# Mahler Tenth Speculation



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

This is not worth a big argument, but I'd be curious what others think. Since the first (Ormandy) recording of Cooke's first try at assembling a performing version of Mahler's Tenth, I have been bothered by the bass drum beats that end the fourth movement and punctuate the beginning of the finale. They have always sounded clunky and interruptive to me. I know the back story (memorial service/funeral cortege to a fallen NY fire fighter outside his hotel room window) but I don't know how specifically Mahler indicated which instrument on his short score, and I've always tried to imagine another way. I've finally decided that if were a conductor I would direct the batterie to replace the bass drum thwack with a short soft snare drum roll. I think it would serve the same purpose effectively but be whole lot less jarring and not tend to bring the music as much to a full stop each time.

Anyone think that has merit? Or am I deluded and that defeats Mahler's purpose??

cheers --


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## Larkenfield (Jun 5, 2017)

_Anyone think that has merit? Or am I deluded and that defeats Mahler's purpose??_

I believe the problem with substituting a snare for the bass drum is that it's a more suspenseful sustained sound and doesn't sound like the blows of fate during this upsetting and troublesome period of his life when his wife Alma was having an affair and his life was apparently coming to an end. (All the music he still must have been hearing in his head!) But the bass drum does sound naked, isolated and abrupt with hardly any support from the surrounding orchestration. Had Mahler lived he might have done more to integrate the fateful-sounding bass drum with the rest of everything else. As it stands now, this is for me one of the weakest, most incomplete parts of the Cooke performance edition and I've also felt that it wasn't satisfying, though I think it's meaningful in the overall design of the symphony. Perhaps it's been dealt with in a fuller sense since the original Cooke edition or someone else's performance edition. The bass drum occurs more than once in the remaining parts of the symphony and sounds important, and then there's the return of that harrowing dense block chord of tension and turbulence in the last movement that may have been a reflection of his state of mind until there's some sense of a return to peace or acceptance. Now _that_ may have been his final bittersweet goodbye to the world with him still full of a sense of longing. I find the ending truly heart-rending until it seems that everything will end in a whisper and then the giant swelling of one last chords until the end. Goodbye Gustav, and sorry to see you go. But well done!

His complete score and drafts for the 10th can be found at the IMSLP website: https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page


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## WildThing (Feb 21, 2017)

MarkW said:


> This is not worth a big argument, but I'd be curious what others think. Since the first (Ormandy) recording of Cooke's first try at assembling a performing version of Mahler's Tenth, I have been bothered by the bass drum beats that end the fourth movement and punctuate the beginning of the finale. They have always sounded clunky and interruptive to me. I know the back story (memorial service/funeral cortege to a fallen NY fire fighter outside his hotel room window) but I don't know how specifically Mahler indicated which instrument on his short score, and I've always tried to imagine another way. I've finally decided that if were a conductor I would direct the batterie to replace the bass drum thwack with a short soft snare drum roll. I think it would serve the same purpose effectively but be whole lot less jarring and not tend to bring the music as much to a full stop each time.
> 
> Anyone think that has merit? Or am I deluded and that defeats Mahler's purpose??
> 
> cheers --


I've always found that passage awkward and unsatisfactory as well, and can't help but think Mahler would have done SOMETHING different there. I'll be interested to see if anyone else can shed some light on the issue.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

_"There is some dispute as to what exactly Mahler heard that day in 1910 and therefore what he would have intended us to here in the symphony. Was it a single stroke on a drum, or was it, as has recently been researched by Jerry Bruck, a short tattoo? Should it be a bass drum as in Joe Wheeler's edition, or a muffled military drum as in Cooke's? There is further dispute as to how hard it should be struck."_
- Tony Duggan

You pays your money and you takes your choice


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

From Mahler's short score: at the end of IV he writes for a dampened bass drum a single quarter note marked with one f. At the beginning of V, again a single bass drum note mark with and sf (accented). The problem for me with so many recordings is the simple forte is replaced with ff. It's too loud, too intrusive. It's shocking, but inappropriate, I think. But that's what Cooke wrote. In the first instance he writes ff, in the second sf followed by sempre ff. We'll never know what Mahler's real intensions were. Maybe he would have changed it, maybe not. Clearly the Bass Drum is correct - not a snare or other percussive sound.


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

Hmm...Maybe a tympani roll diminuendo starting at f? And - just spitballing here - how about a bass clarinet or contrabassoon instead of a tuba or bass viol for the ascending figure? My idea here is to soften and unify.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Thanks everyone!


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## mbhaub (Dec 2, 2016)

Several reasons for that ascending bass line: in the 3rd bar Mahler himself wrote "2 Contrafag." against the top note of the figure. So it can't be the contras playing it. The line is quite low - much lower than a bass clarinet can play, so that can't be right. The only two instruments left that can play in that range: bass viol or tuba. Cooke really did do his homework in preparing his edition. Studying the published score is quite interesting, since you not only get Cooke's realization, but at the bottom the print Mahler's sketches, although nicely typeset so it's readable. 

To soften the blow, I think the best solution that some conductors offer is to change the f down to a mf - they argue that from high up in their hotel suite, Alma and Mahler wouldn't have heard the bass drum so loud - it would be more muffled. It's easier on the speakers and ear drums, too!


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

I think a bass drum is appropriate as it _sounds_ funereal, and I like the idea of it in the work itself as it challenges the music to find room to breathe in the movement which follows. I don't see why it should be too loud, though: assuming Mahler was in a hotel room when the cortege passed by it makes more sense to me to have the bass drum muffled (especially if he was in an upper storey) - had he actually been down on the street then maybe the bass drum should be louder to represent his closer proximity to the procession. I don't like the idea of a snare drum so much - I think it would sound too martial in this instance.


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