# Mahler and Beethoven



## Beet131 (Mar 24, 2018)

I think I remember seeing an interview with Riccardo Chailly where he stated that Mahler was the first modern composer. I can't disagree with that. However, would it be fair to say that the first truly modern composition was written sixty years before Mahler composed his "Titan Symphony?" This would be Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, Op. 133. And, if this is true, are there any other individual examples of "modern" compositions that predate Mahler?


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## Beet131 (Mar 24, 2018)

Here's the Alban Berg Quartet performing Beethoven's Grosse Fuge:


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

I've heard this sort of idea before but I don't follow it at all, I mean what's modern about the Beethoven Fugue? To me it sounds like a flash back to baroque, to this sort of music.






When Arditti first got together they used to programme the Beethoven with Ligeti and Xenakis etc -- in interview they said it was just to put bums on seats.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> I've heard this sort of idea before but I don't follow it at all, I mean what's modern about the Beethoven Fugue?


The sheer _extremeness_ of it, for me; he takes both form and genre and stretches both to the limit. Several composers wrote wonderful string quartets after Beethoven, but nobody wrote anything remotely like the _Große Fuge_. The same could be said of many of his works, whether they were instrumental, chamber or symphonic. Beethoven was, to my mind, the first true musical iconoclast, and way ahead of his time.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> and way ahead of his time.


No, no-one wrote anything like late Beethoven afterwards, but, as I demonstrated, there were fugues equally "extreme" and more so before. The musical world did not follow Beethoven's in the late music. Late Beethoven was sui generis, not ahead of his time. Apart maybe for the idea of long and sentimental slow movements in symphonies, which clearly Mahler liked.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> No, no-one wrote anything like late Beethoven afterwards, but, as I demonstrated, there were fugues equally "extreme" and more so before.


Maybe, but I can't think of any. Of course, I'd be delighted to find an earlier work for string quartet that was half as dramatic and challenging as the _Große Fuge_, but I don't hold out much hope.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> I'd be delighted to find an earlier work for string quartet . . .


Ah well that may be right, though some of the last movements of Haydn op 20 are not without interest here.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Beet131 said:


> I think I remember seeing an interview with Riccardo Chailly where he stated that Mahler was the first modern composer. I can't disagree with that. However, would it be fair to say that the first truly modern composition was written sixty years before Mahler composed his "Titan Symphony?" This would be Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, Op. 133. And, if this is true, are there any other individual examples of "modern" compositions that predate Mahler?


Sure. You can add the fugue from the Hammerklavier Sonata by Beethoven too! I can't imagine the bewilderment the listeners of the time, in their reactions to this extraordinarily advanced music.

To this day, I can listen to Schoenberg's Piano and Violin Concertos as easier listens than Beethoven's Grosse Fugue-for me, the composition of a madman genius!


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

hpowders said:


> Sure. You can add the fugue from the Hammerklavier Sonata by Beethoven too!


The first movement of the _Hammerklavier_ is pretty radical, too.


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## Reichstag aus LICHT (Oct 25, 2010)

Mandryka said:


> Ah well that may be right, though some of the last movements of Haydn op 20 are not without interest here.


Thanks, Mandryka. I'll make a point of re-listening to them.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Reichstag aus LICHT said:


> The first movement of the _Hammerklavier_ is pretty radical, too.


Yeah, but the first movement could be grasped by the audiences of his day. The fugue, no. More modern than Schoenberg. What a brain!!! Probably caused more of a fuss than the premiere of Le Sacre!


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Beet131 said:


> Here's the Alban Berg Quartet performing Beethoven's Grosse Fuge:


A great way to empty my house of unwelcome Thanksgiving guests. I'll bookmark this!!!

It's either Grosse Fuge or Mahler's Kindertotenlieder.

Either should get the job done!


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## poconoron (Oct 26, 2011)

Beet131 said:


> Here's the Alban Berg Quartet performing Beethoven's Grosse Fuge:


Listening to this reminds me of what the well-known art critic John Ruskin wrote in 1881: "Beethoven always sounds to me like the upsetting of bags of nails, with here and there an also dropped hammer."

I love alot of Beethoven but draw the line with this one.


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## Mandryka (Feb 22, 2013)

poconoron said:


> I love alot of Beethoven but draw the line with this one.


Yes it's often played without any refinement, delicacy, subtlety or _noblesse_. A rather surprising approach given the context (op 130) I'm not sure whether this approach is inevitable. Could it possibly be desirable? I don't know the answer to that either.


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