03-04-2019, 08:43 AM
(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.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.