And he succeeds in infecting viewers young and old, connoisseurs and the uninitiated, with his overwhelming love of music. Leonard Bernstein celebrates Mahler's centennial by conducting excerpts from the composer's Fourth Symphony and discussing his career as a composer and conductor. Soprano Reri Grist joins the orchestra in a performance of the last movement of the Fourth Symphony. Production Year:.
Age rating:. Audio Language:. Subtitle Language:. Carnegie Hall. United States. Leonard Bernstein. New York Philharmonic. We're going to hear part of it now, a song for the tenor soloist called Youth. The words of this song are based on an old Chinese poem, which describes a beautiful scene of young Chinese friends sitting in a garden summerhouse made of green and white porcelain, very pretty, drinking and chatting in their silk robes, while in the brook outside you can see the whole picture reflected upside down in the water--the friends, the summerhouse, the garden, and the bridge--all upside down.
And the music is a bit upside down, too, the music of a European reflected in an Oriental pool of water. That's the double Mahler again--half real, half reflection.
And that's one of the reasons that the music sounds so original. Here is the tenor, William Lewis, to sing this charming song Youth for us now. By now you must have noticed something very special about all these symphonies of Mahler: The fact that so many of them use voices in addition to the orchestra. Out of his nine symphonies Mahler used voices in four of them--that's almost half: And in two of the nine, in fact, he used whole choruses. His greatest symphony, called The Song of the Earth, part of which you have just heard, is sung from beginning to end.
It's really a song symphony. You see, Mahler was as much a composer for the voice as he was for orchestra. And that makes us think right away: Why didn't he write operas?
What a natural thing for him to have done with that deep feeling he had for the human singing voice. But he didn't write operas, never one, and there again we see that split in Mahler: Here is a natural operatic composer who never wrote an opera.
He just kept writing symphonies that sound operatic. For instance, just listen to this duet section from his Second Symphony--it's almost exactly like listening to opera. You see, that's really operatic.
Mahler was really in love with the human voice. He was always writing songs, in fact, and many of his own songs he used in his symphonies, even without a voice singing. Like the songs in a collection called The Boy's Magic Horn--which is a series of sort of folk songs about childhood and childlike dreams. Remember that important side of Mahler, the childlike side?
You must never forget it: because as we said, it is the main secret of his music. It also explains why he loved folk music so much, which is, after all, part of childhood. Take this particular song from the Boy's Magic Horn which is called St. Anthony's Sermon to the Fish. It's a humorous song.
You might almost call it a comic song, because it tells about how the fish came to listened to St. Anthony's sermon--including the crabs and the turtles--and then at the end they all just swam away happily being just as silly and naughty as they had been before they heard the sermon. We're going to hear part of this song first as a song, then afterwards we'll hear the same music used without singing in a symphony.
Here is Miss Helen Raab to sing St. And now let's see how Mahler takes that same song and makes a movement of a symphony out of it, not the whole movement of course.
The orchestra now will sound much bigger now, because it's on its own; there won't be a singer. The music is bigger too, more developed, more symphonic. You remember the program we did last year about development and what makes music symphonic? Well, if you do remember it, you'll understand how that little comic song we just heard has developed into a great symphonic scherzo.
Listen to this part from it. And so it goes on and on, for a much longer time. But what a difference between this and the singing version we heard before! See in this music also, we can see again the double Mahler, in still another way, and that is the double way he has of treating the orchestra: the little way and the big way. I'm sure you heard it. Most people think of Mahler as a composer for big monster-orchestras, which is true, as far as it goes.
He did use the biggest orchestral assemblies in history, and so we come to expect sounds like this one we just heard:. But just as often as not, he does exactly the opposite and makes wonderful new sounds with just a few instruments, like chamber music.
Like this passage we just heard a bit earlier:. Now that music shows us something, that Mahler was a real master of chamber music sounds. And yet he never wrote chamber music--not a quartet or trio or a violin sonata or anything.
That's another strange example of that tug of war that was always in him. Just as the operatic Mahler never wrote operas, so the chamber Mahler never wrote chamber music.
A double man, you see? But there still remains one more split, and perhaps it's the biggest split of all: that on one hand Mahler was the end of the whole romantic nineteenth-century tradition of composing, the last of that line beginning with Mozart and running through Beethoven and Schubert and Wagner, and at the same time he was the beginning of modern music, of what we call the music of our time.
Imagine being the end of something and the beginning of something else, all at once! But he was. In the various pieces of his that we've played today, you have heard bits that sound like Mozart, like Schubert, or Bach, or Wagner. But you've also heard many bits that seem to prophesy the coming of new composers, like Schoenberg and Webern, Copland and Britten, and even Shostakovich, very much Shostakovich, in fact.
So now we're going to perform for you a piece of Mahler that does both things, that reminds you of the old German music, and at the same time gives you very strong hints of the new music that is to come.
What we're going to do is play you the last part of the last song of his great symphony, The Song of the Earth, part of which we heard before, which is one of the most beautiful endings any piece of music has ever had.
Now certain people were amazed when I told them I was going to play this for you today. They said, "What? You're going to play that long, slow, highbrow music for young people? You're crazy--they'll get restless and noisy. They won't understand it. It's just too highbrow. And it doesn't even end with a bang-up finish. It dies away quietly. Nobody will clap. Well, I know my young people, and I'm not afraid to play this music for you.
I know you'll understand it, and even love it, because you already know more about Mahler than most people do, and you'll understand also all the doublenesses, those fights in him, all those things we've talked about today.
They're all in this music. It has very heavy orchestration and very light chamber-music orchestration. It's very German-sounding, but it also has some Slavic- and Jewish-sounding phrases. It gets very complicated and then gets childishly simple, even has bird calls in it. It sounds sometimes like opera, and sometimes like a simple folk song. And it's very Chinese. Especially in the orchestration, which uses harps, and mandolin, and celeste, and all things calculated to make a delicate oriental sound.
Now just one more word before our contralto, Helen Raab, sings it for you. I want to tell you sort of what it's about. This last song is called The Farewell and comes from an old Chinese poem describing a person who is saying farewell to the world. But at the very end of the poem the singer says: "This beautiful world blooms again, every spring, over and over, forever. But it means something else too: It is like Mahler's own personal farewell to the old romantic kind of German music, as if he knows it's all over, and now he must begin a new kind of music, which he begins right then and there.
And it comes out sounding very original. But at the same time he doesn't want to say goodbye to the old music; he loves all that Wagner and Schubert so much. So he says goodbye sadly, unwillingly, so that at the end of the piece, when the singer says the German word ewig, meaning forever, she sings it again over and over as if not wishing to let go of this beauty.
It's almost like magic, this marvelous ending. You really have the feeling that it goes on and on, forever, even after it's stopped. And if this magic stillness at the end makes you feel like not clapping, then just don't. I'll understand. Watch a video excerpt of "Who is Gustav Mahler? Now just to welcome you back in a happy way, we're going to play you a little music: Now, I'll bet there isn't a person in this whole Carnegie Hall who knows what that music is.
Like this part, in the third movement of this symphony: Is that heartbroken-sounding music the real Mahler? She says: We are enjoying the pleasures of heaven, Free from all the noise and troubles of earth, Everything is quiet in heaven, in gentle repose, But lots of fun just the same. By the way, at this point in the music you will hear Mahler imitating the sound of the lamb like this: [PLAY] and you will also hear the sound of the ox. Right in the middle of this same Fourth Symphony, with all its German Mozartean and Schubertian sounds, suddenly comes this peculiar Chinese tune: Imagine that absolutely primitive Chinese tune in the middle of a big Austrian symphony.
He did use the biggest orchestral assemblies in history, and so we come to expect sounds like this one we just heard: But just as often as not, he does exactly the opposite and makes wonderful new sounds with just a few instruments, like chamber music. Like this passage we just heard a bit earlier: Now that music shows us something, that Mahler was a real master of chamber music sounds.
And then again, and again, so that finally the music dies out on this word, without seeming to end at all. All rights reserved. Facebook Twitter Instagram Youtube.
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