# Mahler Ninth: Am I weird?



## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

I have known this symphony for a long time. I got the Barbirolli/BPO recording in my teens and have played it many times over the years, along with Bernstein, Klemperer, Haitinck, Neumann, Abbado (2) and Karajan (2). I love the first movement, the second movement, the third movement . . . but the finale leaves me cold -- it's just there. I never skip it, but after about 5 minutes, I just sort of tune out. It's pretty and (naturally) well composed, but it doesn't inspire in me wistfulness, thoughts of mortality, actually much of anything. I like the finale of the Third, the slow movement of the fourth, the outer movements of the Tenth, Der Abschied . . . but this one seems to lack the significance it has for other people. There are bits that sometimes pop up and circle around in my head all afternoon like ear worms -- but that's just a characteristic of Mahler in general.

How strange am I?


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

MarkW said:


> I have known this symphony for a long time. . . but the finale leaves me cold -- it's just there. I never skip it, but after about 5 minutes, I just sort of tune out. It's pretty and (naturally) well composed, but it doesn't inspire in me wistfulness, thoughts of mortality, actually much of anything. How strange am I?


For great M9 finales - Try Solti/CSO, Giulini/CSO or Walter ColSO....they nail it very well...


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## BachIsBest (Feb 17, 2018)

MarkW said:


> I have known this symphony for a long time. I got the Barbirolli/BPO recording in my teens and have played it many times over the years, along with Bernstein, Klemperer, Haitinck, Neumann, Abbado (2) and Karajan (2). I love the first movement, the second movement, the third movement . . . but the finale leaves me cold -- it's just there. I never skip it, but after about 5 minutes, I just sort of tune out. It's pretty and (naturally) well composed, but it doesn't inspire in me wistfulness, thoughts of mortality, actually much of anything. I like the finale of the Third, the slow movement of the fourth, the outer movements of the Tenth, Der Abschied . . . but this one seems to lack the significance it has for other people. There are bits that sometimes pop up and circle around in my head all afternoon like ear worms -- but that's just a characteristic of Mahler in general.
> 
> How strange am I?


Maybe try a rendition that takes it quickly; close to the 20-minute mark or below it. Both Rosbaud and Walter/VPO come to mind; although Karajan is ultimately my favourite, I think there is a lot to be found by taking the finale at a quicker pace. In particular, it can make it seem less cold and more intense.











Ultimately though, if you don't like it, you don't like it. You recognise that it's well-composed and good music, but just for whatever reason aren't personally attracted to it; nothing wrong with that.


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## larold (Jul 20, 2017)

I too have a problem with the finale of the 9th symphony though it doesn't "leave me cold." 

When performed by the likes of Karajan or Maurice Abravanel or anyone else that stretches it out to more than 25 minutes I cannot sit through the thing without becoming fidgety and eventually losing interest. I have no doubt of the musicality or beauty of such an approach but the thematic material in my opinion is too slight for such orchestral verbiage. For me it is for me simply too much of the same thing for too long as too slow a speed, especially when pacing slacks more as time presses forward.

The only recording of Mahler 9 I know I can sit through in its entirety is Boulez though, at 21 minutes and 25 seconds, there is understanding he is presenting a very different finale than others. Compared to Karajan at more than 26 minutes Boulez seems to set a race horse pace.


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## Kiki (Aug 15, 2018)

MarkW said:


> I have known this symphony for a long time. I got the Barbirolli/BPO recording in my teens and have played it many times over the years, along with Bernstein, Klemperer, Haitinck, Neumann, Abbado (2) and Karajan (2). I love the first movement, the second movement, the third movement . . . but the finale leaves me cold -- it's just there. I never skip it, but after about 5 minutes, I just sort of tune out. It's pretty and (naturally) well composed, but it doesn't inspire in me wistfulness, thoughts of mortality, actually much of anything. I like the finale of the Third, the slow movement of the fourth, the outer movements of the Tenth, Der Abschied . . . but this one seems to lack the significance it has for other people. There are bits that sometimes pop up and circle around in my head all afternoon like ear worms -- but that's just a characteristic of Mahler in general.
> 
> How strange am I?


Me too.

Mahler resigned into the oblivion, in a negative way. That's what bugs me. Given that there're a lot more to come in the 10th, and those things are a lot more positive in spirit, I can't help feeling that the 9th, on its own, does not have a satisfactory ending.

I remember saying something along these lines a few years ago but I can't find that post. Most others thought it was bittersweet and it was great music. I agree; but the finale's negativity still turns me cold.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

My opinion is that the 9th & 10th have the same relationship as the 6th and 7th, i.e. both 6th & 9th leave on an a very down, resigned note which is subsequently resolved in the following symphony. Given these inter-symphony connections, also the 1st->4th, it leaves me wondering what an 11th might have been, something like the 8th?!


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## Brahmsianhorn (Feb 17, 2017)

My favorite all time symphonic movements:

1. Bruckner 8 - 3
2. Mahler 9 - 4
3. Beethoven 9 - 1
4. Brahms 3 - 3
5. Brahms 4 - 1

Yes, you are weird.


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## MarkW (Feb 16, 2015)

Brahmsianhorn said:


> My favorite all time symphonic movements:
> 
> 1. Bruckner 8 - 3
> 2. Mahler 9 - 4
> ...


Okay.


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

I love the finale to Mahler 9, but I don't often listen to it...have to be in the right mood..
It is certainly one of the greatest slow mvts - along with, ottomh - 
Mahler 3/VI
Bruckner 7/II
LvB 3/II
I know there are more, but those came to mind first


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

Mahler is a tough nut for me, who has been listening to classical music for only four years, not decades like some of the other TC members. The second movement connected with me, then the first. In recent weeks, I have been enjoying the third and last movements. So far, I can tell the last movement is passionate and high-quality and beautiful, but I don't hear it as earth-shattering...yet.


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## ORigel (May 7, 2020)

larold said:


> I too have a problem with the finale of the 9th symphony though it doesn't "leave me cold."
> 
> When performed by the likes of Karajan or Maurice Abravanel or anyone else that stretches it out to more than 25 minutes I cannot sit through the thing without becoming fidgety and eventually losing interest. I have no doubt of the musicality or beauty of such an approach but the thematic material in my opinion is too slight for such orchestral verbiage. For me it is for me simply too much of the same thing for too long as too slow a speed, especially when pacing slacks more as time presses forward.
> 
> The only recording of Mahler 9 I know I can sit through in its entirety is Boulez though, at 21 minutes and 25 seconds, there is understanding he is presenting a very different finale than others. Compared to Karajan at more than 26 minutes Boulez seems to set a race horse pace.


You probably cannot get any worse than Roger Norrington's interpretation!


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

ORigel said:


> Mahler is a tough nut for me, who has been listening to classical music for only four years, not decades like some of the other TC members. The second movement connected with me, then the first. In recent weeks, I have been enjoying the third and last movements. So far, I can tell the last movement is passionate and high-quality and beautiful, but I don't hear it *as earth-shattering.*..yet.


That is not a description that I would think of nor of a performance I'd want to hear.


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## Becca (Feb 5, 2015)

Heck148 said:


> I love the finale to Mahler 9, but I don't often listen to it...have to be in the right mood..
> It is certainly one of the greatest slow mvts - along with, ottomh -
> Mahler 3/VI
> Bruckner 7/II
> ...


Add the RVW 2/II from the 1913 version


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## Heck148 (Oct 27, 2016)

Becca said:


> Add the RVW 2/II from the 1913 version


I was thinking of possibly RVW 6/II
Bruckner 9/III


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## Art Rock (Nov 28, 2009)

BachIsBest said:


> Ultimately though, if you don't like it, you don't like it. You recognise that it's well-composed and good music, but just for whatever reason aren't personally attracted to it; nothing wrong with that.


Spot on. I wish more people realized that about music or art in general.

That said, I love M9, including the fourth movement.


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## Haydn70 (Jan 8, 2017)

BachIsBest said:


> Ultimately though, if you don't like it, you don't like it. *You recognise that it's well-composed and good music, but just for whatever reason aren't personally attracted to it; nothing wrong with that*.


Exactly! That is called objectivity...a quality sadly lacking in the majority of people. The typical attitude is "I don't like it, so it isn't good; I like it, so it is good." I have seen that with a quite a few TC members.

For me, for example, I don't like the music of Debussy. At the same time I acknowledge he was a great composer and a major figure in Western art music. But his music just doesn't do much for me.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

*Mahler Ninth: Am I weird?*



MarkW said:


> . . . the finale leaves me cold -- it's just there. I never skip it, but after about 5 minutes, I just sort of tune out. It's pretty and (naturally) well composed, but it doesn't inspire in me wistfulness, thoughts of mortality, actually much of anything. ...
> How strange am I?


I may be odd man out here, but weirdness, strangeness, whatever, comes in different shades and exists on both poles, as well as in-between. I find the final movement of the Ninth the strongest movement of that particular symphony, and one of the great masterworks in Mahler's oeuvre. In fact, over the years I've often played only that final movement, skipping the rest of the symphony in order to enjoy (experience is a better word, perhaps) those final crushing moments of what Mahler likely suspected, as he wrote it, would be his final symphonic statement.

That closing movement is dark, indeed, and seems to express a dying man's final breaths. I've always been fascinated by the theme, that "turn" of notes that is a so common figure in Romantic music. Mahler explores the figure to finally bring it to its close, and in some sense seems to bid good-bye to the great Romantic era of symphonic music in which he played such a culminating part. The "new" music of Schoenberg and the Impressionists was pushing to the forefront and the "older" style was becoming quaint. Is this what Mahler was contemplating as he wrote that last movement.

The Tenth Symphony was never completed, but on his deathbed Mahler apparently sketched enough of it for us to grasp the idea. It is indeed more optimistic, the closing moments pursuing a reflective depiction, perhaps, of the comfort of death or the joys of the afterlife. In any case, I have long thought that Mahler fought against death long enough to compose that Tenth in short score because he was unsettled and dissatisfied by his own Ninth and its apparent assessment of life. Mahler must have been contemplating death during the period when he wrote his last works (as well as through much of his early life as well), but he seems fundamentally a man for whom "life" is the crucial issue, not death. His music is so full of life -- of nature, and dance, and hopefulness, and child-like joy. I'm pleased to know the Tenth Symphony. It is a more fitting ending to Mahler's symphonic oeuvre. But I cherish the Ninth as well, and that symphony's final movement is a revelation in its own way, and I wouldn't want to be without it.

So, call me weird, too. I don't mind. If it's over Mahler, so be it. Names will never hurt me. But I should be much the poorer for lacking knowledge of Mahler's great symphonic oeuvre, including that final movment of the Ninth Symphony.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

SONNET CLV said:


> *Mahler Ninth: Am I weird?*
> That closing movement is dark, indeed, and seems to express a dying man's final breaths. I've always been fascinated by the theme, that "turn" of notes that is a so common figure in Romantic music. Mahler explores the figure to finally bring it to its close, and in some sense seems to bid good-bye to the great Romantic era of symphonic music in which he played such a culminating part. The "new" music of Schoenberg and the Impressionists was pushing to the forefront and the "older" style was becoming quaint. Is this what Mahler was contemplating as he wrote that last movement.


I have the exact opposite reaction - basing a movement on an ornamental turn (harking back as far as the baroque) just sounds unoriginal to my ears. It is curious how we can all react so differently to such elements.

I don't know if Mahler knew 'Eventide' by William Henry Monk.


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## Allegro Con Brio (Jan 3, 2020)

With my (possibly ill-advised) propensity to read extramusical interpretations into things, I envision the 9th finale as symbolic of the terrors and struggles of a new century in Europe, the pillars of the old ages crumbling down in favor of world wars, poverty, tyranny, and unrest. It’s a requiem for both an era in art/music and an era in history, bidding goodbye to the familiar and welcoming in the uncertain. It also sums up the questing spirit of Mahler’s life in which he was never able to find long-term satisfaction in much if anything, even if he didn’t know he was dying at the time. It’s one of the handful of pieces that is absolutely guaranteed to draw at least one teardrop from me every time.


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## allaroundmusicenthusiast (Jun 3, 2020)

Allegro Con Brio said:


> With my (possibly ill-advised) propensity to read extramusical interpretations into things, I envision the 9th finale as symbolic of the terrors and struggles of a new century in Europe, the pillars of the old ages crumbling down in favor of world wars, poverty, tyranny, and unrest. It's a requiem for both an era in art/music and an era in history, bidding goodbye to the familiar and welcoming in the uncertain. It also sums up the questing spirit of Mahler's life in which he was never able to find long-term satisfaction in much if anything, even if he didn't know he was dying at the time. It's one of the handful of pieces that is absolutely guaranteed to draw at least one teardrop from me every time.


That is kind of like what Bernstein says in his lecture on XXth century music


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## EdwardBast (Nov 25, 2013)

janxharris said:


> I have the exact opposite reaction - *basing a movement on an ornamental turn* (harking back as far as the baroque) *just sounds unoriginal to my ears*. It is curious how we can all react so differently to such elements.
> 
> I don't know if Mahler knew 'Eventide' by William Henry Monk.


Yes to this. I find the movement hackneyed and tedious in the extreme. (Mahler is hit or miss for me. I like symphonies four through six a lot. But not the rest of them.)


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## Brahmsianhorn (Feb 17, 2017)

My favorite is this live Barbirolli. Passionate and poignant. Hauntingly elegiac. Karajan '82 is also excellent.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

janxharris said:


> I have the exact opposite reaction - basing a movement on an ornamental turn (harking back as far as the baroque) just sounds unoriginal to my ears. It is curious how we can all react so differently to such elements.
> 
> I don't know if Mahler knew 'Eventide' by William Henry Monk.


Originality often lies in the manner by which one utilizes a common figure. Schoenberg remarked that there was still a lot of good music to be written in the key of C Major. He wasn't proposing that using the common key of C Major hints at unoriginality.

In his Fifth Symphony (first movement), Beethoven takes a common early music "turn", a lachryma, seemingly one plucked out of John Dowland's "teardrops" studies (_Lachrymae_), a work Beethoven is known to have studied, and gives it to an oboe to play as a short lament in his time of "fate knocking at the door." It's an ingenious use of the figure, and in no way unoriginal.

Tchaikovsky would later borrow that same series of notes for his greatest lamentation, the great weeping theme of the first movement of Symphony No.6. Again, nothing unoriginal there. Rather, genius is revealed by how the common, trite figuration is utilized. This is true across the arts.

I would not call Euripides's nor Sophocles's _Elektra_ tragedy to be unoriginal because Aeschylus had penned his version years earlier. Nor would I accuse Richard Strauss, not my favorite composer, mind you, of being unoriginal for setting the same story to an opera. Rather, each artist has something unique to say with his version. And there have been many Electra/Elektra's since and the story will continue to prove insightful to new generations as it contains the seeds of a human truth that is flexible and pliable and capable of addressing many concerns.

The same is true in graphic art. El Greco's _View of Toledo_ is not unoriginal because it is a painted "view of the city of Toledo" any more than an Ansel Adams photograph of Mount McGee, a mountain!, is unoriginal.

At the very edge of the most absurd take on the comment of unoriginality is something of the notion that anyone who writes a symphony is unoriginal since there have been many many symphonies written already. But the form survives because original thinkers will always find ways of using it to communicate something different and/or new and/or useful and/or previously unconsidered....

Mahler remains in this category -- an artist of most original mind. Whether tapping into a French folk song, a Christian hymn, a Jewish lamentation, or a long-used musical figuration, he has genius enough (with much to spare) to find new meanings in old systems. And that's one of the things for which we most respect our artists.


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## BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist (Jan 13, 2019)

I've said it on this forum before, but Mahler - late Mahler especially - is full of clichés, you might even say platitudes. But you shouldn't be looking for originality or profundity in the individual musical cells. Rather, it's in how these clichés communicate with each other that the beauty and transcendence of the music emerges. The first and last movements of the 9th are perhaps the epitomes of this late Mahlerian aesthetic.

The 9th is kitschy music, in a literal sense. Yet it is through kitsch that Mahler manages to capture the depths of human experience. Much - maybe most - of great literature, visual art, and especially film works this way. With music, where sensation tends to constitute the essence of artistry directly without the intervention of psychological perception, making greatness out of kitsch is less common. But when it is done - in the Diabelli variations, Tchaikovsky's 6th, and above all in late Mahler, the result is truly something special. In the humble opinion of this listener, at least.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

BrahmsWasAGreatMelodist said:


> ...
> 
> The 9th is kitschy music, in a literal sense. Yet it is through kitsch that Mahler manages to capture the depths of human experience. ...


I'm reminded here of the third movement, the funeral march, of Mahler's First Symphony. Here is music built on the most familiar of folk tunes, and yet .... Just the transposition to the minor key changes things to immediately grab our attention. Other borrowings mark the movement, yet it remains supremely original.

An intriguing analysis of that movement, I find:

http://gustavmahler.com/symphonies/...Movement-Funeral-March-in-Callots-Manner.html


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## Aries (Nov 29, 2012)

For me the fourth movement is beautiful and very positiv. It clears my mind and gives me power. But people talk very different about this movement. Maybe I am weird too.


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## janxharris (May 24, 2010)

SONNET CLV said:


> Originality often lies in the manner by which one utilizes a common figure. Schoenberg remarked that there was still a lot of good music to be written in the key of C Major. He wasn't proposing that using the common key of C Major hints at unoriginality.
> 
> In his Fifth Symphony (first movement), Beethoven takes a common early music "turn", a lachryma, seemingly one plucked out of John Dowland's "teardrops" studies (_Lachrymae_), a work Beethoven is known to have studied, and gives it to an oboe to play as a short lament in his time of "fate knocking at the door." It's an ingenious use of the figure, and in no way unoriginal.


That moment in the Beethoven has always been a special one for me; that it isn't particularly original seems not to matter because of it's brevity. Étienne Méhul's 1st symphony (finale) is perhaps a better example of possible influence (in terms of the famous motif - though it does appear unclear who influenced who as both works appeared at about the same time).



> Tchaikovsky would later borrow that same series of notes for his greatest lamentation, the great weeping theme of the first movement of Symphony No.6. Again, nothing unoriginal there. Rather, genius is revealed by how the common, trite figuration is utilized. This is true across the arts.
> 
> I would not call Euripides's nor Sophocles's _Elektra_ tragedy to be unoriginal because Aeschylus had penned his version years earlier. Nor would I accuse Richard Strauss, not my favorite composer, mind you, of being unoriginal for setting the same story to an opera. Rather, each artist has something unique to say with his version. And there have been many Electra/Elektra's since and the story will continue to prove insightful to new generations as it contains the seeds of a human truth that is flexible and pliable and capable of addressing many concerns.
> 
> ...


Fair enough - if it works for you then I wouldn't want to try to persuade you otherwise. I do consider Mahler a genius but not based on the particular movement in question.


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## Spy Car (Nov 15, 2017)

The final Adagio from Mahler 9 is one of my very favorite symphonic movements.

Perhaps I'm weird? 

Bill


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## Brahmsianhorn (Feb 17, 2017)

Spy Car said:


> The final Adagio from Mahler 9 is one of my very favorite symphonic movements.
> 
> Perhaps I'm weird?
> 
> Bill


No, not weird at all. It's up there with the Abschied from DLVDE as the best thing Mahler ever wrote.


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## Spy Car (Nov 15, 2017)

Brahmsianhorn said:


> No, not weird at all. It's up there with the Abschied from DLVDE as the best thing Mahler ever wrote.


I looked at your list of favorite movements earlier in the thread and found myself nodding in agreement with each choice.

Based on that and other posts I've read, I think I strongly tend to share your musical tastes.

Bill


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