We’ve been in rehearsals the last month for “Progress Through Knowledge,” my new band-with-choir piece written for the Centennial of Oklahoma Panhandle State University. I’ve been increasingly gratified with how the piece is coming together, and I’m excited about the premiere on October 8. As I wrote the piece over the summer, not knowing exactly how the two groups would come together, I agonized over the scoring, particularly in its thickness. We’ve made a few changes to the piece as the result of hearing it in the hall, but only in scoring, and generally thinning out, not adding. The real test will come a week from Monday, when the two groups come together.
I never seem to tire of this process. The real payoff is seeming a piece come to life for the first time, helping the performers to realize my vision. I’ve said before that “Music is about people,” and over the last few weeks, I’ve come to see that I still believe this. How does one apply this in the more routine situations we face as musicians and as teachers? Simply, I think it means that in music theory class, we never present only facts… we must remember that a scale or a chord progression has an emotional, human impact on the listener. We must link what we want to know about music to who we are as human beings. It is not simply enough, as I tell my students, to know that a major second comprises two half-steps, but rather we must make the major second a part of our experience… not just understand it, but breathe it, live it. Getting my students to really do this has to be my job, at least in first-year theory. An appealing approach in this regard is found in the book “Harmonic Experience” by W. Mathieu… some of his conclusions are off, but his approach–rooted in Eastern tradition–can’t be denied.
Somewhat of a ramble, but there it is…
Posts Tagged ‘revision’
Progress on “Progress”
Wednesday, September 23rd, 2009Mahler, Symphony No. 1, “Blumine”
Monday, August 24th, 2009As a working composer, I am always very interested in false starts, incomplete pieces, works which composers abandon at any stage of composition, even after performance. The process of composition is just as important to me as the product. It is only fitting, then, that I at least take a peak at the “missing” movement, titled “Blumine,” from Mahler’s first symphony.
In the original 1889 symphony, “Blumine” was the second of five movements, with a programmatic scheme. By the time of the original 1899 publication, Mahler had dropped the program of the symphony, and with it, this movement. The score ended up in the hands of one of Mahler’s pupils, and came to light in the 1950s. It was subsequently published and recorded in the late 1960s. Since then, most performances and recordings have kept to the four-movement plan which seems to have been Mahler’s final intention, but “Blumine” occasionally pops up.
As a composer, I must ask myself why an entire completed and performed movement was deleted from this piece. Compositionally, the piece works. It is beautiful, well-scored, unambiguous and basically successful. As always, Mahler’s use of the orchestra, while not as adventurous as in the other movements of the symphony, is flawless. From this composer, I would expect nothing less. But Gustav Mahler was his own worst critic, and frequently made extensive revisions during rehearsals and after the premieres of his symphonies (his Tenth symphony was probably left incomplete because of the time spent on a major revision of the Third Symphony). It is believed that many works by Mahler simply have not come down to us because the composer destroyed them, guarding his legacy carefully, perhaps.
So why would Mahler have excised “Blumine?” One flaw of the piece is that it is somewhat limited thematically, and feels at times more like a strophic song than a symphonic movement. I have been discovering that Mahler’s use of repetition is a key to understanding his ability to build large forms, and here the repetition is not unwelcome–the piece works–but it is somewhat unabated. There is a single theme, based on a single motive. There is some development, but it is not extensive.
A second reason that suggests itself is that it just doesn’t seem to adhere to the composer’s style as expressed in the other movements. This piece is very clearly an intermezzo, standing between the more significant first movement and the more forceful Landler that would become the second movement. Mahler’s middle movements are rarely the sort of fluffy, friendly pieces that we see in “Blumine.” Where is the angst, the drive, the seriousness? In addition to the dramatic suggestions, the style simply seems dated. It is more like Berlioz than Mahler. Perhaps Mahler came to realize that the symphony became too disparate in sentiment with the inclusion of “Blumine,” and when it came time for publication, it seemed best to leave the piece behind. The Wikipedia article on this piece suggests that it existed before the rest of the symphony as incidental music for a play unrelated. While Mahler may have had good feelings for the piece, it lacks the passion, the irony, the dramatic import of the rest of the piece, and even seems mispaced harmonically (C-major, where the other movements are in D-minor or D-major).
An interesting diversion, to be certain. Score and recordings are readily available (I found a good recording on the Naxos Music Library), and any serious Mahler fan should check them out.