Choose Your Own Damn Mahler Adventure
Do you love Mahler? Do you want to marry him and have his babies? Well it’s a bit late for that, but it’s not too late to participate in Deutsche Grammophon and Decca’s latest foray into the classical music social media scene. They’ve done a bang-up job arranging this one.
The idea is that they are putting together a new Mahler boxset. “But Ben! Those are a dime a dozen — well maybe a grand a dozen, but you can definitely buy 12″ I can hear you verbosely shouting at me through the internet. Well yes, but the difference here is that every symphony in the set is from a different conductor and orchestra, and it’s the voting public who get to decide which ones go in the set. “But Ben! I don’t own every single boxset, how will I compare renditions without shelling out thousands of dollars?” comes your next, sensibly thrifty proclamation.
Well that’s the best bit: you can stream — for free! — what appears to be their entire Mahler catalog, in order to confirm your decision.
Pre-X-Mas-Ing
This is a busy and non-bloggy week. I’ve been preoccupied with the end of the semester — and extra importantly — the return of G. from Manhattan. Tomorrow we have the departmental machine-shop party (which is infinitely better than the regular departmental party), and a crapload of snow. Then on Saturday I am sneaking up through the wintery weather into darkest Maine.
I have managed to find a bit of time to listen to music, mostly during the brief jaunts between home and lab. I’ll have tonnes more time over the next week. Here’s what’s been on the menu:
- Nielsen – I’ve been going through one of those rediscovery periods with Nielsen recently, where you listen to all these pieces that once got a lot of headphone time, and wonder why on earth you stopped listening to them. This time around I’ve been back to the last three symphonies, but also added two string quartets. The biggest rediscovery is probably the slow movements from the 4th symphony — I had either not noticed, or totally forgotten, how they have this deliciously slightly-broken Romantic sound. Like the little off-key chirrups in the 2nd movement, and the ominous timpani in the 3rd.
- Mahler – Yep, still working on him! The 9th symphony is working out really well, I’ve listened to the kick-arse 2nd movement infinity more times than I can count, and am starting to properly branch into the other movements. The rather awesome Ben Zander sent me a bunch of CDs this week (with his performances of the 1st, 5th and 9th) all of which also include a CD with him discussing the pieces. I am looking forward to listening to those while lounging around the living room in Maine.
- CPE Bach – The 5th symphony (sinfonia, whatever) totally rocks.
Mahler Umlaut Issues
Today is Sunday, and significant parts of it were spent geeking out in a serious fashion. I cashed in five hours worth of precious non-work time installing a new distro of Linux on my desktop (gentoo -> arch, for those who care). This rash action was brought on by me getting insanely frustrated that all the umlauts in my Mahler recordings looked like question marks. I do not care to listen to “gem?chlichen l?nders”. For those reading this who aren’t Linux geeks (probably about 98% of you) this involved about four hours of typing into terminal windows, restarting, swearing, etc.
(Note: it isn’t this painful if you use one of the pretty graphical installers, but that takes all the fun out of it)
Well anyway, it turns out that I could have fixed my little umlaut problem in about five seconds, but I like my new system better anyway. We are all happy: me, Mahler, and my computer.
Yes Mahler. I tried listening to the 9th symphony today. The second movement rocks! There are weird wobbly bits of sarcasm and uncomfortable tonalities, all wrapped up in a snidely cheerful 3/4ish rhythm. I love all that. And since it’s Mahler it lasts about ten years. That bit is more difficult to love. It’s really freakin’ intimidating when a single piece lasts over an hour. *cough* Bruckner *cough*
Music Understanders Report In!
Yes, music understanders. I don’t care if mister high and mighty spellchecker thinks it necessary to shove a wiggly red line under it, it’s a word. Lexographical iniquities aside, here’s the meat of today’s problem: I’m dumb when it comes to music theory. I have no classical training, and barely any professional teaching to speak of. I do have a basic grasp of a bunch of stuff, but that sets a pretty low bar hanging to bang into. I’ll evidence this complaining and not-quite self-loathing with an example. Take these two sections in Mahler 6, juxtaposed here sequentially (filled with long words tonight we are) one from the exposition, and one from later on:
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This is one of my favorite bits in the first movement, the unexpected change in that descending sequence is ridiculously satisfying. So what’s going on here? My not terribly educated guess is the second version modulates to some related major key (such as C-major) instead of dropping all in A-minor. At least, I assume it’s in A-minor since that’s the tonic of the symphony and it’s the first theme.
Sometimes I really wish I had had a bunch of music lessons.
Leaves
After a dainty little daisy of a month, due to low credit card spending, this one is a sunflower, a whale; a really heavy thing. This is totally and utterly to do with the expense added a few hours ago of a trip back to the UK, to visit family, friends and anyone else who might manage to insert themselves into my clustered itinerary. This time g is coming too, for fun, frolics and, errr, visiting (f and v basically have the same phonemic sound, so despite appearances that’s squinty alliteration). Scarily, it’s about 5 weeks distant from t equals right now, right this second.
It’s been ages since I was in London last, really. I can’t remember all the essentials of what to do. We’re also shoving off to Holland for a few days, but that’s a little less overwhelming. maybe. Until I realistically start thinking about it.
ANYWAY… something musical, something musical… what’s been happening in my all-encompassing little world of classical music today? Well, more Mahler, really. I keep forgetting to move the Gielen version of the 6th symphony onto my MP3 player, so I’m stuck with the more uptempo but less intense Bernstein version. Not that it’s bad or anything, but the slower pacing of the former fits my taste better.
Well horror of horrors, there I am innocently strolling into lab an hour after the appropriate time… and I almost find myself enjoying that romantic theme in the first movement. Almost. Of all my previous classical experiences, the getting into Mahler’s 6th business is most reminiscent of the same process for Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3. Both sounded far too Romanticy on initial listens, and both subtly slid themselves under my skin when I wasn’t really looking.
But, BEDTIME! I have another 9:00 meeting with my supervisor tomorrow morning, even though we spoke for two hours in the corridor this morning. She’s vocally insatiable.