Gustav Mahler

“ Bruch and others—The modern 'poetic' school: Richard Strauss as symphonic composer—Anton Bruckner, his life and works—Gustav Mahler—Max Reger, and others.
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No other European nation can show, within the last fifty years, so great a variety of schools, and so great a variety of effort and achievement within each school, as the German. The reason is that the Germans were the only race that, by the middle of the nineteenth century, had beaten out a musical language that was capable of almost every kind of expression. ”

“ These dirges for children have hardly any parallel in music. They combine an intense pathos with something of the naïve simplicity of the child. They are not mere dirges. They are dirges for those ‘the doubly dead in that they died so young.’ The congenital faults of Mahler are not to be found here. The songs are almost above criticism from the musical standpoint. But Mahler the peasant is to be seen especially in the songs from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, that wonderful collection of German folk-poetry which has been such a storehouse for the nation in the last century. ”

“ He has always the air of a heedless and discontented child. Tall and slim, rather elegant and supercilious, he seems to be of a more refined race than most other German artists of to-day. Scornful, blasé with success, and very exacting, his bearing towards other musicians has nothing of Mahler's winning modesty. He is not less nervous than Mahler, and while he is conducting the orchestra he seems to indulge in a frenzied dance which follows the smallest details of his music—music that is as agitated as limpid water into which a stone has been flung. ”

“ There is nothing more fatal to a creative spirit than too much reading, above all when it does not read of its own free will, but is forced to absorb an excessive amount of nourishment, the larger part of which is indigestible. In vain may Mahler try to defend the sanctuary of his mind; it is violated by foreign ideas coming from all parts, and instead of being able to drive them away, his conscience, as conductor of the orchestra, obliges him to receive them and almost embrace them. ”

“ It has the passionate exuberance of Strauss's preceding symphony, Heldenleben, but it is superior in artistic construction; one may even say that it is Strauss's most perfect work since Tod und Verklärung ("Death and Transfiguration") , with a richness of colouring and technical skill that Tod und Verklärung did not possess. One is dazzled by the beauty of an orchestration which is light and pliant, and capable of expressing delicate shades of feeling; and this struck me the more after the solid massiveness of Mahler's orchestration, which is like heavy unleavened bread. ”

“ Hugo Wolf is another example of it. Mahler's case is really rather curious. When one studies his works one feels convinced that he is one of those rare types in modern Germany—an egoist who feels with sincerity. Perhaps his emotions and his ideas do not succeed in expressing themselves in a really sincere and personal way; for they reach us through a cloud of reminiscences and an atmosphere of classicism. I cannot help thinking that Mahler's position as director of the Opera, and his consequent saturation in the music that his calling condemns him to study, is the cause of this. ”

“ If his music expresses anything at all, it expresses just the characteristics that Mahler was most anxious to have it conceal. Life is the greatest of practical jokers, and Mahler, in seeking to escape his racial [Pg 221] traits, ended by representing nothing so much as the Jew. ”

“ Mahler failing to get with eight horns the effect that Schubert got with two—plus a great melodic idea—at the opening of his C Major Symphony, Debussy confectioning a banal bit of tune in muted string or pastoral flute sonorities with piquant harmonies—both are appealing, with varying success, from our minds and hearts to our auditory nerves. The increasing measure of success attending such appeals shows vividly the numerical advantage that the hungry or curious auditory nerves have, in the modern democratic audience, over the enlightened minds and hearts. ”

“ What is really disquieting is that, in spite of all the talent that still abounds, Germany is fast losing her chief musical endowments. Her melodic charm has nearly disappeared. One could search the music of Strauss, Mahler, or Hugo Wolf, without finding a melody of any real value, or of any true originality, outside its application to a text, or a literary idea, and its harmonic development. And besides that, German music is daily losing its intimate spirit ”

“ The blight on the entire new generation of composers would seem to point to some such common cause. There is, no doubt, a curious coincidence in the fact that in each of the four chief German musicians of the recent period there should be manifest in some degree a failure of artistic instinct. The coarsening of the craftsmanship, the spiritual bankruptcy, of the later Strauss, the grotesque pedantry of Reger, the intellectualism with which the art of Schoenberg has always been tainted, and by which it has been corrupted of late, the banality of Mahler, dovetail suspiciously. ”

“ Woodard said as he left here that he'd stop for a late swim."
"Just lovely," sighed the girl. And Russ nodded in slow motion.
Nodus smiled almost reluctantly. Perfectionist that he was, it would be long before he was wholly satisfied. He turned to the girl. "Your idea of substituting the partitas for the Mahler 'Farewell' was very sound. I'm interested in the reasoning."
Her nostrils flaring at the heady draught of his praise, she giggled shyly. "I hoped the partitas would work, because Mahler really fractures me. ”

“ In the heyday of political infamy, he, a needy man, obliged to accept wages from his constituents, kept his political virtue unspotted, and he stood throughout his career as the champion of moderate and tolerant measures. There is a story that his old schoolfellow, Danby, was sent by the king to offer the incorruptible poet a place at court and a gift of £1000, which Marvell refused with the words: “I live here to serve my constituents: the ministry may seek men for their purpose; I am not one.” When self-indulgence was the ordinary habit of town life, Marvell was a temperate man. ”

“ In a word, Müller owed the success of his career to the perfect poise of his intellect and the admirable critical faculty that guided him in the thorny path of knowledge at a time when there were so few landmarks of real scientific significance to show the investigator what the probable course and progress of real science must be. ”

“ But, if any reader is still doubtful as to the facts, or thinks they are here arrayed in a deceptive garb or invested with an imaginative halo, he is hereby invited to examine for himself the singularly minute records which George Müller has been led of God to put before the world in a printed form which thus admits no change, and to accompany with a bold and repeated challenge to any one so inclined, to subject every statement to the severest scrutiny, and prove, if possible, one item to be in any respect false, exaggerated, or misleading. ”

“ In Un Héritage, the character of Franz Müller is at once pleasing and natural. He is not represented as perfect—he has his failings and weaknesses like any other mortal, and they are exhibited in the book, although we have not, in the outline we have traced of it, had occasion to give them prominence. But his heart is sound to the last. Wealth may momentarily bewilder, but it does not pervert him. He is true to his affections, and has the sense and courage to accept honourable toil as preferable to a fortune embittered by anxiety and dissension. ”

“ In bringing about this condition, and in establishing the deductive scientific method as alone admissible in the realm of natural science, we must look upon Müller as a reformer whose work has been of enduring benefit to science. The nature of his vitalistic hypothesis did not prevent him in the least from directing his labor to establish life phenomena on a physico-chemical basis. Even the vitalistic principle, as it appertains to the philosophy of the present day, is largely a matter of man's personal and ultimate view of his own life and his own destiny. ”

“ Malloch was an ideal man for an exploring expedition like ours, brought face to face by circumstances with conditions that were calculated to test to the utmost a man’s real nature, for he was not only fully equipped in his own special field of science but beyond all that he was one of the most self-sacrificing men with whom it has ever been my lot to be thrown into intimate contact. ”

“ There are several of his water-colour drawings in the South Kensington Museum. Müller was one of the most original and powerful of painters from nature. He seized the characteristics of a scene with wonderful clearness and promptitude, and set it down without hesitation or difficulty. His selection and generalisation were nearly always masterly, his colour pure and strong, and he could probably suggest more, with fewer touches, than any other painter of his time. He never spoilt the freshness of his work by over-labour or detail. ”

“ Balder was the most godlike of all the gods, because he was the purest and the best. Wherever he went his coming was like the coming of sunshine, and all the beauty of summer was but the shining of his face. When men's hearts were white like the light, and their lives clear as the day, it was because Balder was looking down upon them with those soft, clear eyes that were open windows to the soul of God. He had always lived in such a glow of brightness that no darkness had ever touched him; but one morning, after Idun and Brage had gone, Balder's face was sad and troubled. ”

“ Strange it is, indeed, that Germany, which in Beethoven voiced the spiritual aspiration, in Schumann the romantic joy, and in Brahms the philosophic meditation of the whole world, should find itself at length reduced to the half-impotent strivings of a Mahler, to the learned lucubrations of a Reger, while mixed with even the gold of its one genius, Strauss, there should be so much dross of cheap sensationalism and irrelevant melodrama. Yet to consideration these signs of a widespread decadence in [157] German music will not by any means remain incomprehensible. ”

“ The whole after-life of George Müller proved that God had for him an entirely different plan, which He was not ready yet to reveal, and which His servant was not yet prepared to see or follow. If any man's life ever was a plan of God, surely this life was; and the Lord's distinct, emphatic leading, when made known, was not in this direction. He had purposed for George Müller a larger field than the Indies, and a wider witness than even the gospel message to heathen peoples. He was 'not suffered' to go into 'Bithynia' because 'Macedonia' was waiting for his ministry. ”

“ The cause of the unsatisfactoriness of much of the music of Strauss and Schoenberg, Reger and Mahler, is doubtless to be found in the innate weakness of the men themselves rather more than in the unhealthiness of the atmosphere in which they passed their lives. ”

“ Müller's address was characterized by that stiff formality peculiar to the old school type of German professor; and yet with this he combined the dexterity and activity of the more modern scholar. His conversation was never productive. The constant consideration of the various problems of his activity was usually uppermost in his mind and, although he would talk pleasantly and interestingly of many varied subjects, as art, architecture and music, it was to some phase of his labors that the further discussion of these subjects almost invariably led back. ”

“ When we turn to consider Müller's relation to the Natarphilosophie, we recall how he contracted this spirit while he was at Bonn, and how he was rescued, at least from its extreme influences, by Rudolphi at Berlin. Throughout his Berlin period, Müller devoted much of his thought to freeing natural science from the influence of the Naturphilosophie. The result was that not long after the death of Hegel, in 1831, the dangerous play with mystical words became gradually eliminated from the consideration of life phenomena. ”

“ He can descend to us in our working-day cares, but it is not to be expected that many of us can ascend to him in that sublime retirement of his among the visions and the shadows. To take Balder, for instance: marvellously few of us, even at our vainest, think either kings or gods of ourselves; ordinary human nature, spite of its prides and pretensions, is seldom without a consciousness at its heart of its own littleness and poverty; and when we hear a man declaring his sublime superiority, we are puzzled, and pause, and smile, and try to make it out a burlesque or an irony. ”

“ Müller but little, but knew his positive convictions and uncompromising loyalty to them, might suspect that he would have little forbearance with even minor errors, and would not bend himself from his stern attitude of inflexibility to accommodate himself to those who were ensnared by them. But those who knew him better, saw that he held fast the form of sound words with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. Like Paul, ever ready to be made all things to all men that by all means he might save some, in his whole character and conduct nothing shone more radiantly beautiful, than Love. ”