Mahler, Overrated?

[Yagan Kiely]

A composer that I would think lacks emotion would be somebody like Arthur Sullivan or Jacques Offenbach.

I can second that. Even Dvorak (which I can't stand), is STILL emotional.

How can you, Yagan say Hitler and Stalin "kinda" went off track? Hitler was not even listening to his generals towards the end of the war.

I was being sarcastic, they went very off track. Hitler more so.

[Melodia]

...this thread reminds me why I tend to stay away from "general" classical music forums <.<

[Notenschreiber]

Me too, terribly. Please, stop it.

Notenschreiber

[allegroamabile]

There's nothing better than having a heated debate during the long days of summer.

[Yagan Kiely]

While I agree a lot of the posts have been terrible. Apart from a couple of small digs, it's been mostly civil. If you don't like, you don't have to participate.

[tickle88]

An interesting and lively discussion. Personally I tend to identify with aldona; I especially can empathize with his references to a church choir. I love Brahms and Mahler while recognizing their different personalities. And I have my blind spots: the sea music in Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, with its trills and upward fillip, always sounds to me like someone urping over the side of the boat. De gustibus.... A careful study of the life of Brahms (e.g. Jan Swafford's Johannes Brahms: A Biography) should convince most fair-minded people that Brehms was not evil. He was, of course, human. Short answer to Is Mahler overrated (or, is Brahms overrated?) : No.

[tickle88]

And while I'm at it, a few words about G.B. Shaw. In thye late 1880's and early '90's, before he began his spectacular career as a playwright, Shaw worked as a professional music critic in London, under the pen name Corno di Bassetto. He was then notoriouly pro-Wagner and anti-Brahms, referring to the Liebeslieder Waltzer as "those minor bores," as opposed to the Requiem, which of course was a major example. He lived long enough (94) to alter his opinions. The Perfect Wagnerite, which explains the Ring cycle as Socialist allegory, makes amusing reading today, not least because of his habit of spelling the German names as they are pronounced in English--sort of. Mimmy, for example. For all that, he made many good points in his musical writing. There was a paperback edition available a while back, called I think "Shaw on Music", which had some great stuff in it, including an absolutely hilarious piece about the baggage he carried to every performance of Beethoven's Eroica, conditioned by his funeral experiences as a young man. A warning to us all.

[allegroamabile]

Anyways, since ZacPB189 was so enthusiastic about Hans Rott, I decided to get a recording of his Symphony in E major. It is a beautiful, imaginative piece which was influenced greatly by the music of Bruckner and Wagner. I also did some research on Rott, and discovered that he had an intresting biography. He studied with Bruckner and was close friends with Mahler whom both thought very highly of his music. When Rott completed the first movement of his Symphony in E, he submitted it to a contest. All the judges except Bruckner were very scornful of the piece. Once he finished the whole Symphony, he showed it to Brahms. He told Rott that he had no talent and that he should quit music. Everything went downhill for him from there. In late 1880 while on a train ride, Rott threatened someone with a gun and said that Brahms had planted explosives on the locomotive. Sometime after that he was sent to a mental hospital and was diagnosed with insanity and depression. He later died of tuberculosis in 1884. You could say that Brahms "killed" Hans Rott.

Brahms also received a great deal of criticism (as discussed earlier). As some claimed him a genius, others thought his music was garbage. He was also very insecure and destroyed many manuscripts of pieces he thought were not worthy to be shown to the public in fear of rejection. As a result, he was very arrogant and haughty in an effort to protect himself from his enemies whom many were followers of the Wagnerian school. I do not think he was a jerk, I just hypothesize that he was unsure of his talent as many musicians (including myself) are. He was also a loyal and loveable friend to the people he got along with.

You can see the opposite of this Rott story with Dvorak. Dvorak, a poor musician as well, also sent music to be judged after he was rejected from studying privately with Liszt. The only person on the panel of judges that liked his music was the great Brahms himself. They soon became good friends after that.

[Yagan Kiely]

I don't really care to much about personalities (or politics) of composer - as long as the pieces are good, I'm happy. Cheney, Sharon, Hitler, Stalin etc. if they wrote good music, I'd promote their (musical) ability. Hell, Wagner was very anti-Semitic and I'm pretty sure there are a few racist US composers.

[allegroamabile]

I would not classify Dick Cheney in the same group as Hitler and Stalin.

[Yagan Kiely]

I'm not going to get into a discussion, but I would. If you are interested in my reasoning PM me.

[pml]

I think this thread is a wonderful demonstration of how one can be a brilliant musician or composer, while simultaneously being unaware that one possesses a large, unobjective, blind spot (or blind spots, plural). Ditto the posters on this thread...

Go on, keep discussing... you know you want to...

PS tickle88, a heads-up for you, you might have slightly misjudged Aldona: note the -a ending.

PPS re: GBS (aka Corno di Bassetto) and the Eroica Symphony: I remember going to a performance of the Eroica during my first year at university, and hearing a huge kerfuffle upstairs in the gallery during the middle of the Marcia funèbre; I found out later from one of my college tutors (who happened to be second bassoon in the orchestra) that one of the punters had had a heart attack in the middle of it, and had to be given CPR by a medical doctor in the audience before being hauled off to hospital...

[allegroamabile]

Yeah! Let's get back into the brawl we were in!

[vinteuil]

What really drives me nuts is that some people insist upon making Mahler the missing link between Wagner and Schoenberg (even though the links were written...after the pieces to which they connect???)

Another thing: Mahler is rather like the book twilight - the music is only so bad (no offence!), it's the fan club I usually can't stand.

[KGill]

Between Wagner and Schoenberg? That really makes absolutely no sense...Mahler's camp was completely different from Schoenberg's, even in the latter's early years (unless one compares only the sheer size of the orchestras of Gurrelieder and Mahler's symphonies...which is slightly irrelevant). In fact, some people might say Schoenberg was in the polar opposite group (Brahms's) . Which was also quite different from Wagner's...
And, of course, what you said about the links being written after the pieces to which they connect.