# Tempo of Mahler's Adagietto from his 5th Symphony



## Aurelian (Sep 9, 2011)

The Adagietto, marked "sehr langsam" (very slow) is usually played at that tempo. This very nice performance is almost 12 minutes long:






Yet, a _New York Times_ article from July 19, 1992, argues that Mahler intended the movement to be around 8 minutes long.

If you can access it:

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/19/arts/classical-music-a-dirge-no-it-s-a-love-song.html

What do you think? Is it a faster love song, or funeral music?


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Faster love song. That's what Mahler intended it to be.
Not that it doesn't work as a sort of forerunner of the Barber Adagio for Strings, the music is so strong that it survives even being stretched to 15 minutes on a Procrustean bed. But taken not as an individual outing but as the 4th movement of the 5th symphony, I'd like to hear it done in under 9-10 minutes.


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## Barbebleu (May 17, 2015)

Sometimes I wish composers would put a metronome marking when they say stuff like ‘sehr langsam’. How do you define very slow when you don’t have a base for slow. My slow might not meet someone else’s criteria for slow! Even an approximate duration would help, like this movement should last between 8 and 10 minutes, no less, no more!


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

Mengelberg (who was closer to Mahler as a conductor than anyone else): *7 minutes*





Haitink (Berlin, his earlier CGO recording took 10 minutes): *14 minutes*





What is truth?


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

8-9 minutes is about right. One thing that we know for a fact: tempos have slowed over the last 100 years. That's why my preferred recordings come from conductors who were older and came of age when faster was the norm. They understood that music needs to move; as bassoonist David McGill put it: Sound in Motion. From Boult, Rodzinski, Scherchen, Munch, Paray, Reiner, Walter, Monteux, Markevitch...even in his younger days Klemperer. I don't know why the Great Slowdown happened, but it did, and that's why we have some too long recordings of Mahler. Walter's 7:35 for the Adagietto destroys his "slow old man" image, and is really quick. And it works.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

The faster temp works wonderfully, and has the advantage that it's playable. (also, the movement marking refers to its length, not its adagio-ness.)

The slow/slower/slowest tradition dates from Bernstein's performance at the memorial service for Robert F. Kennedy in 1968.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

There is lots of evidence for a flowing tempo around 8-9 min. The diminutive "adagietto" and reduced scoring makes this a "small" movement, despite the "sehr langsam"; it is not supposed to be a massive movement (like the slow finales of the 3rd or 9th). But it's not such an important point for me; my favorite recording of the symphony (not because of the adagietto, though), Bernstein/Vienna Phil is too slow at about 11 min (and his early 1960s NYPhil is about the same already, so at least he didn't slow down a lot in ~25 years in this movement).


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## FrankinUsa (Aug 3, 2021)

It is defined not funereal music. Maybe this began Bernstein playing at RFK funeral. Then is was used in a movie(at this exact moment the name escapes me). There should definitely be a flowing feel to it. 9-10 minute sounds good.


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

FrankinUsa said:


> Then is was used in a movie(at this exact moment the name escapes me).


The Visconte film, Death in Venice.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

I think it's Mengelberg versus Scherchen/Philadelphia (15:15), as regards extreme tempi.

(Cobra (16:49) has just generally disqualified himself)


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## Rogerx (Apr 27, 2018)

Karajan: Adagietto. Sehr langsam
Track length11:52
For me personally just about right.


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

Barbebleu said:


> Sometimes I wish composers would put a metronome marking when they say stuff like 'sehr langsam'. How do you define very slow when you don't have a base for slow. My slow might not meet someone else's criteria for slow! Even an approximate duration would help, like this movement should last between 8 and 10 minutes, no less, no more!


Actually, "slow" and "fast" in tempo are perceived in relation to how fast the human heart beats (its theorised that this is because this is the first thing we hear). Fast tempos, are those that are faster than the human heart and slow tempos are those that are slower.

Not that any of this tells us what is "slow" and what is "very slow".

To offer my opinion on the actual thread topic, the music should be played a bit quicker (~8min), but with much flexibility in tempo. Especially in the context of the symphony, it should not be 12min. However, the music more or less still works when taken really slow, so I don't hate recordings that do it this way.


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## Forster (Apr 22, 2021)

Chailly and Concertgebouw make this potentially miserable quite bearable at 10:18


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

I always found it surprising that Barbirolli, with his reputation for slowness in certain repertoire, took less than 10 minutes in his famous Philharmonia 5th.


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## Kreisler jr (Apr 21, 2021)

The adagietto is often an exception, i.e. slow/fast adagietto does not have to mean slow/fast rest of the symphony. 
Wyn Morris has one of the faster adagiettos but still takes ~77 min for the whole symphony because all other movements are on the slowish side (don't feel really slow for me, though).


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

joen_cph said:


> I think it's Mengelberg versus Scherchen/Philadelphia (15:15), as regards extreme tempi.
> 
> *(Cobra (16:49) has just generally disqualified himself)*


Found a music video of Cobra conducting (presumably electronics) on his site... at 16:49, isn't it a bit, fast? I'd expected 30+ mins.


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## MrMeatScience (Feb 15, 2015)

Thankfully several performances of the symphony under Mahler had their timings preserved in the parts by some of the players during rehearsals. There's a bit of a range -- a bass player tells us the adagietto ran 7 minutes during the 1907 St. Petersburg performance (Mahler's last of this piece). Some earlier performances (Hamburg 1905) apparently may have been as long as 9 minutes, but it's not surprising at all that Mahler would take different approaches depending on the day. 

We can never know whether the timings are accurate, but the movement makes a lot of sense in that timing range and it fits with what we generally know about the performance practice of the time and with what those who knew/heard Mahler personally did when they performed the symphony (see Walter, Mengelberg). Taken as a whole, I think the evidence is pretty convincing that this is where it's "supposed" to be, even if it can work at slower tempi. Gielen gives a really good modern performance in this range.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

For Mahler, flexibility was the key to his music. Tempo, balance, even orchestration all depended on the circumstances of the performance. In a large hall with a lot of reverb, he would take the tempo slower, naturally, but also add extra players to reinforce the important voices. Nowadays it would be seen as sacrilege to tamper with Mahler's orchestration, but Mahler wanted, even demanded that the conductor would arrange the piece to accommodate the space of the performance venue as best as possible.

So it's no wonder that we have two rather contradictionary accounts of the tempo of the adagietto, as performed by himself.

Fun fact: the very last thing Mahler did at the end of his life, in 1910-1911, even after finishing the short score of the 10th symphony, was a revision of the 5th, something he wanted to do for a long time, dissatisfied as he was with the orchestration.
I don't know whether there's a performance or even a performing edition that incorporates these revisions, and whether the adagietto was subject of revision too.


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## MrMeatScience (Feb 15, 2015)

RobertJTh said:


> For Mahler, flexibility was the key to his music. Tempo, balance, even orchestration all depended on the circumstances of the performance. In a large hall with a lot of reverb, he would take the tempo slower, naturally, but also add extra players to reinforce the important voices. Nowadays it would be seen as sacrilege to tamper with Mahler's orchestration, but Mahler wanted, even demanded that the conductor would arrange the piece to accommodate the space of the performance venue as best as possible.
> 
> So it's no wonder that we have two rather contradictionary accounts of the tempo of the adagietto, as performed by himself.
> 
> ...


Yeah, he was notorious for tweaking things to get the optimal effect in each performance, and didn't really consider anything out of bounds in that pursuit. The "score-as-sacred-object" mindset had already taken hold (although not nearly as strongly as it has subsequently, I think) by that point. Some critics regularly slammed him for changes he would make -- though whether or not they actually didn't like the changes is hard to say, since the antisemitic press were looking for reasons to discredit him -- but some were very positive about the musical logic and the results from his tinkering.

The 1911 revision of No. 5 is the standard version since the Ratz critical edition of the 60s -- the same edition that really dug the hole deeper on the No. 6 movement order debate. Probably nearly any recording you've heard made in the modern era will use the 1911 score as the base, +/- minute editorial differences.


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## joen_cph (Jan 17, 2010)

Kiki said:


> Found a music video of Cobra conducting (presumably electronics) on his site... at 16:49, isn't it a bit, fast? I'd expected 30+ mins.


Yes, he probably had to lay down and rest afterwards.


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## RobertJTh (Sep 19, 2021)

MrMeatScience said:


> The 1911 revision of No. 5 is the standard version since the Ratz critical edition of the 60s -- the same edition that really dug the hole deeper on the No. 6 movement order debate. Probably nearly any recording you've heard made in the modern era will use the 1911 score as the base, +/- minute editorial differences.


Good to know. I wondered because not long ago I read an article by a critic who complained that Mahler's final word on the 5th was ignored since everyone used the 1904/1905 published scores. Must have been a very outdated comment then.


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## Marc (Jun 15, 2007)

Kreisler jr said:


> There is lots of evidence for a flowing tempo around 8-9 min. The diminutive "adagietto" and reduced scoring makes this a "small" movement, despite the "sehr langsam"; it is not supposed to be a massive movement (like the slow finales of the 3rd or 9th). But it's not such an important point for me; my favorite recording of the symphony (not because of the adagietto, though), Bernstein/Vienna Phil is too slow at about 11 min (and his early 1960s NYPhil is about the same already, so at least he didn't slow down a lot in ~25 years in this movement).


I always took the meaning of 'Adagietto' as a 'short Adagio', not as something related to the tempo at all. Well... Adagio, of course. 
After that, Mahler gives the tempo mark: sehr langsam (very slow).

My personal problem is: when it really is played very slow, I can experience it as a bit too dull. For instance in Haitink's Philips recording with the Berliner Philharmoniker. (Which is a pity, because the other 4 movements are very good imho.)
And Mengelberg's famous recording is a bit too fast for me. I personally prefer it, say, between 9 and 11 minutes. Mind you, I find the intensity with which the piece is played even more important than the speed/tempo.

But of course these are personal preferences and they have got nothing to do with what Mahler might have intended. (Who cares anyway, lol.)


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## Triplets (Sep 4, 2014)

mbhaub said:


> 8-9 minutes is about right. One thing that we know for a fact: tempos have slowed over the last 100 years. That's why my preferred recordings come from conductors who were older and came of age when faster was the norm. They understood that music needs to move; as bassoonist David McGill put it: Sound in Motion. From Boult, Rodzinski, Scherchen, Munch, Paray, Reiner, Walter, Monteux, Markevitch...even in his younger days Klemperer. I don't know why the Great Slowdown happened, but it did, and that's why we have some too long recordings of Mahler. Walter's 7:35 for the Adagietto destroys his "slow old man" image, and is really quick. And it works.


I was about to mention Walter, who surely was closer to GM than Mengelberg. Horenstein also comes in around 8 minutes


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## hammeredklavier (Feb 18, 2018)

2:10


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