BBC Radio 3 programme - "Beautiful Death"

[Penny]

I wondered whether members of this forum might be interested in a 45-minute programme broadcast on BBC Radio 3 last Sunday, "Beautiful Death", which is about Mahler's view of death and how it tied in with contemporary Viennese ideas.  Here's the link - I hope it works!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0505m8k

[barry guerrero]

Hi Penny. I've only listened half-way through (got to run), but it's quite interesting. According to the Jens Malte Fischer biography, Mahler was extremely detached and un-talkative when Bruno Walter visited him for the last time. At that point, Mahler realized that there would be no recovery from his terminal illness. He wasn't interested in hearing 'happy' small talk, nor unrealistic 'grand plans' for the future. It must have been very hard and awkward for Walter. Anyway, I think the description of a 'farewell trilogy' as opposed to a 'death trilogy' is very accurate in describing those last works. I like how this very topic is handled in the Ken Russell "Mahler" movie.

In the movie, Mahler says, "death, death, DEATH - that's all anybody ever talks about these days". Later, he tells the black woman on the train (African English?), "in place of the word death, madam, you should insert the word love. My Ninth Symphony is a farewell to love". I like to think that these scenes are far closer to the truth than most folks care to acknowledge.

[barry guerrero]

Later on  .    .    .

Very interesting. I think bringing up Freud's late preoccupation with death - then putting it into context - was particularly interesting. I think much of the Viennese alleged obsession with death can be partly explained in a geo-political context. In the early 20th century, the Austro-Hungarian Empire did not share the same sort of upward, expansionist and 'positive attitude' outlook as that of Hohenzollern Germany. Hapsburg liberalism was beginning to feel extreme pressure from the numerous nationalities within the empire, as well as experiencing a sudden rise in antisemitism, due in large part to a sizable and rapid influx of lower class Jews from Silesia into Vienna. This was bound to feed into Viennese complacency and a general feeling of malaise.  Thus, a prevailing sense that the empire was doomed and everything would eventually change was pervasive. It's little wonder that the Viennese held on to their time-honored rituals and traditions surrounding death - there was going to be a hell of a lot of it.

Much, I believe, can be explained in an old saying about the differences between Austrians and Germans: A German says that the situation is serious but not hopeless, while an Austrian says that the situation is hopeless but not serious. Hence, the ongoing Viennese balls and Strauss waltzes. All of that doesn't mean so much in today's more homogenized Europe.

[Penny]

Thank you for that, Barry – it’s interesting.  I must confess to not being familiar with many of the political aspects of this, including the sizeable influx of Jews contributing to anti-Semitism.  I’m currently wrestling with Jens Malte Fischer’s book, which goes into some of the political background, but in some parts is not at all an easy read!

One thing that did come out of this programme for me is, although it’s impossible to apportion blame, the idea of Alma’s stressing of the “three blows of fate” that felled Mahler, as a possible diversionary tactic against her own role in his demise, something I must confess hadn’t occurred to me.

[barry guerrero]

The whole, "three hammer-blows of fate" thing is such utter nonsense in several ways. Mostly it helped Alma to explain the sixth symphony to herself, and putting the "Kindertotenlieder" into context - for her. Mahler himself stated that the Kinderlieder were not songs about the death of children in a literal sense but about death in general, and our (humans) relationship to death: how we deal with it; how we observe it; how we process it. In other words, it's a metaphor or allegory for death in a more general sense (and hence, it's really about Ruckert). The much maligned Ken Russell movie goes into this detail in a rather fanciful way, but it makes its point.

The worst problem with the 'three hammerblows of fate' concept is that it has the reduced the sixth symphony to being a 'biographical' symphony in the minds of the majority of listeners. There's obviously some biographical element to most works by Mahler, but the sixth symphony is a "tragic" symphony in a more general, 'universal' sense. Mahler even approved of the 'tragic' subtitle. It's far more accurate to think of the sixth symphony as being a sort of Greek tragedy - where the tragic experience is meant to be a cathartic experience - or as something of a warning as to where the world was heading in the most general sense - something that many intellectuals (thinking people) foresaw at that same time. This makes even more sense if you think of symphonies six through eight as being a 'darkness to light' trilogy (with the fifth symphony serving as a sort of model for that trilogy). Whether they were planned as a trilogy or not is really rather irrelevant.

There's another story which makes the biographical element of the sixth symphony quite false. When Mahler premiered the 6th in Essen, he was in a worked-up, almost hysterical state. It wasn't just Alma who had observed this. Yet, when Mahler performed the sixth a year later in Munich, he was rather jovial and focused more on musical matters, particularly the percussion. He may have even left something of a musical clue by having the Liszt piano concerto #1 performed on the same concert. Jonathan Nott goes into great detail on this point in the notes to his recording of M6 (Tudor label).

For anyone who knows the 6th symphony rather well - and especially if you're a score reader - it's clear that Mahler most likely dropped the third hammer-stroke for purely musical reasons. After all, the finale originally had five hammerstrokes! Mahler - allegedly - had spoken about the first hammer-blow being the strongest, and the next two getting progressively weaker. Yet, when Mahler revised the symphony, he offered the optional reinforcement of the second hammer-stroke with cymbals and tam-tam (the bass drum is there in both versions). Most conductors take advantage of that option. Evidence that the Mahler dropped the third stroke for superstitious reasons simply doesn't exist.

I don't think that Alma created the ' three strikes, you're out!' concept as a way to cover her tracks as much as it was simply a biographical tool in helping to explain her life with Mahler to herself. That's just an opinion on my part.