# Understanding Mahler, Part 2



## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

Understanding Mahler

Part 2: The 19th century before Mahler

The widespread changes in music over the course of the 19th century are usually supposed to be a movement from the relative stability and consonance of the classical period to the unruly and dissonant modernist movement. From a certain perspective this is true, but the main difference is not in the kinds of dissonances used, but in their treatment and resolution. Mozart and Beethoven made extensive use of chromatic motion and unexpected modulations, but these would be prepared and balanced by an equal and opposite motion back towards the stability of the tonic.

The tonal system depends on the relationship between the tonic and opposing key areas, and the strongest of these is the dominant, which is a fifth above the tonic. Classical sonata form movements depend on a large scale motion from tonic to dominant, and then from dominant to tonic. Sometimes substitute key areas could be used, such as the subdominant (the key a fifth below the tonic) in Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony, or the relative major (the major key with the same key signature) for minor key movements, but the kind and treatment of the opposition was the same.

Beethoven began to substitute mediant relationships for these, modulating to keys a third away from the tonic. These keys are also relatively closely connected to the tonic, as it either contains these notes or is contained in their chords, just as with dominant relations. He would treat these the same way, though, preparing them and resolving them.

In the Romantic period, composers began to treat these keys as if they were very close to the tonic, slipping into them with little or no preparation, and slipping back out without clear resolution. Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn, and others of this first generation of Romantics used a wider range of motion within a key without the clear oppositions of the classical era, treating C major as if it encompassed not only its relative minor A, but A major and E major as well as C minor, providing a greater diversity of harmony, but losing some of the definition of each key area in the process.

In addition, though classical composers such as Mozart and Beethoven had made use of chromaticism and dissonance for expressive effect, these relationships were generally treated as extensions of the dominant principle, and it was the introduction/prolongation of these elements that was the surprise, rather than their resolution. In the Romantic period, the widening of the key area resulted in more and stronger chromatic relations, which were sometimes left unresolved for long periods of time, and sometimes not at all.

In a classical era work, movements are usually separate in mood and material, and unified by close key relations and similarities of character. The similarities in some works, such as Beethoven's 5th symphony with its rhythmic motto, inspired Romantic composers looking for a way to unify the disparate movements of their compositions to share material between movements of widely varying key and character. When done directly, this is called cyclical form. Berlioz's Sinfonie Fantastique has a theme that is presented more or less the same way in every movement; the theme was a specifically programmatic element, associated with the artist's beloved and representing her in various situations: their first meeting, dancing at a ball, in the distance in the countryside, watching the artist at his execution, and gloating over him at a witch's sabbath. Cyclical elements were also used by other composers without specifically programmatic associations, and often transposed into different keys or otherwise altered.

These developments were pushed very far. In the march of Berlioz's Sinfonie Fantastique, there is a moment where two chords, the tonic G minor and D-flat major, are juxtaposed. This relation of a tritone is the most distant possible on the circle of fifths (the system of key relationships in the equal-tempered musical scale). This was considered so dissonant that a note was placed in the score reading as follows: "This is no clerical error; the G-minor-chord is immediately next to the D-flat-major chord. The composer requests the violinists and viola players not to "correct" their parts by placing a flat before the D of the fifth of the G-minor-chord". Although it doesn't shock us today the way it did Berlioz's audiences, it manages to retain its bizarre and unnerving sound. But the one who pushed harmony farther than anyone else of his time was the opera composer Richard Wagner.

Wagner admired the more extreme elements of Berlioz's music, as well as that of the enfant terrible virtuoso Liszt. Alongside his conception of an entirely new form of theater called music drama, a unified presentation of words, music, and acting without the cut and dry separation of character/emotion-developing aria and plot-developing recitative that was central to opera. To that end, he pushed farther than anyone else to try to depict the emotional and mythic extremes of his works, the libretti to which he wrote himself. Inspired by earlier composers' use of cyclical form, he created a system of leitmotiv (leading motifs) to unify the long spans of his music dramas. These leitmotiv, usually quite simple and thus malleable, could be altered to fit a given situation, and they could represent anything from characters to emotions to philosophical ideas. There were some who published thematic catalogs of these leitmotiv to help audiences follow Wagner's works, but he discouraged this practice, preferring not to limit the range of a particular leitmotif's meaning to a single idea.

Wagner's opera Tristan und Isolde, based on a legend of two doomed lovers, mixed with the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, was composed between 1857 and 1859 and first performed in 1865. The opera incited musical consternation as well as moral indignation. Wagner was accused of creating noise rather than music, of inflicting "ear-splitting" dissonances on his audiences (depicted literally in one famous cartoon). The opera's prelude begins with a swooning chromatic motif that, shockingly, resolves one dissonance into another. This is repeated sequentially, leaving the listener entirely unsure of the key of the music; although A minor lurks in the background throughout, its dominant either moves to another dominant or into the unexpected region of F major. The entire opera eschews clear resolutions (even the half hour-long love scene in Act II is rudely interrupted) until its final pages, where it coalesces in a dazzling B major. The prelude and finale of the opera are often paired as orchestral excerpts, which works exceptionally well to encapsulate the drama as a whole.

Critics may have disliked Wagner's ventures into this new territory, but a younger generation of composers, including Bruckner (who, although already nearing 40 when he first encountered Wagner's music, did not come into artistic maturity until after) and Dvorak were enthralled. Bruckner turned into an ardent Wagnerian, although he had no interest in writing music drama himself, while Dvorak was taken under the wing of Brahms, who had a more ambivalent attitude towards the man. Brahms was essentially a classicist, believing in "absolute" music without programmatic content and in the traditional forms and developmental technique of Beethoven. Factions developed around these two supposedly unreconcilable poles, Wagner and Brahms, the latter led by the critic Eduard Hanslick, and the former by a quickly multiplying school of devotees who traveled to the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth to see the works of "the master". Mahler was born into this world, and quickly became a supporter of Wagner's works.

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## Kieran (Aug 24, 2010)

That's a marvelous read! Very instructive and still direct and light on its feet. Erudition worn easily. Thanks!


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