Mahler 2nd Symphony at the Chan Centre with the UBC Symphony last evening or - what's enormously long and has scales?

"The idea of suffering and redemption, 

expressed with overblown egoistic self-assuredness, 

is as youthful as a hangover."

I cried, etc etc, it was amazing!! so powerful - exciting! emphatic!! (see Mahler's m.s., of his first symphony, featuring exclamation marks, above) and yet…

I am in what appears to be a tiny minority that thinks Mahler has Emperors’ Wardrobe Syndrome (or Philip Glass syndrome if you like) - a condition whereby not-very-good musical materials are dressed up and presented, somehow acquiring the adulation of the majority, preying on its pretentiousness, putting the 'phony' in 'symphony.

I looked around the web today to see what other curmudgeons might be daring to express the same opinion - and I found some notable critics, among them Kingsley Amis. No, I am not alone.

I do, however, love Mahler's 2nd, for all its failings; the emergence of the soprano in the Auferstehn NEVER FAILS to tear me up. It’s also a passage to my youth. I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard it: the Wilson Library, wearing small black headphones, reading the analysis of the motifs, my 19-year-old egotism resonating furiously with this shallow yet gargantuan work. (I also remember exactly where I was when JFK was shot: that obviously does not make it a good thing!)

The idea of suffering and redemption, expressed with overblown egoistic self-assuredness, is as youthful as a hangover.

What caused Mahler's symphonies? 

Several things come to my mind: the enormous orchestral resources must be a reflection of the rise of the Austro Hungarian Empire, with its leader Emperor Franz Josef happening to be a person of artistic temperament. I was rather disappointed in Vienna when I discovered that the ancient and venerable buildings in the heart of town were actually built just over 100 years ago (there may be houses in Vancouver older than the palaces of the Vienna Centrum). The militarism required to maintain an empire must have given rise to lots of organized music making, mostly among brass and percussion. The brass chorale in Sym 2-mov 5 may owe itself to that. 

The ambient music of Vienna in the 1870-s must have included, among the gala waltzes, frequent military parades, which the young Mahler would have been excited about. The military passages are not present in his work as a commentary on militarism (that’s our contemporary revisionist thinking at work), but because he liked that sort of thing!  The Arabic or Asiatic modes which provide occasional colour, and the frequent use of solo violin, speak to me of the lands to the East of the Danube, with their Gypsy influence. 

Cuckoo clocks, nursery rhymes, folk songs, military marches, bird calls (can somebody SHOOT that bird?), scales, big bangs, and incessant use of chord tones and intervals such as mordents and turns: these are its gems. The settings are opulent and impressive, but the material being set is in most cases trivial. Wagner's lietmotif structure is far more subtle, profound, and melodically inspired.

BUT I LOVE IT.  I don't love that I love it, but I do. I love it in spite of, or possibly even because of, its blustering and blundering human ego coating its shrinking human frailty.

More swirling thoughts

Again, during book 2 #24:

-should Bach be fingered as organ music, with finger sustain requiring continuous finder-substitution? (I say YES but who the eff am I?)
-can I 'invent' a memorization technique where you close your eyes then reopen them at intervals, letting the motor memory "flywheel" over the spot where the visual cue is made unavailable?
-is it sensible to claim that a melody could be as expressively and magically performed using a single finger on alternate hands? (this from the very difficult division of the octave leaps in this fugue when countersubjects are occurring above and below the subject!!) and might this be a consciousness-raising exercise which would happily explore the inequalities of the left and right sides and help them compensate? (Liszt's "Un Sospiro" would bear out this eccentric-seeming claim) i.e. play scales with alternate thumbs? third fingers?
-could I assemble all my random knowledge and experience and develop a beginners' approach where the kids would have fun and really excel? wow, what a thought. I think that's EEEEGGGGGOOOOO talking. OK, stalled long enough! off to take initial mechanical readthrough of C# minor book 1 (I analysed it in counterpoint classes in the 70's).

swirling thoughts

First, it amazes me when the motor memory starts to take off, and your ever-seeking creative mind can launch itself off into some other activity besides monitoring and - sometimes - interfering with the neurophysical process of performing the notes. Thoughts that ran through my mind when rehearsing the last fugue, the B minor (of course) book 2 (of course):
-could I get a masters in piano performance at UBC?
-how can I motivate my favourite student to bring more discipline and accomplishment to his work (and more credibility to me!)?
-could there be a metronome which is non-metronomic, i.e. will play its beats with slight variation, as would a conductor? Or which really breaks the pattern and 'listens' to the pianist - and does things like slowing down as the player gets louder (counteracting my intuitive pattern of adding excitement by getting louder AND faster)?
More to follow next post. OK, curb your enthusiasm!! don't you want a ringside seat to the addled brain function and tumbling thoughts of a classical piano addict?

finger independance, and Chopin's boot camp

Chopin gave his new students the 48 preludes and fugues to work on independence and control. That's reassuring - that with all the suggestions and approached available, you can give yourself the "Chopin" boot camp. The fact that the requirements in both hands are virtually identical means that if you have one hand that's better than another (as I do) the good hand can teach the worse one. Also, Bach sounds good at slower speeds, as the logic and beauty of the counterpoint still shows itself.

I'm hoping that by getting some "Bach fingers" I can get more clarity and control in my other pieces. When I briefly jump over to, for instance, the Scriabin 4th sonata (2nd movement), I believe this is happening. I'd describe this as 'wiping the mist off a mirror' - what you see (hear) is now more clear and defined.

The Bach 48 show promise as being a definite route to excellence of expression and communication in other composers, as well as a way to acquire new and interesting repertoire.

01 05

OK, lads, (especially Ted), here goes.

I have been going after a relaxed, fluid, reliable, pain-free competent piano technique since about 2001, and it's never broken free. I'm really ambitious as you can tell from some of these past lunatic episodes:
'learn Ravel's "SCARBO"' (one of the most difficult pieces ever published)
'learn Debussy's "L'ILE JOYEUSE" in a week (Debussy himself confessed he could not master it)
'learn Ravel's "MIROIRS" and the Rachmaninoff Preludes op 23 and perform them'
'learn the Liszt B minor Sonata'

Oh, come on. How about: 'learn to connect yourself with the piano so you can have a joyous, creative, and productive experience'. That's where I am at now, perhaps becoming more of a realist and less of an arrogant and self-aggrandizing 20 year old trapped in a 55 year old frame.

So as this year's plan, I thought I'd give myself what Chopin gave his students - the Well Tempered Clavier. The fugues have these advantages, to me:

-each hand with its fingers is absolutely identical in its task, so LH can teach RH
-they sound equally elegant (to me) at any tempo
-I think I can do a Victory Dance if I pull this off. I want to impress myself!

Yesterday I played the E minor from book 2 to a friend over the phone and it went well. I'm also on the C# from book 2, and the A major book 1, which I started yesterday. Hopefully this blog will turn into something interesting and useful.