Hello again. I'm the guy who asked a few weeks about about the Mahler "revival" in the 60s. This DVD was mentioned, and I got it from Netflix. It's from Carnegie Hall, broadcast Feb. 7, 1960. Of course, it's wonderful! 
And since I've transcribed much of it, as I work on the article I'm writing for the Asheville Symphony program to prepare audiences for the M4, I thought some of you might enjoy reading (and commenting on) Bernstein's narration. It's especially relevant now, as we approach Mahler's 150th birthday, since it commemorated his 100th... … (conducts opening of the M4) I bet there isn’t a person in this whole Carnegie Hall who knows what that music is. Or maybe some of you do, because you’ve peeked at your program, and know that today’s concert is about a composer called Gustav Mahler. But who is this Mahler? Has any one of you ever heard of him? I’ll bet not, or at least only very few of you. See, Mahler isn’t one of those big popular names like Beethoven or Gershwin or Ravel. But he’s sure famous among music lovers. In fact, we’re playing an awful lot of Mahler these days right here at the Philharmonic – there’s one of his pieces on every program for at least 2 months! And the reason is that this year is his 100th birthday. Imagine, he would have been 100 years old in July if he were still alive. And so we’re having this long birthday party for him, by playing his music every week. And I thought, why shouldn’t you be invited to this party too, and celebrate with us? That’s why we’re going to talk about Mahler today, and play some of his music for you. There’s also another very special reason why we should be celebrating Mahler’s music here. And that is that 50 years ago, he was the conductor of this very same New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Of course, it wasn’t called the Philharmonic then, and it certainly wasn’t made up of the same players who are sitting here today. But they gave many beautiful concerts with Mahler right here on this same stage of Carnegie Hall, and I’m very proud to stand here on the same stage with the same great orchestra, because Mahler was one of the greatest conductors that ever lived. Of course, I never heard him conduct myself, but everyone who did hear him said he was simply marvelous.
Now there are some people - a lot of them - who say that Mahler may have been a very fine conductor, but that he wasn’t so hot as a composer. Some people say that Mahler’s own music sounds too much like all the composers he used to conduct, like Mozart and Schubert and Wagner and all the other composers belonging to his German tradition, and that he just remembered their music, and imitated it, when he wrote his own. And they say that anyway, a conductor’s head is too full of everyone else’s music, so how can he write original stuff of his own?
Naturally, I don’t agree with these people at all. I think Mahler’s music is terrific, and very original too, and I’m sure you’ll agree when you hear it. Still, I admit it’s a problem to be both a conductor and a composer. There never seems to be enough time and energy to be both things. I ought to know, because I have the same problem myself. And that’s one of the reasons I’m so sympathetic to Mahler. I understand his problem. It’s like being two different men locked up in the same body. One man is a conductor, and the other a composer, and they’re both one fellow called Mahler… or Bernstein. It’s like being a double man.
But for him - Mahler - the problem was even worse. He was a double man in every single part of his musical life. And today we’re going to try to get a picture in our minds of this double man by listening to his music and discovering how the battle between those two different Mahlers inside him made his music come out sounding the original way it does. Now, for instance, you take that happy music we played a little while ago, which was the beginning of his Fourth Symphony. You remember those merry Christmas-y sleigh bells at the beginning. (conducts) And you remember that lovely graceful melody that sounds like the happiest sort of Mozart tune. (conducts) And you remember this other gay tune which is full of high spirits, like when you whistle, when you feel on top of the world. (conducts) Well, you might not believe it, but the man who wrote all of that jolly stuff was one of the most unhappy people in history! And the reason he was so miserable was exactly because of that battle that was always going on inside him.
In this very same symphony, which is so happy and so delightful, every once in a while you will hear this sad crying voice, the other Mahler’s voice, as if his heart were breaking, right in the middle of all that happiness and gaiety. Like this part in the third movement of this symphony. (conducts) Now is that heartbroken-sounding music the real Mahler, or is it the other happy sleigh bell music? No, they’re both Mahler – they’re voices of the two different people inside him.
Then of course you’ll say, well, doesn’t every composer go from happy to sad and back again - I mean, it’s true of Mozart and Beethoven and Bach, isn’t it? Yes, but no composer goes quite so
far in each direction – so happy, and so sad. When Mahler is sad, it’s a complete sadness. Nothing can comfort him. Like a weeping child. And when he’s happy, he’s happy the way a child is, all the way. That’s one the keys to this Mahler puzzle – he
is like a child. The feelings are extreme, exaggerated, like young people’s feelings. That’s another reason why it’s so specially right to have you young people to come to this birthday celebration. I think young people can understand Mahler’s feelings even better than old ones. And once you understand that secret to his music, the voice of the child, you can really love his music.
So that’s the main secret about him. He was struggling all of his life to recapture the pure, unmixed, overflowing emotions of childhood. I’m sure you’ve all had emotions like that, like that filled-up feeling that nature sometimes makes you have, especially in the spring, when you almost want to cry because everything is so beautiful. Well, Mahler’s music is full of those feelings, and full of the sounds of nature, like bird calls and hunting horns, and forest murmurs, which are all part of his idea of beauty, childlike beauty. Here was this grownup, very sophisticated, learned man, with children of his own, and a heart full of struggle between the different voices fighting inside him, always trying to feel pure and innocent again, like a child. And that too is one of the battles he had – the battle of the double man, half man and half child.
We’re going to play for you now the last movement of this fourth symphony – the whole movement – because it’s a perfect example of what we’ve been talking about, it’s like a man’s dream of childhood, quiet, peaceful, contented, but it’s done with the knowing art of a grownup man. This music is sung as well as played – it uses a soprano who sings, in German of course, a charming poem about how heaven is going to be when we all get there, whoever of us is going to get there, that is. And naturally, it’s a child’s dream of how heaven is going to be. And the voice that sings it must be light and clear and young, like a child’s voice. (He reads a translation of the poem, then leads the orchestra with soprano Reri Grist in the 4th movement of M4.)
… But there were still more battles going on in this Mahler. He was even divided geographically, between belonging to the east and belonging to the west. Imagine – even those two forces were at war in him. You see, he was born in the country called Bohemia, which we now call Czechoslovakia, and that country is smack in the center of Europe, between the west and the east. So Mahler carried in him memories of both sides, the songs and the history, the manners and customs, the ways of thinking and feeling, of both east and west. Now the western side of him naturally drew him to western musical styles, so his music shows the influence of Mozart and Schubert and Wagner, and all the great German and Austrian composers. But his eastern side drew him to other musical ideas, like gyspy, and Slavic, and Jewish ideas, which are also based on eastern folk music. And even so far as Chinese musical ideas. He loved Chinese poetry and Chinese philosophy, and the sounds of Chinese music, and his own music shows it. Right in the middle of this same 4th symphony, with all its German, Mozartean and Schubertian sounds, suddenly there comes this pecular Chinese tune. (conducts flutes in 3d movement) Now imagine that absolutely primitive Chinese tune in the middle of a big Austrian symphony. And the strangest thing is that when Mahler, after writing eight big Austrian symphonys, came to write his greatest and best-known work, the Song of the Earth, he based that whole long piece on, of course, Chinese ideas. …
Topic: Bernstein's Young People's Mahler DVD (Read 8486 times)