# Mahler's revisions of the Beethoven Symphonies



## arnerich (Aug 19, 2016)

Mahler's revised orchestrations of the Beethoven symphonies are still some what controversial. I'm just delving into them a bit. They are interesting at the very least.

The obvious conversation starter is whether Beethoven's symphonies needed the Mahler treatment, should anyone change another composers music (especially music as hallowed as the 9th) and, at the end of the day, did it really make much of a difference?

The other point of conversation is for those individuals familiar with the Mahler revisions. Were there any that stood out whether good or bad?

For me I'm on the fence, I think they're fun to listen to but any performance of the Mahler revisions should clearly make that known to the audience.

Here's Mahler's version of the 9th scherzo.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Very interesting, I didn't even know that Mahler made revised orchestrations of the Beethoven symphonies. Can you please recommend some recordings?


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Fascinating that a number of well known composers were interested in reinterpreting Beethoven's symphonies. Liszt's piano reductions are wonderful. Apparently Horowitz, interviewed late in life, lamented never having played them in public.


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

Mahler wielded his musical graffiti on the Schumann Symphonies too.

I have the Chailly performance of Schumann 2, and with all the criticisms of Schumann as a "weak orchestrator", Mahler did the Schumann 2 no favors.


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## SixFootScowl (Oct 17, 2011)

I want nothing to do with it. Let Mahler be Mahler. Let Beethoven be Beethoven. 

I can tolerate Liszt because I believe his intention was only to make piano transcriptions so people could enjoy the essence of Beethoven's symphonies in their homes, as obviously few had full orchestras at their disposal, much less CDs or vinyl.


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## chill782002 (Jan 12, 2017)

Florestan said:


> I want nothing to do with it. Let Mahler be Mahler. Let Beethoven be Beethoven.
> 
> I can tolerate Liszt because I believe his intention was only to make piano transcriptions so people could enjoy the essence of Beethoven's symphonies in their homes, as obviously few had full orchestras at their disposal, much less CDs or vinyl.


While I agree with you as regards the Liszt piano transcriptions, I would nonetheless be interested to hear Mahler's orchestrations. Beethoven was arguably the first of the romantics and Mahler one of the last. Plus the standard symphony orchestra was much larger in Mahler's time than in Beethoven's.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

First, I don't like people meddling with Beethoven. But ... in Mahler's defense (and we're talking _Der Mahler _here, not some second rate hack composer!) ... in our modernized world Beethoven is meddled with at every turn. First there are the instruments themselves. The modern grand piano is something Beethoven never knew. I personally care less for the pianoforte readings of his music than I do the sonorities of a modern grand. So I'm guilty of selecting Beethoven on non-Beethovenian instruments. And I suspect that Mahler realized his orchestra utilized instrument builds that improved on those available to Beethoven, so that balance in horn and woodwind sections and string sections were quite different.

Too, many of us hear our Beethoven primarily via recordings. If you've looked closely at the credits on those recordings you'll find persons listed as Producers and Engineers. They could be called Meddlers. Of course we're closer to Beethoven when we hear him live in the concert hall, but then again you have those modernized instruments, contemporary performance practices, and each individual performer's "touch" (or interpretation) of the work. Talk about meddling.

If you really want pure Beethoven, you can probably only read the scores. But then you'll be interpreting the music in your head, and how well that matches Beethoven's head sound is up for debate. After all, he never heard an oboe or a trombone via a recording; he never heard a modern French horn or trumpet. A lot to be considered, here.

I'm rather familiar with Mahler's revisions of Schumann's symphonies. I listen to them on occasion, and you're right that in the larger scheme of things it doesn't really seem to matter. After all, a lot depends upon _how_ you hear your music, too. What kind of equipment (or discs! or tapes! or downloads!) you hear it by. Even if you play the music yourself, what are you playing it on? And if you hear it in the concert hall, what concert hall are you hearing it in? The same orchestral forces in different concert halls will sound different. And we haven't even gotten to the quality of your own ears! Is your hearing spot on, or do you have some frequency lackings that inhibit all the requisite overtones from being registered? Are your ears themselves changing Beethoven's music?

In other words, if you hear Mahler's revision of Beethoven's Ninth at Boston's Symphony Hall, the Bolshoi Theatre, the Konzerthaus Berlin, the Royal Albert Hall, or at the Wiener Musikverein, you'll hear five different Ninths. And those are great sounding concert halls. Most folks will hear this music in less acoustically refined spaces.

So ... in the end I have no real opinion about this, only to say that there is really no harm in listening to the "original" Beethoven or the Mahler revised Beethoven as it's all music. And Mahler's revision does not annihilate the original. That is still available to you in recordings, via a variety of equipment, via a variety of instruments, musician interpretations, conductor interpretations, hall soundings, and producer/engineer meddlings. Makes me wonder what all the fuss about accuracy _is_ all about. Too bad we can't ask Beethoven's opinion of this.

Finally, I don't know if Beethoven ever reorchestrated his predecessors' music, but I do know that he wrote several works based on variations of tunes by others, and that by restating such, say a Mozart opera aria on piano, he was _changing_ the original. Did he offer any improvement? Or simply a new, more expansive way of hearing the original? That remains a matter of opinion. And music listening is, in the largest scope of things, just that: a matter of opinion.


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## Heliogabo (Dec 29, 2014)

Didn't knew about Mahler's has made it to Beethoven as well, only knew his Schumann's attempts.
A pity he didn't work more in his own symphonies instead, he may give us another master work...


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## jailhouse (Sep 2, 2016)

Haven't heard it, but I liked what he did with his Bach arangement. I should check it out


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## Pugg (Aug 8, 2014)

I didn't know this either, nevertheless thank you arnerich for sharing.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I don't know what all of Mahler's revision were, but I have no problem with Mahler (or anyone else) re-inserting notes that Beethoven left out because the instruments of his day didn't have them.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

arnerich said:


> Mahler's revised orchestrations of the Beethoven symphonies are still some what controversial. I'm just delving into them a bit. They are interesting at the very least.
> 
> The obvious conversation starter is whether Beethoven's symphonies needed the Mahler treatment, should anyone change another composers music (especially music as hallowed as the 9th) and, at the end of the day, did it really make much of a difference?
> 
> ...


Those trumpets sound crazy, not to mention unnecessary. What was Mahler thinking? I hope not to hear this again. (The tempos here are pretty crazy too - like Wile E. Coyote pursuing Beep Beep the Roadrunner.)


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## Captainnumber36 (Jan 19, 2017)

arnerich said:


> Mahler's revised orchestrations of the Beethoven symphonies are still some what controversial. I'm just delving into them a bit. They are interesting at the very least.
> 
> The obvious conversation starter is whether Beethoven's symphonies needed the Mahler treatment, should anyone change another composers music (especially music as hallowed as the 9th) and, at the end of the day, did it really make much of a difference?
> 
> ...


Isn't what Mahler did here similar to what Jimi Hendrix did to All Along the Watchtower by Bob Dylan? Looking at it like that makes it exciting that this occurred at all in the classical world, it's like a cover, making it your own though.

I can appreciate it, I like the tempo here too, light and bouncy, which is almost the opposite of how I am used to hearing it, as grand and powerful. I enjoy both!


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

I have the Mahler re-orchestration on Beethoven's 9th, conducted by Krystjan Jarvi. The performance is lackluster. Some of Mahler's changes make the sound more transparent and effective, others are less successful, as I hear it.

https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Sy...UUTC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1490764185&sr=8-3


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

Florestan said:


> I want nothing to do with it. Let Mahler be Mahler. Let Beethoven be Beethoven.
> 
> I can tolerate Liszt because I believe his intention was only to make piano transcriptions so people could enjoy the essence of Beethoven's symphonies in their homes, as obviously few had full orchestras at their disposal, much less CDs or vinyl.


As far as I know, such piano reductions were very common indeed, for any orchestral works that achieved popularity. This was in fact the form in which people mostly heard their favourite symphonies. Which is why it was so important for upper lass ladies to learn to play piano.

Now in the case of the Liszt transcriptions, I don't know if they served the same purpose: perhaps they are too difficult for even very hard practicing upper class ladies?

Either way, piano transcriptions of orchestral works, or orchestrations of piano or chamber works, seem not to be bother me nearly as much as people messing around with existing orchestrations. Who does this Mahler bloke think he is?


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Even some of Shostakovich's symphonies are available in piano four-hand. These arrangements were made to preview the symphonies to the Composers Union. There's a very interesting arrangement of DSCH's 10th in this format, played by Shostakovich and Vainberg (now Weinberg of course) that may be hard to find but worth the search.

I have no problem with people messing with Beethoven's orchestration. His own always seemed pretty utilitarian to me, but it's amazing how hard even the best orchestrators (Mahler for instance) find it to improve on them!

Liszt's piano arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies were made over a period of years. I'm not sure what the commercial motive was; I've always thought they were a labor of love.


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## Bettina (Sep 29, 2016)

KenOC said:


> ...Liszt's piano arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies were made over a period of years. I'm not sure what the commercial motive was; I've always thought they were a labor of love.


That's true - I can't imagine that many amateur pianists would have bought copies of the Liszt transcriptions. They're incredibly difficult to play.

Perhaps Liszt's transcriptions were motivated by a desire to perform these great symphonies at piano recitals. I assume that he played them quite often, once they had finally been completed. (However, I have no evidence to support my assumption.) In any case, I'm grateful to Liszt for undertaking such a massive project!


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

KenOC said:


> I have no problem with people messing with Beethoven's orchestration. His own always seemed pretty utilitarian to me, but it's amazing how hard even the best orchestrators (Mahler for instance) find it to improve on them!


If "utilitarian" means "suited to its purpose," then it isn't surprising that other people's improvements are no such thing. It has never once occurred to me, in nearly six decades of listening to Beethoven, that there was anything deficient about his orchestration. If a conductor feels the need to double the winds to stand up to a larger body of strings, as has often been done in Beethoven performances by massive symphony orchestras in modern halls, that's a reasonable accommodation to a practical circumstance of the sort a Classical composer would have understood. But the addition of unidiomatic, irrelevant orchestral colors which do nothing for the music accommodates only the ego of the arranger. If you must do it, go all the way and produce a sportive bit of camp like the Beecham-Handel technicolor _Messiah_, which will give us a couple of hours of exhilarating fun but which no one would mistake for, or even compare to, the genuine article.


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## KenOC (Mar 7, 2011)

Well, in Liszt's day, in most places you might pass a lifetime and hear a given Beethoven Symphony once or twice, if you had the bucks. I suppose having a piano score at home, that you could "play at" if not actually play, might be worth something.

Hard for us to imagine today, with fine well-recorded performances coming out of our ears.


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## Merl (Jul 28, 2016)

KenOC said:


> I have the Mahler re-orchestration on Beethoven's 9th, conducted by Krystjan Jarvi. The performance is lackluster. Some of Mahler's changes make the sound more transparent and effective, others are less successful, as I hear it.
> 
> https://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Sy...UUTC/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1490764185&sr=8-3


I have that one too. It is a rather patchy performance, to say the least, but interesting enough. I don't mind skilled tpeople messing with the score but, in this case it didnt enhance it. Like trying to do a cover version of a classic song in the same style.


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## mathisdermaler (Mar 29, 2017)

Lost time he could have spent writing symphonies... lol.


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## Razumovskymas (Sep 20, 2016)

Did Mahler revise all of Beethovens' symphonies?


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## Totenfeier (Mar 11, 2016)

I knew that Mahler had done the re-orchestrations, but had never heard any of them. My reaction to the posted example is that, in my very own and humble opinion, if there were _ever_ a symphonic movement that absolutely _must_ be spare, bare, and pared down to the glistening bone, it is the Scherzo of Beethoven's Ninth. I'm afraid Mahler did no favors here.


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