Mats Norrman wrote:

>Is my brain not in order, or is it possible I hear what I think I hear: A
>touch of oriental tunes in Mahler 4? (I don't hear much orientalism in "das
>Lied von der Erde").  Could anyone verify or reject Mahler took interest in
>orientalism at the time for his 4th symphony?

No, any interest was later at the time of Das Lied Von Der Erde.

You really must read Donald Mitchell's Volume III "Songs and Symphonies of
Life and Death" where the case for the "orientalism" in DLVDE is argued in
huge depth, far too complex to really go into here in anything but salient
points.

For Mitchell a simple "chinoiserie" would be the decoractive use of a
pentatonic formula which can, he maintains, certainly be found in DLVDE,
but that it goes much deeper than that.  With this in mind DM goes on to
quote T.W. Adorno as a crucial source in his exposition of this aspect of
the work thus: "The exoticism does not confine itself to the deployment
of pentatonic and wholetone scales, but moulds the entire texture".  One
of Mitchell's main tenets springs from what he maintains Adorno has in
fact identified as, quoting him again: "the indistinct unison (unscharfe
Unisono) in which identical parts are rhythmically a little out of step
with one another - something that he (Mahler) had used since the
Kindertotenlieder as a kind of improvised counterbalance to the excessive
'finish' characteristic of art songs" and which Mitchell himself labels
"Heterophony".  And Mitchell quotes Adorno again in referring to the
"artificially high Chinese tessitura of the tenor part" in DLVDE.  Here
Mitchell maintains Adorno is referring to the high-pitched glottal style
of Chinese opera as a possible influence.

(Mitchell also refers to an article by John Williamson "Mahler and The Veni
Creator Spiritus" in which Williamson talks of the "intricate polyphony -
often verging on the *heterophonic*" in some of the Ruckert Songs and also
in the Eighth Symphony Part I, so validating this important strand for
Mitchell.)

Mitchell then speculates on a source for Mahler's knowledge of this
"heterophony" which is at the core of the Chinese dimension of DLVDE.
Firstly he brings forward a piece of evidence contained in Henry-Louis
de La Grange's Volume III - at the stage that HLG's Volume III was at
the time Mitchell was writing his own Volume III in 1985.  (So it is, of
course, quite possible that M.  de La Grange has more thoughts about the
piece of evidence Mitchell refers to 12 years on.) It is that the banker
Paul Hammerschlag recalled visiting Mahler at Toblach in the last two
weeks of the Summer of 1908 and that he had given Mahler some cylanders
of Chinese music, made in China, that he had bought in Vienna.  The
implication being that here is evidence Mahler had actually heard Chinese
music before composing DLVDE.

For Mitchell questions are raised.  (Which is why I wonder whether M.
de La Grange now has anything to add!) What kind of music was on the
cylanders? Was it vocal? If it was then Adorno's point about Chinese opera
becomes even more interesting.  In which year did Hammerschlag give Mahler
the cylanders? DLVDE was composed between 1907 and 1909 with the "main
thrust" of the work in the Summer of 1908.  For the cylanders to be
influential on DLVDE they have to have been in Mahler's possession,
Mitchell maintains, by 1907.  However, Adorno (and Mitchell and Williamson)
maintain the heterophonic principle can be found in the late Ruckert Songs
from 1901-2.  Mahler first met Hammerschlag in 1900.  Did he give him the
cylanders then?

As Mitchell observes, there is more research to be be done and, for all I
know, it may have been!!!

However, Mitchell has another string to his bow for an Oriental musical
influence on Mahler in DLVDE.  In 1908 Mahler's friend Guido Adler
published an article "Uber Heterophonie" which is a brilliant example of
current thinking on musical traditions other than Western in circles that
Mahler moved in.  Of course, as Mitchell points out, when it was published
work on DLVDE was already substantially finished, but it must have been the
result of long research and preparation during which time the two friends
*might* have discussed the subject.  But even if they hadn't the fact of
what had to have been a long gestation proves at least what Mitchell calls
a "cultural preoccupation" that does predate DLVDE.  Mitchell helps by
reproducing a translation of the entire article in his book and points out
that you could be forgiven for mistaking it as a description of the
techniques encountered in DLVDE.

I wrote:

>>I have always been lukewarm regarding Bernstein's Mahler

To which Mats replied:

>Why so? Do you want to elaborate a little on this.  I am asking as I
>wonder if you mean only Mahler 4 or all Bernstein-Mahler.  If the latter
>I don't agree, for example I think the 1st symphony one of the very best,
>especially the first movement.

If you mean his DG recording, the first movement is very good.  The second
too.  The third is far too fast and the fourth contains some agogic
distortions.

>I would be interested to hear what you don't like about
>Bernsteins Mahler.  maybe this vcan give me new ideas...

For me, Bernstein in Mahler is too often too "idiosyncratic".  I would also
add far too personally involved to the extent that his idiosyncrasy and
involvement can become irritating in a short time and annoying over longer.

There can be few conductors who knew the Mahler symphonies better than
Bernstein.  Few who loved them more too.  And here might lie the problem.
I think Bernstein loved the Mahler symphonies almost to death, even seeing
them as a way of working out his own neuroses.  The reason I think these
excesses are inappropriate is because I think there is already enough
emotion and excess written into the music for any more to need to be
added by the conductor and that any more that gets added becomes a
self-indulgence serving the conductor and not the composer.  For me the
best Mahler conductors are the ones that can allow the music to speak for
itself, allowing you to see the musical wood for the interpretative trees,
which I find I cannot do for too many great passages under Bernstein.

When I see people citing Bernstein first and foremost as a Mahler
interpreter I wonder how many others they have heard.  It isn't just
because I don't share their taste for Bernstein in this composer, (there
are other conductors of Mahler who are not to my taste too), it's that I
sometimes get the impression that Bernstein's particular "way" with Mahler
is accepted by more people as in some way definitive which, of course, it
isn't.  There's no definitive way to play any piece of music and this
applies to Mahler in spades.

Bernstein was a good and important interpreter of Mahler.  Anyone who
wants to know more about Mahler performances must listen to Bernstein
because he exemplifies the "interventionist" approach.  He was also an
important advocate of Mahler's music playing a key part in its final
renaissance and deserves his due.  Though nowhere near as great a part
as he would have liked the world to believe, or as many still appear to
believe.  He played his part (especially in the USA), but there were others
just as important and the "Mahler boom" is a lot more complex, a lot longer
in developing, than the view which would place one conductor at its head
gives it credit for.

Let me conclude by saying that there are recordings where he doesn't put
a foot wrong.  I love his Seventh and his Third.  Here he lets the music
speak for itself.

Tony Duggan,  England.
My (developing) Mahler recordings survey is at:
http://www.musicweb.force9.co.uk/music/Mahler/index.html