that Shakespeare didn't know that the world could fly apart at any moment, and that the Wars of the Roses had ended only eighty years before he was born? Do you imagine that Rembrandt, because he lived in Holland, had never heard of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, only thirty-four years before he was born? Do you think that Bach would have enjoyed himself if Charles XII had come to tea? Do you believe that Dostoyevsky thought life was a bowl of cherries? Of course such artists knew that they had to assimilate suffering and refine it into their art, that they had to face ugliness before they could conceive beauty. ... Artists like these do know the artist's duty: to face the void without flinching and to weave their single strand of the great rope that holds the universe together."

[rwl.livejournal.com]

I'll repeat Lynch's First Law of Classical Music Concerts: The more prestigeous the symphony or ensemble, the more likely they are to perform some composition that will leave you cold.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure that's always true, or at least if it is, the ratio on which the likeliness rises is not that high. Not often does SFS play something quite this appalling.

But the reverse does seem to be true: the obscurer the ensemble, the more likely they are likely to play something you adore in recording but had given up hope of ever hearing performed live.

[rwl.livejournal.com]

I grant you permission to refer to that as Calimac's Corollary to Lynch's First Law.

[voidampersand.livejournal.com]

Just saw the same program.

You didn't mention the Copland (music from the film score for "Our Town"). Beautiful.

According to the program notes for the Berg, he was quoting various Mahler themes. If so, that would explain why MTT, as a Mahler expert, would find it so interesting. MTT really is a geek. Even when I can't share his enthusiasm, it's fun to see him get so excited. As for the Berg piece, it's not the sort of thing I'd like to listen to a lot, but there were aspects of it that I enjoyed. There were harmonies and melodies that were sometimes evocative or even pretty. He played all sorts of clever tricks with the music and sometimes I could tell what he was doing. What made it harder to enjoy were that the tricks and manipulations tended towards the grotesque, and they came so fast and without letup, it became tiresome. I think you could take any 15 seconds of the piece and I would find it quite interesting.

The Brahms seemed to be played significantly faster than the recording I have (von Karajan, Berliner Philharmonic). It gave the piece a restless feeling that I'm not used to. But it was very interesting. Now I have an image of the 1st being written by a strong and energetic Brahms who was still very much in his prime.