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From: greg@olivee.UUCP (Greg Paley)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Re: Sibelius - tone poems (really Mahler)
Message-ID: <432@olivee.UUCP>
Date: Fri, 25-Oct-85 13:47:28 EST
Article-I.D.: olivee.432
Posted: Fri Oct 25 13:47:28 1985
Date-Received: Sun, 27-Oct-85 06:33:52 EST
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Organization: Olivetti ATC; Cupertino, Ca
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> > >> 
> > >> And I suppose we could also talk about the music of Mahler...
> > >> 
> > >> Music that has little or nothing to say, but spends hours doing it anyway.
> > >
> > > There are none so deaf as those who will not listen...
> > >
> > > Maybe you should learn the language!
> > >
> > >					Jeff Winslow
> > 
> I have no trouble understanding Mahler's music, both subjectively and
> objectively (where I have studied it in this fashion). Each measure
> brings something new, interesting and appropriate. And I am not easily
> interested or entertained.
> 
> Now I can understand someone being turned off by his style (intricate and
> emotional), although personally I love it. Are you sure that's not the
> real reason you feel as you do?
> 
> 				(no Lord) Jeff Winslow

Personally, I'm unable to fully agree with either side on this argument,
since I can't make a single judgement about all of Mahler's music.
I find tremendous skill in construction of elaborate layers of sound in
all his works, and I also hear a subtlety and delicacy in the use of
orchestral colors that even exceeds Richard Strauss.  As to whether these
gifts are deployed in the communication of a genuinely expressive content
can be another thing.  For me, it's sometimes yes, sometimes no.  Someone
else could say that this really has to do with my own perceptive limitations,
and there's no way I can really argue that.

The works that I hear as beautiful and expressive are the 1st, 2nd, 3rd and
4th symphonies, slow movement of the 5th symphony, and some of the 9th,
"Das Lied von der Erde", and a number of the vocal works, such as the delightful
"Des Knaben Wunderhorn", the lovely "Lieder eines fahenden Gesellen" and
the often exquisitely beautiful settings of poems by Friedrich Rueckert,
particularly "Ich atmet einen Lindenduft" and "Ich bin der Welt abhanden
gekommen".  I hear expressiveness in the "Kindertotenlieder", but I find
these so lugubrious that I don't care to listen to them.

Aside from individual moments, the 5th Symphony (other than the slow
movement), 6th and 8th symphonies completely lose me.  I've tried and
tried listening to them both on recordings (and I've tried pretty much
all of them - Solti, Haitink, Bernstein for all three of these, as well
as Ozawa (8th), Karajan and Abbado (5th - the Abbado being a live Salzburg tape)Barbirolli, Tennstedt, Levine (5th and 6th)) and in live performances.  
They just don't say anything to me.  I keep trying.

The 7th Symphony is starting to make sense to me, and this after fifteen
years of listening to it.  What I hear now is an extension of the message
of the 3rd Symphony.  I guess the fact that I keep listening to these
things rather than ignoring them must indicate that somewhere deep down
inside I must feel there's something there that I just haven't found yet.

	- Greg Paley