Saturday, January 12, 2013

Theodor Adorno on Gustav Mahler

"To interpret language means: to understand language. To interpret music means: to make music."
-T.W. Adorno, "Music and Langage: A Fragment", Quasi Una Fantasia

     With Mahler, not only does the old music come to an end, but the new music also begins. Without Mahler, the atonal music of Schoenberg and the work of the Second Viennese School would not have been possible. Given the influence of Schoenberg and his pupils, such as Stockhausen, on the development of modern electronic music, it might even be possible to say that Mahler is integral to this development. In a brilliant essay on Mahler, Adorno shows how Mahler, working within a fairly traditional framework and without a particularly sophisticated knowledge of composition, was able to create some of the most advanced and influential music ever written. Adorno wrote his essay more than fifteen years after World War II, but it is clear that the experience of the war (Adorno, as a German Jew, had been forced into exile in the United States) has influenced his perception of Mahler's music. He extols Mahler's music as the music of an "untrammeled subjectivity" which refuses to participate in the domination of others, and which represents an attempt at a new polyvocality (through the incorporation of folk elements, musical banalities, and other "detritus", for which Mahler is often criticized). In Mahler's music, "the expression of suffering, his own and of those who have to bear the burdens, no longer knuckles under at the behest of the sovereign subject that things must be so and not otherwise." (p.96) It was precisely Mahler's lack of virtuosity that allowed him to follow the music where it wanted to go, rather than "commanding the notes to go where they belonged." (ibid) Mahler's music can be disturbing, unbalanced, even ugly at times, but it is only so in an attempt to remain at the level of a true humanity.

   Adorno's essay on Mahler can be found in the recently republished collection "Quasi Una Fantasia: Essays on Modern Music". For those interested in hearing Mahler's music, I would recommend beginning with the Fifth Symphony or the Kindertotenlieder; more adventurous listeners might begin with the Ninth Symphony. The recordings with John Barbirolli conducting available from EMI in the Great Recordings of the Century series are among the best readily available.

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