{"id":3428,"date":"2025-04-01T00:48:46","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T04:48:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/?p=3428"},"modified":"2025-04-01T00:48:49","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T04:48:49","slug":"finding-a-mahler-message-for-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/2025\/04\/finding-a-mahler-message-for-today.html","title":{"rendered":"Finding a Mahler Message for Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

My review of Karol Berger\u2019s\u00a0Mahler\u2019s Symphonic World: Music for the Age of Uncertainty \u2013\u00a0<\/em>\u201cFinding a Mahler Message for Today\u201d \u2013 was today published online by\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0American Scholar<\/em>. You can read it\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One starting point of Berger\u2019s terrific new book is Theodor Adorno\u2019s 1960 contention that Mahler\u2019s gift was essentially pessimistic, that he did not succeed as an ostensible \u201cyea-sayer.\u201d Adorno was a frequent windbag. Berger, in rigorous disagreement, never obfuscates or fudges. He takes topics elsewhere a muddle and keenly finishes them off. I am thinking especially of his treatment of Mahler\u2019s two most memorable leavetakings: the \u201cAbschied\u201d (\u201cFarewell\u201d) concluding Das Lied von der Erde<\/em> (The Song of the Earth, <\/em>1909) and the Adagio finale of the Ninth Symphony (1910). Both vanish to wisps of tone. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Are these kindred versions of a sublime dissolution of the ego? Berger\u2019s meticulous answer, bearing on Mahler\u2019s state of mind in the wake of personal travail, is: not really. The ending of Das Lied<\/em> admits no redemptive afflatus, no serene personal afterlife, no transcendental realm. Berger memorably writes: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c[Das Lied von der Erde<\/em>] celebrates the earth but from the perspective of someone who knows that he is only a temporary guest on it and that he is about to take his leave. . . . Uniquely in Mahler\u2019s oeuvre, no consoling vision of a transcendent beyond is on offer here: death is death and there is no hereafter to recompense us for its finality. The only consolation is that the earth will go on, forever renewing itself and offering its life, love, and beauty to others.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This close consideration of Mahler\u2019s serene submission to nature yields a personal note that feels exigent right now, with the world more distressed than at any point in Mahler\u2019s lifetime. \u201cWe take it for granted that the earth is filled with so much beauty. We shouldn\u2019t. Beauty is not like air or water, absolutely indispensable for our existence and survival. Humanity would have survived on a planet deprived of beauty. Beauty is something optional.\u201d So Mahler, in Berger\u2019s reading, is saying to us: \u201cFor me<\/em>, this beauty [is] a gratuitous and welcome gift. And for this very reason, it seems a promise that the earth is not necessarily hostile, that it might potentially be a suitable, hospitable, delightful place for me and beings like me. When the time comes, I shall take leave of it with regret but also with gratitude.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My review eventually digresses to ponder \u201cMahler and Schubert.\u201d Of Mahler\u2019s scherzos, Berger writes: \u201cInvariably, these are marked by moments when the exuberance . . . threatens to become uncontrolled, sliding into something frightening and ghostly.\u201d They are caught in an \u201cinexorable temporal stream.\u201d Berger adds: \u201cMahler must have been the first composer to attempt to capture in his music . . . the absurdity of existence.\u201d But surely the first composer to do that was Franz Schubert. His \u201cDie Kr\u00e4he<\/em>,\u201d in the song cycle Winterreise<\/em>, limns an unsettling and hallucinatory intimacy between a man existentially adrift and \u2013 his sole faithful companion\u2014an ominous black bird. The cycle ends with a barefoot hurdy-gurdy man in the snow attended only by growling dogs. And in the second movement of Schubert\u2019s Ninth, an \u201cinexorable\u201d march, \u201cceaselessly in motion,\u201d becomes a juggernaut halting at the cusp of a cataclysm. Arthur Farwell\u2019s scrupulous review of Mahler\u2019s 1910 New York Philharmonic performance of Schubert\u2019s Ninth \u2013 a document I have quoted half a dozen times in my books \u2013 here says it all.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That the Mahler template is already nascent in Schubert\u2019s Ninth was brought home to me decades ago, because my main experience of the symphonies of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert has always been at the piano, playing four-hand keyboard reductions.  Only one of those symphonies could possibly work in concert as a piano duet: Schubert\u2019s Ninth, the knitted textures of which are so pervasive, so active, that tremolos and other accompanimental formulae prevalent in the usual secondo parts are wholly absent. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My review further ponders Mahler and Schubert, then summarizes Karol Berger\u2019s acute extrapolation of Mahler\u2019s \u201cworldview.\u201d It ends:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe eventual result of Berger\u2019s exegesis is an intellectual underpinning for Mahler\u2019s quest that both affirms its continued pertinence and supports its \u2018yea-saying.\u2019 . . . Mahler in Berger\u2019s view \u201cis the first major composer whose work as a whole embodied in music some of the most essential features of the [new] age, its pluralist perspectivism and its lack of foundations.\u201d Though this existential quest never culminated in a single answer, Mahler \u2013 pace<\/em> Adorno \u2013 is at all times painstakingly truthful. I find [Berger\u2019s] reading of Mahler \u2013 the man, the composer \u2013 both credible and moving. In fact, it is essential.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(I am rather recently the author of a novel: “The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York.<\/a>” I have since turned it into a play, to be premiered in May 2026 at Colorado Mahlerfest.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My review of Karol Berger\u2019s\u00a0Mahler\u2019s Symphonic World: Music for the Age of Uncertainty \u2013\u00a0\u201cFinding a Mahler Message for Today\u201d \u2013 was today published online by\u00a0The\u00a0American Scholar. You can read it\u00a0here. One starting point of Berger\u2019s terrific new book is Theodor Adorno\u2019s 1960 contention that Mahler\u2019s gift was essentially pessimistic, that he did not succeed as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3428","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2QLHN-Ti","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3428"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3444,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3428\/revisions\/3444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/uq\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}