I much enjoyed Richard Morrison's article in The Times this morning and
expect many others will too.
Come on, Mahler, make me a kid again
Once again - thanks to an extraordinary coincidence that I shall come
to in about 800 words' time - I find myself thinking about Mahler.
And very irritating it is too. Mahler, after all, is a teenagers'
composer. His music is best savoured when you are 18, at which point
it exactly fits your world-view: that life, love and death are heroic
adventures, worthy to be celebrated in music of heaven-storming
grandeur.
At that age a symphony such as the Resurrection, which sweeps you
down to hell and then blazes out the promise of immortality, hits
you between the eyes. The Adagietto of the Fifth - that shimmering
love-song-without-words - leaves you in a trance. You don't walk
out of the hall; you float.
Hear the same pieces when you are 37 or 47, and it is liable to be
a case of emotion recollected in sterility. By then, most of us have
found life to be neither heroic nor tragic: rather, it's paying the
mortgage and muddling through. The rollercoaster ride hasn't happened.
We can still thrill to Mahler's huge emotional odysseys, but the
thrill is rooted in escapism or nostalgia.
And yet old habits die hard. I still check my diary each time I see
a Mahler concert advertised. No other composer has that effect on
me. Why? Well, one clue may lie in a fascinating book, Charisma in
Politics, Religion and the Media, by David Aberbach. He studied the
lives of people who, for good or evil, exercised charismatic power
over mass populations. Ranging from Hitler to Marilyn Monroe, he
argued that a traumatic failure or tragedy, often in childhood, leads
such figures to seek compensatory control of the public domain. "I
belong to the public and to the world," Monroe declared, "because I
have never belonged to anyone else." Or as Diana, Princess of Wales,
put it: "I want to be the princess of people's hearts."
Aberbach didn't study composers, but Mahler would surely have been
his prime example. His symphonies are wrenched from the turmoil of
his life - particularly his grisly childhood, scarred by the deaths
of his siblings - and then laid bare in public. Nearly a century
later, their hold on audiences remains extraordinary. In his hands
we are all teenagers, it seems.
But Mahler's symphonies, especially the massive choral ones, are also
grand celebrations of music as a truly communal art. Mahler was
himself a great conductor, and the music he wrote for orchestral
musicians is expertly conceived to stretch them to the technical
limit. But the glory of these gigantic works is that their virtuoso
demands operate in tandem with choral writing that demands nothing
more than a good ear, a tuneful voice and prodigious lungs. To cap
it all, Mahler also used children's voices brilliantly. So his
symphonies really do span the gamut of music-making, from skilled
pros to beginners. That is why every Mahler concert is an event.
And the Eighth Symphony is the greatest event of them all. It's
called the Symphony of a Thousand because at its 1910 premiere a
thousand people (1,002 actually) took part. These days, most
performances get by with about 600. But even in these straitened
circumstances, Part One of the Eighth Symphony - that hurtling dash
through the ancient Catholic hymn Veni Creator Spiritus - is one of
the most ear-splitting, mind-blowing half-hours in all music.
(Unfortunately, it's then followed by Part Two - but nothing is
perfect.)
Imagine my astonishment, then, to discover that next week London will
enjoy not one but two unconnected performances of this gargantuan
masterpiece. Much laborious prose has been churned out - not least
by me - on the subject of London's decline as a world-class musical
capital. But I cannot think of any other city on the globe that
could possibly find the musicians, or the audience, to sustain two
performances of the Symphony of a Thousand, 48 hours apart, by entirely
different organisations.
What a contrast they will make, too. The Albert Hall show next
Thursday is in what you might call the European Cup of Mahler Eights,
with the Royal Philharmonic, three famous choral societies and some
starry soloists. Two days later, the Festival Hall hosts the Mahler
equivalent of the Nationwide League, including such intriguing
ensembles as the Crouch End Festival Chorus. But I don't doubt for
a moment that their commitment will be every bit the equal of the
luminaries across the river.
Leonard Bernstein said Mahler was "the last great composer". That's
a bit gloomy, but one knows what he meant. Mahler lived at the
optimum time in history for personal traumas to be expressed on
massive musical canvases. Shortly after he died the advent of cheap
mass entertainment destroyed the economic basis for music-making on
such a scale. And the rise of a foul generation of political dictators
gave charisma and rhetoric a bad name. The power to inspire millions
suddenly seemed, to sensitive composers at least, unhealthy and
potentially evil.
Many retreated into writing complex little pieces for complex little
audiences. By contrast, pop composers had no scruples about wooing
millions with their music, but rarely developed the techniques to
extend their art beyond the span of the four-minute song.
So in one sense Mahler really was the last of the greats. And 90
years on, the Eighth Symphony continues to enthrall and deafen us,
just as it did the Edwardians. But can I take it twice in three
days? You bet. When it comes to Mahler, as Mr Bryan Adams so memorably
wrote, I'm 18 till I die.
John G. Deacon http://www.ctv.es/USERS/j.deacon
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