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richard barrett
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« Reply #135 on: 23:41:43, 18-03-2007 » |
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But Tony - what is it about the third movement that you don't like?
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Andy D
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« Reply #136 on: 23:42:18, 18-03-2007 » |
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Has anyone heard Schnittke's "completion" of the Piano Quartet? He adds a second movement which presumably takes some incomplete sketches, adds reminiscences of mt 1 and glues it all together with some wild, Schittke-esque expressionism. A bit of a culture shock after early Mahler, but worth listening to.
No I haven't, didn't know Schnittke had done this. As he's one of my favourite composers, I'd be interested to hear it - is it available at all? |
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richard barrett
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« Reply #137 on: 23:59:55, 18-03-2007 » |
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If nobody's going to say anything, I will. I don't really see the scherzo as a "buffer" between the second and fourth movements but as the central point of the work, which uses the scherzo/trio structure in an unprecedented way to juxtapose the dark character of the preceding movements (in the trios) with the more serene character of the following ones.
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Tony Watson
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« Reply #138 on: 00:08:23, 19-03-2007 » |
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Richard,
I did draft a reply but then I rejected it as I'm rather tired at the moment. Perhaps something is needed between the second and fourth movements (be it a buffer or a means of juxtaposition) but the length of the movement and the relatively weak themes mean that it fails for me. If you see it as the central point of the work, then length is no problem, but if it be so, then I think the whole symphony is diminished. When people think of the 5th, is it the third movement that first springs to mind? And remember that the fourth movement was an afterthought, so the third was not written with it in mind. If it does work, then that's a happy accident, perhaps?
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« Last Edit: 00:14:38, 19-03-2007 by Tony Watson »
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Bryn
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« Reply #139 on: 00:12:09, 19-03-2007 » |
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Richard and Ollie, the (Sony) Boulez recording of a three movement version of Da Kladende Lied is a bit of a kludge. They took his earlier recording of the later revision (in two movements) and tacked a new recording of the early first movement onto it. Nagano was, I think, the first to record the original version (with boy soprano, etc.) and I have to admit I find that version less than satisfactory. I much prefer the kludge version done by Rozhdestvenky at the Proms (issued on a BBC Classics CD a good few years back). Good ending. Really wakes you up, if you have drifted off.  |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #140 on: 00:13:22, 19-03-2007 » |
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I sort of wasn't saying anything because I've never had a problem with the 3rd movement... There's another rather important point to the overall form in that the D major chorale that finishes the piece has already been attempted (so to speak) at the end of the second movement but the music isn't ready for it so it collapses in a heap to be followed by that rather grisly D minor 'anti-climax'. The third and fourth movements are essential in giving the work a broader foundation, opening out from march to waltz and song if you like, or human to natural if you want to see it that way, before the 'happy ending' finally has something to rest on. The 'themes' of the second movement are surely the 'weakest' in purely melodic terms, aren't they? I certainly have no problem singing large swathes of the third movement but any attempt on my part to do that with the second soon collapses into generalised grunting.  |
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tonybob
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« Reply #141 on: 08:43:19, 19-03-2007 » |
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only by the way it is so saccharin. it is a convincing arrangement, though. |
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sososo s & i.
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richard barrett
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« Reply #142 on: 09:05:17, 19-03-2007 » |
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If you see it as the central point of the work, then length is no problem, but if it be so, then I think the whole symphony is diminished. When people think of the 5th, is it the third movement that first springs to mind? And remember that the fourth movement was an afterthought, so the third was not written with it in mind. If it does work, then that's a happy accident, perhaps?
I can't work out what's "weak" about the themes, I'm afraid, and I took Boulez and the VPO to bed with me last night just to check (although on the whole I do prefer some female company). But then some people think the 7th is Mahler's weakest symphony, and I'm not one of them. I don't think the fourth movement being added after the third really affects what I was saying about the third being a kind of alternation between the succeeding "mood" and the preceding one: the addition of the fourth movement surely supports my argument that the third is the centre around which the others are arranged in a kind of symmetrical formation, so that the fourth would have been conceived as completing and clarifying that formation. As for "happy accidents", part of compositional technique is, I'd say, creating situations where such "accidents" become more probable, even inevitable. |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #143 on: 09:18:54, 19-03-2007 » |
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Fourth movement as afterthought - after the third perhaps but surely not after the fifth (which quotes it)?
In case there's any uncertainty there I don't for a moment think the fourth movement is at all dispensible either. I have experienced the form of the whole piece as excessively exhausting but for that's a quality of certain performances which make the conclusions of the first and second movements too definitive rather than of the piece itself.
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richard barrett
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« Reply #144 on: 09:24:16, 19-03-2007 » |
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As I implied, for a composer there's no such thing as an afterthought - a piece of music is by default in a condition of evolution until the composer for whatever reason (and this may be fairly arbitrary) decides some kind of final form has been reached, about which he/she might subsequently have a change of heart anyway. The Fifth was subject to all kinds of changes and revisions even after its first performance, I believe.
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #145 on: 09:33:53, 19-03-2007 » |
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All the same: I'd be rather surprised if Mahler had written the fifth movement, then decided he needed a slow movement before it, took a throwaway theme from the fifth movement which was then still the fourth, slowed it down by half an order of magnitude and spun it out into the Adagietto.
As far as I know the changes to the fifth symphony were more in the way of tinkering with the orchestration, nowhere as near as extensive as the reordering of movements, changing of dynamics (and at one point octave for the whole string section), tweaking the melodic line that all happened in the sixth. I'd be very interested to hear otherwise of course.
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Tony Watson
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« Reply #146 on: 10:08:14, 19-03-2007 » |
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Oliver and Richard,
You both make very good cases for that movement. I just don't happen to like it and it's not necessary to like everything, even music that is widely acclaimed! For me, it fits in to the rest of the symphony in a similar way to the third movement of Brahms' fourth; but that's just a personal reaction. Perhaps I was over critical of the themes (the trio's not so bad) but even though we should expect Mahler's symphonies to embrace a very wide spectrum of life, the whooping, yodelling and whiff of lederhosen in that movement outstay their welcome for me. I'm busy at work today so I can't write any more but I might have another go tonight.
The processes of composition that you allude to are very interesting.
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richard barrett
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« Reply #147 on: 11:20:54, 19-03-2007 » |
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whiff of lederhosen You really don't like it, do you?  However, I'm sure there are those here for whom such an aroma would be more, er, beguiling. No, Ollie, I'm not aware that the revisions extended further than those you mention; but since there was such tinkering, perhaps it can be assumed that (unlike in the case of the 6th, as you say) Mahler felt the overall design was satisfactory. A feeling of superfluity about the scherzo could indeed also arise from a performance giving too much finality to the previous movement. (Which Boulez doesn't.) |
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oliver sudden
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« Reply #148 on: 13:04:57, 19-03-2007 » |
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A feeling of superfluity about the scherzo could indeed also arise from a performance giving too much finality to the previous movement. (Which Boulez doesn't.)
Indeed not. On the other hand I've seldom been able to listen to the DG Bernstein without at least a cup of tea and more often a couple of days between the second and third movements... |
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thompson1780
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« Reply #149 on: 13:43:05, 19-03-2007 » |
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whiff of lederhosen You really don't like it, do you? That's funny - I took it that Tony W meant it was just too much of a good thing! Tommo and his alpentusk |
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Made by Thompson & son, at the Violin & c. the West end of St. Paul's Churchyard, LONDON
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