on M10 program notes by David Matthews

[barry guerrero]

The Noseda M10 has excellent program notes by David Matthews - the best I've read on the Cooke version. As most of you probably know, Cooke's 2nd and 3rd versions contain some contributions - changes in orchestration, minor pastiche composing - from the Matthews brothers; David and Colin. David Matthews acknowledges, perhaps for the first time by anybody, that Goldschmidt did much of the orchestration for Deryck Cooke. This makes sense, but Goldschmidt often times voices his woodwinds the opposite of what Mahler often times did himself. Namely, Mahler frequently exploited the upper range of the clarinets, while voicing the oboes in their middle and lower range. Goldschmidt frequently does the opposite: high oboes, low clarinets. This leads to a somewhat uncharacteristic sound, especially in the first scherzo, which D. Matthews acknowledges as being "the basket case" (my description, not his) of the five movements.

Correctly - in my belief - Matthews states that Mahler undoubtedly would have greatly revised the first scherzo. This is where I have a problem with many of the other completions: those folks took a lot of time and trouble to rework the second scherzo - which really doesn't need much help, just as it stands - but basically excepted the first scherzo as is. More importantly, D. Matthews discusses and defends the contributions that he and has brother made to the Cooke score.

Matthews explains that he - and his brother - would meet with Cooke for hours, even over the smallest adjustments to the score. In other words, nothing was done hastily, or without Cooke's serious consideration. Thank goodness for that! But here's precisely where I have a difference of opinion with Matthews.

Matthews states that he talked Cooke into expanding the orchestra from triple woodwinds and brass (3 of each), to quadruple woodwinds and brass (4 of each). Using "DLvdE" as a model, he confesses that he - and his brother - convinced Cooke to reduce the tuba part in places, and replace it with the 4th trombone instead. The idea was, more or less, to make the tuba solo that opens the fifth movement, more of a surprise. But this is very falacious thinking on their part. In all of the symphonies where Mahler employs a fourth trombone, the tuba is kept very busy indeed. In the sixth symphony - the most low brass heavy of them all - Mahler doesn't even use the fourth trombone until the finale. In the third symphony, Mahler's useage of a fourth trombone is mainly to allow him to put two players on a part (where he divides them into two-part harmony). The entire brass chorale in the sixth movement of M3, for example, has the trombones split into two-part harmony. This explains why many of the louder and more climactic moments in the two scherzos of M10 don't have more tuba on the bottom (often times, none). In my mind, this is a fairly major mistake in a Mahler symphony that is going to have four trombones and four trumpets employed (and ideally, the horns should be expanded from four to six - just like in the fifth symphony).

Well, getting back to the first scherzo, in addition to six horns, it's my belief that the movement cries out for two sets of timpani with almost an entire scale of notes available to the players at any given time (hence, cutting down on retuning). Obviously, that means that I would greatly expand their contribution, but not with double rolls (which aren't not necessary). That's not to mention the complete revision of the first scherzo that D. Matthews admits is necessary (and of course, the Cooke camp argues that only Mahler himself could have made those revisions). I'm not advocating that somebody should do a major revision of the first scherzo - a recomposing job - but I do believe that it badly needs to be reorchestrated in its current state. Your thoughts?

[Leo K]

Well Barry, I agree something needs to be done with Scherzo #1....especially at the very beginning but I'm not sure what would work there yet.  Did you once mention bassoons or contra-bassoons to start the movement off?  I wish I had a score to really study the issues closely!  You also have told me a better transition into the trio is needed, and I agree...it's not too bad as is, but it would be fun to tinker with it a bit.  I'm pretty happy with what Carpenter and Samale/Macuzza has done with it, and both have improved my liking of this movement greatly.

Along with the extra timpani I think tam tam would be nice, used with subtlety of course right near the beginning possibly.

--Todd

[barry guerrero]

Yes, I did suggest that (bassoons at the start of M10/II; played loudly, and with trills). I think that the horns clucking along in their muddy sounding middle register just isn't a typical Mahlerian sound. I like how the first scherzo is done on this Noseda recording; it's a bit slower, but it's also very rhythmic. That works well with the incredibly uncharacteristic orchestration for M10/II - as it currently exists - with lots of high strings and horns constantly dovetailing each other. My thought is to make the start more woodwind oriented - somewhat like the start of the "Rite of Spring" - and use the low strings more to propel things along; removing some of the awkward and rather unnecessary counterpoint that keeps dogging the melodic line as well. Sadly, in this case, the dovetailing lines aren't so much counterpuntal in the J.S. Bach sense of the term, but just an ongoing immitation of the melodic line, offset by a couple of beats. In a sense, those immitating lines are just muddying up the works. My idea is to make things so that the first scherzo can go comfortably at a somewhat faster pace, and not sound muddy and weird at the same time. Think of the "Rite Of Spring", and think of the R-B from M9 as well. In the R-B, there's really not that much counterpoint - some, but not gobs of it.

The melodic line in the R-B is constantly broken up over various wind solos; wind tutis; wind doublings; solo violin, etc. It's never just horns and high strings. Down below, the low strings are constantly playing sort of broken arppegio figures: leaping around octaves; fifths; thirds - that sort of thing. This helps to keep everybody on beat, and simply propel things along. I'm convinced, given the time, Mahler would have revised M10/II more in this direction, and less as a poor immitation of M4/II, as well as sounding like M5/III in the more climactic moments. To put this another way, in the R-B of M9, Mahler spreads out his orchestration so that more stuff is happening up high - with lots of shifting of color - and down low at the same time. In contrast to that, everything in M10/II is bunched up too much in the middle range, with not enough contrasting colors. Harmonizations and voicings need to be opened up more, and there needs to be far more exploitation of different wind colorings on the melodic line. In short, in needs to be more kaleidoscopic.

Of course, I'm talking about how I would get M10/II started, and how I would "set the tone" for it, so to speak. There's the whole issue of how the movement develops, and what it is that it's really leading up to. Fortunately, it's only 12 minutes long, because nothing gets truly resolved until the very end; which, quite obviously, also badly needs to be reorchestrated as well. More on all this later. I need to run.