What do you think makes Mahler's music appeal to you?

[john haueisen]

What is it that sets Mahler's music apart?   
Why do you prefer much of his music over other composers, for example, such as Mozart, Brahms, or Beethoven?  Just what is it that drew us to the Mahler community?

[david johnson]

it's just a musical language i enjoy.

dj

[chris]

To oversimplify:  I like that Mahler's music can be so bizarre yet so accessible.   

[Amphissa]

I know it is not the politically correct thing to say on this board, but I don't prefer Mahler's music over Brahms and Beethoven. I enjoy his music, yes, when I am in the mood for his music. But I also like to listen to chamber music, and I like solo piano music, and concerti with piano, cello or violin, and I feel a strong affinity to Russian music, and some opera.

Mahler is just one composer, and unfortunately, a composer with a very limited purview.

However, having said all that, my answer to your question is -- I like Mahler because of his talent for making the "over the top" grandiose statement. He is so extreme, so invested in what he felt compelled to say musically, that some of his symphonies are just wondrous to experience. I don't want to hear them every day, or even every week. But when I'm in the mood for that sort of thing, no other composer will do.

[barry guerrero]

I think Chris has distilled the answer for me to its most basic expression:

"To oversimplify:  I like that Mahler's music can be so bizarre yet so accessible"

.    .     .    very well put!

 

[Vatz Relham]

What is it that sets Mahler's music apart?   
Why do you prefer much of his music over other composers, for example, such as Mozart, Brahms, or Beethoven?  Just what is it that drew us to the Mahler community?

Mahler's music appeals to me on very many levels:

Purly muiscal, great orchestration, melodic, complex and sophisticated.
Emotional, Spiritual, profound insights into human existence.

His music is the complete package, it has it all, and no other composer I know has that, and I do listen to a lot of other music.

Vatz

[Ivor]

   It was his melodiousness,initially,for me. Sometimes,the music is a continuous (as distinct from continual) stream of melody.

   Then A huge penny dropped,and I was more affected by mahler's than anyone else's music. So he produced genuinely powerful effects on me.

   At some point it became a matter of his 'speaking to me' where others didn't,as tho' I was on his wavelength.


   Incidentally,tho' he's first in my personal pantheon,I think not an iota less of anyone for whom that is not true. If it were true,life might turn out to be very,very,boring.

   Different strokes for different folks.

   I think it's great if someone places another composer ahead;it'll be a further opportunity for me to acquire a new pleasure in life.

[Jot N. Tittle]

I was more affected by mahler's than anyone else's music.

This may be the essential difference between those who are drawn to Mahler's music and those who merely tolerate it or can't tolerate it.

More specifically, for me, it is his musical expression of the human condition (love, life, death) in a beautiful but care-less world. I was hooked on Mahler when I first heard the seventh "ewig" fade away. His music reflects and stirs my emotions more than other composers' works do.

    . & '