I can't claim to be an expert on dreams or dream-states (as opposed to red or blue states
). But what you say about Mahler's harmony sort of represents the crisis of late romantic era music in general. Schoenberg takes this to even farther limits in his first three major works: Verklaerte Nacht; Gurrelieder, and Pelleas & Melisande. It's little wonder that Schoenberg felt that he had to take the next step, shedding music of tonal centers altogether. Schoenberg spoke of the "emancipation of dissonance", and viewed atonality as really being "pantonality". It was only later that he turned to serialism: 12 tone rows and their many transformations.
Tonality in Mahler is something that truly hasn't been written about enough, in my opinion. I watched Bernstein's didactic lecture, "The Little Drummer Boy" on DVD. To me, the most interesting part was when Bernstein was sitting at a piano in Tel Aviv, playing brief excerpts from "Des Knaben Wunderhorn". Bernstein was pointing out Mahler's frequent usage of the Phrygian mode to get the sort of minor-mode based, East European sound that he's looking (listening) for. That, in turn, is interesting in that the Phrygian mode is generally associated with music from Spain. When you hear Spanish music without already knowing what it is - let's say, you have your car radio on - and you say to yourself, "ahh, that's Spanish"; that's because of the unique and immediately identifiable tonal characteristics of the Phrygian mode. You don't have to know WHAT it is, but you already know what it sounds like. Mahler is far more subtle in his usage of the Phrygian mode. In fact, I doubt that Mahler ever said to himself, "ah-ha! I'll sneak in a little turn from the Phrygian mode here". He borrows notes - alterations to certain degrees within a minor scale (in other words, flatting or sharpening a tone) - from the Phrygian scale, in order to lend that certain sound that he wants; a sound that's at least somewhat associated with East European village life (assuming that one already knows something about Mahler's personal background). Those melodic alterations force implications for the harmony as well. Hence, Mahler's unique brand of late romantic tonality.
To me, that's the truly interesting part, because Mahler probably developed his own personal variant of late romantic tonality and functional harmony (same thing, I suppose), without being terribly conscious of how it was that he even did it. It's rather analogous to what people say about orchestration: every composer has his/her own trademark of orchestration, while often times not even being aware about what it is that they're doing that makes it sound unique. Mahler had to compose and orchestrate his music so quickly, that I'm sure that he never took much time to think about a "Mahler system" or approach to tonality and harmony. In fact, he probably spent greater time on the orchestration side of the equation.
I talk in these terms, rather than yours (and make no mistake, you do it very, VERY well!!), only because this might be the more objective way of addressing what it is you speak of. Harmonic analysis is something that can be objectively performed on any given score. Of course, as we reach the greater ambiguities of late romantic harmony, some chord progressions are subject to different interpretations - different ways of notating the analysis of specific chord progressions. That much can be subjective, to be certain. In my opinion, Mahler scholars need to be doing far more good-old harmonic analysis of his scores (including good-old motor mouth me!), and far less of the subjective blather that stems from how people "feel" about what they're hearing. But Mahler analysis is still very much in the, "wow! - that was cool! Let me tell you how that made me feel" stage. That, in of itself, is not a bad thing. It's one way of communicating to others and asking the question, "did you feel what I just felt?".
Obviously, however, the next step is to stop and ask the truly hard question: what specifically is it in Mahler's music that makes us feel the way that we feel? That's much tougher, because it requires a bit of knowledge of what happened previously in the history of western music, and what the specific elements are that make up music (in other words, you need to be schooled in music to at least some degree). To me, the uniqueness of Mahler can be mostly attributed to two major things:
his own variant of late romantic tonality (and thus, chord progressions); and, his own, very
progressive orchestration, which is almost immediately identifiable.
To elaborate on that thought, Mahler takes the large scale dynamics of Wagner (large forces), but puts his orchestration more in the context of Berlioz or late Dvorak (I'm thinking of the last symphonic poems). In other words, rather than relying so much on massive sonorities that are almost purely strings and brass oriented, Mahler was THE FIRST composer to give all four major sections of the late romantic symphony orchestra, equal weight and importance: strings, woodwinds, brass, and percussion. Even to this day, I believe that no other composer has done just that, better than Gustav Mahler (perhaps a few just as well). On top of all that, at times, Mahler displays a contrapuntal discipline that might do Bach or Beethoven proud.
But then Mahler takes this unique sound world - a sound world in which his music almost becomes "opera for orchestra", with the individual instruments given almost human and/or animal-like characteristics - and pours it into highly developed formal structures that greatly resemble Haydn and Beethoven symphonies. This is why Pierre Boulez uses the buzz-words "epic" and "narrative" when discussing Mahler.
Now, to come back to you, I think that your observations about Mahler's 10th are very interesting. I like this particular sentence: "
Look at all the different ways Mahler fractures time in the Tenth: the sudden shifts of topic and texture throughout, the meter of the first scherzo." Then you follow that with the truly tough question, the one that simply needs to be addressed more: "
These things are obvious, but what about the musical analogue of gravity, which (I would suggest) is tonality?". Indeed!
I think it's interesting that you associate this business of coming in and out of dream-states specifically with the 10th symphony. There's no question that the 10th was greatly surrounded by the hard reality of his marital crisis, bringing into question the whole business of men/women relationships (or these days, any combination of genders). As we all know, this type of marital crises - especially when infidelity is involved - can drive men or women to pathological madness: suicide and/or murder. The point being, they're terribly powerful. Yet, at the same time, it's clear that Mahler wanted to keep moving forward, musically speaking.
Unfortunately, we don't know how any of this would have played out. We don't know with any certainty, what direction Mahler would have taken his music had he lived further. We also don't know how he and Alma would have resolved their marital crisis (death solved it for them!). And, perhaps even more important, we don't know how Mahler would have responded to the great European melt-downs that were basically just around the corner. Would he have stayed in America? Would he have quit composing? If not, what would his future music sound like? WE DON'T KNOW. But the world kept turning, and there were plenty of other composers who came along, perhaps better equipped to deal with the break down of old European structures than Mahler (not to mention the holocaust).
No doubt, it was all this obvious ambiguity about the future, that lent to this feeling of weaving in and out of dream states in Mahler's 10th symphony.
Barry
