Re: mahler

[TomP317 <TomP317...>]

Because Mahler took himself to Freud, who had lots to say about the Oedipal 
nature of his marriage, there's been quite a lot of comment on his very early 
influences. Certainly it's interesting that in that third movement (in which 
a distincly Jewish-sounding band seems to fetch up in a street down which a 
funeral is processing to Frere Jacques - or Bruder Martin - played as a 
minor-key canon) should be in his first symphony.

But it's possible that this is down to a parodic urge in him - a self-sending 
up which makes his music so knowing and vital. An anecdote we were told at 
school has him as a boy running out of the house in which his mother and 
father had been rowing, and overhearing a hurdy-gurdey playing on the street. 
Perhaps he mentioned this to Freud; he was, at any rate, constantly wondering 
why he could never let his music reach the heights of the sublime, and why he 
would always scupper it. There's that dare I call it 'Death in Venice' 
Adagietto in the 5th symphony, which is speeded up in the next movement with 
jolly beerfest type clarinets trilling over it; and a kind of reversal of the 
process in the 9th symphony, where another clarinet does a turn and then 
hiccups up a diminished ninth interval in a Landler, anticipating the strings 
making the same move more solemnly in the, let's face it, sublime last 
movement.

But if we're looking for early influences on Mahler's doorstep, we have to 
think, too, of the military barracks at Iglau, whose bands must have been 
audible to him. Hence, perhaps, the offstage trumpet in the 2nd symphony. 
Others might have more to say about the persistent influence of military 
bands on Jewish music in general - especially what with the clarinet 
obsession - but it sounds freshly and raucously through Mahler's early work, 
even in his songs. 

Tom Payne


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