Pablo Massa wrote:

>My point is the following: as a deconstructive work or a parody of cultural
>history Mahler's ninth is, in 1909, already *impotent*. A "tragic" fate,
>indeed.?What kind of parody are we going to perceive in a work which
>musical history, by those times, had overpassed?.Webern had begun to
>suspend tonal functions at least four years ago, and Mahler knew very well
>those attempts. Actually, there's a great self-irony in hs famous words:
>"mein zeit es noch wird kommen".

What was collapsing in Mahler's time was the assumed social relationships
that held up the 19th century, and by extension, the artistic symbols which
corresponded to them. To Mahler's age the natural place and focus of art
was the Pastoral and the visions of Nature. But Mahler and others saw,
clearly, that the Urban was to replace it, and that an Urban life must be
based on machines and relationships between people - rather than Nature
and relationships between forces. Pablos argument does not address this
contention, and hence I cannot reply to an his statements addressed to some
phantom in the corner.

We have been told for 90 years that someday everyone would write only
avant-garde music, and it has not happened. We have also been told for 90
years that the avant-garde would someday disappear without a trace, and it
has not happened. Hence if one is to look at the historical meaning of
works, any school which is premised on either of these two extreme - and
falsified by events - views of the world, is an inadequate.

Stirling Newberry
http://www.mp3.com/ssn
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