Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Mahler & Me
I came late to Mahler. Despite learning to play an instrument from the age of 9, and pursuing my interest in music through to a degree in Music Theory & Composition, with even a few years as a professional musician (before cowardly deciding to earn my living through other means), I didn’t really discover Mahler until I was 45 (in 2008).
I think this due to some intimidation regarding what I’d heard about the length of his symphonies, and some idea that they would just be heavy, Germanic, bombastic, and not particularly harmonically interesting. I don’t know where I got this idea from – but I was wrong! (Well, right about the length, but not the other points).
The revelation came to me when listening one day to the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Desert Island Discs’, where a person of note gets to select the 8 tracks they’d like to have with them if they were shipwrecked indefinitely on a desert island.
One day last year they had a film composer on (sorry, I can’t remember who) and his playlist sounded like it could have come from me! There was an eclectic mix of jazz & classical, Miles & Bach, just my sort of stuff – and then he played the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5th symphony: one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard.
And from that, my curiosity was peaked, and I’ve spent the time since then gathering recordings of all his symphonies, as well as several study/full scores to read & follow, and most of the acclaimed biographies and books about him (eg: The Mahler Companion, Adorno’s work, etc.). So now I feel I have a pretty good overview of the man & his music.
I think this due to some intimidation regarding what I’d heard about the length of his symphonies, and some idea that they would just be heavy, Germanic, bombastic, and not particularly harmonically interesting. I don’t know where I got this idea from – but I was wrong! (Well, right about the length, but not the other points).
The revelation came to me when listening one day to the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘Desert Island Discs’, where a person of note gets to select the 8 tracks they’d like to have with them if they were shipwrecked indefinitely on a desert island.
One day last year they had a film composer on (sorry, I can’t remember who) and his playlist sounded like it could have come from me! There was an eclectic mix of jazz & classical, Miles & Bach, just my sort of stuff – and then he played the Adagietto from Mahler’s 5th symphony: one of the most beautiful pieces of music I’ve ever heard.
And from that, my curiosity was peaked, and I’ve spent the time since then gathering recordings of all his symphonies, as well as several study/full scores to read & follow, and most of the acclaimed biographies and books about him (eg: The Mahler Companion, Adorno’s work, etc.). So now I feel I have a pretty good overview of the man & his music.
Labels: classical music, Mahler, symphonies, symphony
# posted by memarkiam @ 6:51 pm 
