Full Description
Gustav Mahler's music continues to enjoy global prominence, both in live or recorded performance and within broader ranges of critical perception and cultural sensibility. In recognition of such a profile, this volume brings together a unique collection of essays exploring the diverse methods and topics characteristic of recent advances in Mahler scholarship. The book's international group of contributors is actively involved not only in bringing fresh approaches to Mahler research in areas such as analysis, sketch studies and reception history, but also in examining hitherto neglected issues of cultural and biographical interpretation, performance practice and compositional aesthetic, thereby illustrating the developing vitality and scope of this field. Engaging with its subject from reconstructive, documentary, theoretical, analytical, discursive and interpretative viewpoints, this volume provides a wide spectrum of contexts in which continuing debate about Mahler's life and works can flourish. Its varied themes and strategies nevertheless collectively recognize and negotiate the shifting space both between the composer's life and his artistic creativity, and between the musical results of that creativity and the critical-analytical process. The essays in this book accordingly fill certain gaps in the scholarly understanding of the composer, and re-orientate Mahler studies towards some of the central concerns of contemporary musicological thinking.
Contents
Contents: Introduction, Jeremy Barham. Nature, Culture, Aesthetic: 'Vocal' music in the symphonic context: from 'Titan' eine Tondichtung in Symphonieform to Das Lied von der Erde, or, the road 'less traveled', Zoltan Roman; Mahler and the idea of nature, Julian Johnson; Mahler the thinker: the books of the Alma Mahler-Werfel collection, Jeremy Barham; Mahler's untimely modernism, Morten Solvik. Reception: The Jewish and Eastern-European Questions: Jewish identity and anti-Semitic critique in the Austro-German reception of Mahler, 1900-45, Karen Painter; Gustav Mahler's musical Jewishness, Vladimir Karbusicky. Analytical Approaches: Multi-stage exposition in Mahler's symphonies, Richard Kaplan; Form in the first movement of Mahler's Fifth Symphony, Robert G. Hopkins; The first movement of Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde: genre, form and musical expression, Elisabeth Schmierer; Theme, thematic process, and variant-form in the andante moderato of Mahler's Sixth Symphony, James Buhler; 'Ways of telling' in Mahler's music: the Third Symphony as narrative text, Vera Micznik. Mahler in Performance: Mahler's first season as director at the k.u.k. Hofoperntheater: the composer waits in the wings, Herta Blaukopf; Mahler on record: the spirit or the letter?, David Pickett; Adagietto: 'from Mahler with love', Gilbert Kaplan; 'Progress' and 'tradition': Mahler's revisions and changing performance practice conventions, Reinhold Kubik. Sketches, Editions and 'Completions': Re-evaluating the sources of Mahler's music, James L. Zychowicz; Unfinished works of Mahler: the Scherzo in C minor, the Presto in F major, the Tenth Symphony and comparative arguments for performing versions, Susan M. Filler; Mahler's Tenth Symphony: rediscovered manuscript pages, chronology, influences and performing versions, Frans Bouwman; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.
