What's the Deal With Mahler?

Certain people in the classical music world are really  into Mahler.  You've seen him.  He's the scruffy, rotund low-brass player with his ass crack peeking out of the top of his baggy jeans and a ring of chapped skin on his lips from his mouth piece.  He's the guy who is unapologetic about emptying his spit valve right on the floor, saying, "Don't worry, it's just condensation, not actual spit."  That guy talks about Mahler with the same awe that astronomers have when they talk about how every atom in your body was created in an ancient star.  

And I'm not sure I get it.

So, today I listened to Mahler's ninth and final completed symphony.  I chose it because I read a review a little while ago of a new recording from the LA Phil, conducted by The Dude, that is, Venezuelan wunderkind Gustavo Dudamel.

Mahler 9 was written in 1909 and 1910, but wasn't premiered until after Mahler's death.  Supposedly, the composer had been diagnosed with the heart disease that would kill him while he was writing this thing, and scholars have written quite a lot about the death imagery in it.  For example, according to the textbook from a class I took on symphonic lit at Shenandoah, Alban Berg said this:

Once again I have played through the score of Mahler's ninth Symphony:  the first movement is the most heavenly thing Mahler ever wrote.  It is the expression of an exceptional fondness for this earth, the longing to live in peace on it, to enjoy nature to its depths - before death comes.  For he comes irresistibly.  The whole movement is permeated by premonitions of death.

Then there was this 1983 essay by Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony.  In it, the author reflects on Cold War tensions and the possibility of a nuclear conflict decimating the population.  Grim.

This is high, high, high romticism.  The music is lush and expressive, and really quite gorgeous.  I get the sense that for symphonic musicians, specifically brass players, Mahler is like Puccini is to singers.  He wrote beautiful, mushy music for them that they just love to play.  (Of course, Mahler is usually compared to Wagner, and you can definitely hear his influence, but I'm talking about it from a performers perspective, not a musicological one.)

When the second movement comes in it really marks a huge contrast with the first.  Folk dance form feels shockingly different from what precedes it.  But then the composer begins to tweak it little by little.  Honestly, if symphony is all about the exploration and development of a musical idea, well, this whole piece does exactly that, and does it a lot, and does it well.

The third movement is a rondo, and the recurring rondo theme is a double fugue, with some really masterfully written counterpoint that has a frenetic feeling that seems to grow more tense with each reiteration.  I don't know if either of you have ever experienced a full-on panic attack?  I thought the final iteration of the rondo theme feels just like that, like when your brain is uncontrollably rushing through increasingly horrible worst-case scenarios until you become convinced that you can't breath and you're actually dying right now.

When I was listening to the final movement, a one point I thought that it sounded a bit like Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings.  Then I thought, nah, Adagio For Strings wishes  it was the fanale to Mahler 9, but doesn't even come close.

So anyway, have a listen.  It's quite long, I'm afraid to say.  I know that was the complaint about the Shostakovich, and like the Shostakovich, I'm not sure it's a good idea to break it up.  Sorry!  Anyway,