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+--- Thread: The definitive piece of music for the Generational Cycle (/thread-597.html)
The definitive piece of music for the Generational Cycle - pbrower2a - 12-19-2016
For an Idealist, at least... High/1T (first movement), Awakening/2T (second movement), Unraveling/3T (third movement) Crisis/4T (fourth movement). With score!
from notes on the YouTube site:
pf: Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein
The Symphony No. 1 in D major by Gustav Mahler was mainly composed between late 1887 and March 1888, though it incorporates music Mahler had composed for previous works. It was composed while Mahler was second conductor at the Leipzig Opera, Germany. Although in his letters Mahler almost always referred to the work as a symphony, the first two performances described it as a symphonic poem or tone poem. The work was premièred at the Vigadó Concert Hall, Budapest in 1889, but was not well received. Mahler made some major revisions for the second performance, given at Hamburg in October 1893; further alterations were made in the years prior to the first publication, in late 1898. Some modern performances and recordings give the work the title Titan, despite the fact that Mahler only used this label for two early performances, and never after the work had reached its definitive four-movement form in 1896.
In its final form, the symphony has four movements:
0:02 - Langsam, schleppend (Slowly, dragging) Immer sehr gemächlich (very restrained throughout) D major
16:27 - Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell (Moving strongly, but not too quickly), Recht gemächlich (restrained), a Trio—a Ländler
25:30 - Feierlich und gemessen, ohne zu schleppen (Solemnly and measured, without dragging), Sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweise (very simple, like a folk-tune), and Wieder etwas bewegter, wie im Anfang (once again somewhat more agitated, as at the start)—a funeral march based on the children's song "Frère Jacques" (or "Bruder Jacob")
35:55 - Stürmisch bewegt – Energisch (Stormily agitated – Energetic)
RE: The definitive piece of music for the Generational Cycle - pbrower2a - 12-19-2016
This is quote possibly the greatest first symphony ever written -- and I know about those of Beethoven, Schumann, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Sibelius, Ives, Shostakovich, Atterberg, and Simpson... and the one symphony each by Bizet and Franck.
If you hear the fourth movement -- what could be more of a Crisis in music?
Mahler lived only into the early-twentieth-century unraveling, and in view of his origin (Jewish) he would have never lived far past age 80 in Germany or any Nazi-occupied country.
RE: The definitive piece of music for the Generational Cycle - Warren Dew - 12-19-2016
I prefer the Brahms first, but I agree the Mahler is a better fit for the generational sequence.
RE: The definitive piece of music for the Generational Cycle - pbrower2a - 03-04-2019
(12-19-2016, 10:57 PM)Warren Dew Wrote: I prefer the Brahms first, but I agree the Mahler is a better fit for the generational sequence.Revision to undo some errors.
I could make the case that Brahms wrote two works for string sextet (Opus 18 and Opus 36) that have such rich sonorities, sometimes even suggesting sounds of non-string instruments, that I have thought of them as symphonies for six string instruments. Those preceded his symphonies composed as such.
Brahms' Opus 68 wasn't completed until he was 43... Mahler's First is almost a juvenile work (by standards of classical composers, that its). But even if I consider the Opus 18 string sextet by Brahms practically symphonic as well as a masterpiece, Brahms completed it at practically the same age (29) at which Mahler composed his First Symphony.
Even the experts in discussing music can't do justice to the works that they discuss. Here are both Brahms string sextets; they speak for themselves as a hack like I can't. Heck, I've never played a stringed instrument (I wish I had gotten the chance).
I am going to need plenty of classical music to get through the next four years which I expect to be horrid on America even if I were filthy rich. No, I have no reasonable hope or winning the Super-Duper Megabucks Lottery that would allow me to move to a villa on Lake Como and pretend to be the polymath that I wish I were. I would definitely take up the cello.
RE: The definitive piece of music for the Generational Cycle - pbrower2a - 03-12-2021
I'll get back to this soon. I want to put a solid recording of Brahms' string sextet Op. 18 as a young work of a composer of what would be four symphonic masterpieces. Brahms could get the richness of a full orchestra out of six stringed instruments, which may explain why he was slow to write a symphony for full orchestra. He got a full orchestra, or at least much of the effect, from far less than a symphony orchestra. Brahms was then about the same age as Mahler when the latter wrote his First Symphony, a work that on its own would have established him as a great master before age 25. See also Wagner's opera The Flying Dutchman.... and much work by Mozart, Beethoven, Schumann, and Chopin.