Much ado about Mahler

So, I ended up going to a concert at the Queensland Conservatorium last night which featured Mahler's 5th Symphony.

I'm here to tell you:   I officially do not care for this composer's work.   I've heard something of his once before at a concert, but I forget what.  I think this is the first time I sat through a whole symphony, though.

I take it from the notes on the program that he was into creating innovative work that might not be understood for another 50 years.  Well, we've gone 120 years and I still don't get it.   

From what I can gather (and I am speaking a music illiterate who just goes to concerts and "knows what he likes," and then tries to justify his gut reaction later), the fourth movement (a string-y romantic love poem for his much younger wife) is famous, sort of conventional, and much admired.  It seems to have escaped my attention entirely until last night, but I thought it entirely underwhelming.   Why is it popular?

Out of the 5 movements, I thought the 3rd was the most interesting and pleasing.   As for the 5th and final movement - talk about a composition in search of a final climax!  There were so many points where it seemed to be building to an end, only to flitter away again.  I know, I have felt this about other classical pieces at times, but for this one it felt particularly acute.

The basic problem I have with the whole piece is the sense of a lack of direction, or structure, or ...something? There are portions that are good and pleasing enough (and pretty loud - if you like it when an orchestra gets dramatically loud [and I do] - there are some good bits), but the thing just doesn't seem to hang together in any pleasing way.  I think that some orchestral players may like the way he does give every part of the orchestra a big role at different times - the students playing last night seemed really happy at the end - but that's not enough to satisfy me, in the audience.

Happily, the internet being the internet, Google searching the topic "I find Mahler completely overrated" shows me that I am not alone - even people who don't understand why that 4th movement is considered good:

it feels like his music sounded better on paper than in reality.For example, the legendary Adagietto from Symphony no. 5 didn't move me that much - in fact, sounded kind of cliché to my ears.

(Actually, it didn't move me at all.)   

It would seem that Reddit contains a fair bit of pro- and anti- (or at least, not getting) Mahler argument, both sides saying they don't understand the other.   But it's good to find people much more familiar with music than me sharing what was just my gut reaction:

Often when I listen to something by him for the first time I have a hard time making much of it. There often doesn't seem to be an obvious sense of direction or a clear emotional implication at any given moment like you would find in Beethoven/Mozart etc.

Or this:

Also, I feel like a lot of Mahler's music doesn't have much of a sense of momentum. Yea, he might make this part faster or louder than that part, but music by composers like Bach, Beethoven, or Brahms, seem to have an intrinsic sense of momentum and development. Brahms never has to force the music to go from here to there, it just happens naturally. Something about Mahler's music feels forced to me.

Yes, exactly.

As for Mahler as a person, here he is, looking stern, as I guess all classical composers usually do:

 Curious things Wiki tells me about him:  

*   his parents had 14 children (!), a lot even in those days, surely;

*   he was big on German philosophy:

Mahler developed interests in German philosophy, and was introduced by his friend Siegfried Lipiner to the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustav Fechner and Hermann Lotze. These thinkers continued to influence Mahler and his music long after his student days were over. Mahler's biographer Jonathan Carr says that the composer's head was "not only full of the sound of Bohemian bands, trumpet calls and marches, Bruckner chorales and Schubert sonatas. It was also throbbing with the problems of philosophy and metaphysics he had thrashed out, above all, with Lipiner."^[18]

 (Maybe I can blame a fondness for Nietzsche as ruining his music...heh.)

*  What a surprise, he could be a jerk:

In spite of numerous theatrical triumphs, Mahler's Vienna years were rarely smooth; his battles with singers and the house administration continued on and off for the whole of his tenure. While Mahler's methods improved standards, his histrionic and dictatorial conducting style was resented by orchestra members and singers alike.^[67] In December 1903 Mahler faced a revolt by stagehands, whose demands for better conditions he rejected in the belief that extremists were manipulating his staff.^[68]

*  He did face a lot of anti-Semitism though, so he sometimes had reason to be cranky.

*  This was mentioned last night - he married a woman 19 years younger than him who was already a pianist and composer of some talent (they did some of her songs last night, as it happens), but as part of the marriage deal was that he insisted she stop composing.  As Wiki explained:

Alma soon became resentful because of Mahler's insistence that there could only be one composer in the family and that she had given up her music studies to accommodate him. "The role of composer, the worker's role, falls to me, yours is that of a loving companion and understanding partner ... I'm asking a very great deal – and I can and may do so because I know what I have to give and will give in exchange."^[91] She wrote in her diary: "How hard it is to be so mercilessly deprived of ... things closest to one's heart."^[92]

Huh.

Anyway, that's it for my amateur take on a classic.   Maybe the Ring cycle ruined him a bit for me - classical music that was, more or less, going somewhere, even it if was 15 hours!  I see that in fact Mahler was big on Wagner:

Along with many music students of his generation, Mahler fell under the spell of Richard Wagner, though his chief interest was the sound of the music rather than the staging. It is not known whether he saw any of Wagner's operas during his student years.^[14]

It says he became a leading interpreter of Wagner.  Did they ever meet?   Not exactly:

 It was on 02-03-1876 at a performance of Lohengrin in the Vienna State Opera. ... Mahler saw Wagner in the wardrobe, but as a young student (aged 16) and admirer he did not have the courage to talk to him. It was the second time Wagner conducted his Lohengrin.

Wait!   I was about to end this now meandering post, when I find that even his wife didn't think much of his work, and was very upset that he demanded she stop composing:

On her part, Alma moderately appreciated Mahler’s music: she wrote in her journal “As a composer, I do not believe in him very much”. When she received Mahler’s letter on Friday, the 20th of December 1901, her heart froze “Surrender my music? Give up the reason I have lived for until now? My first reaction was to refuse. I cried, I couldn’t help it, because I had just realized I loved him”. Alma finally said yes and agreed to give up her vocation – she would however keep a grudge against her husband her entire life.

Also - he once had a long consultation with Freud:

In 1910, he was shaken by an uncontrollable burst of depression when he discovered his wife Alma was having an affair with Walter Gropius. Divorce was out of the question. Mahler thus looked for help with Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. The treatment was too brief though (a sole four-hour discussion-walk) to show results.

Ah, just another typically dramatic life for a temperamental artistic type.   I mean, how many of them ever have a life that was simple and pretty straight forward?   "Met his wife at age 20, married and remained devoted to each other until his death at the age of 75, enjoying good health, financial success and the company of his family until then".  

Fin.