# Mahler 6 - Hammer blows?



## DavidA

I gave heard there is a controversy about the number of hammer blows in the finale - two ot three? Perhaps some of you more knowledgeable folk could help out here?


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## wkasimer

DavidA said:


> I gave heard there is a controversy about the number of hammer blows in the finale - two ot three? Perhaps some of you more knowledgeable folk could help out here?


Zander talks about this on the disc that accompanies his recording. I can't remember the details, but IIRC, Mahler originally wrote in three hammer blows, but when he revised the symphony, he removed the last one.


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## Becca

wkasimer said:


> Zander talks about this on the disc that accompanies his recording. I can't remember the details, but IIRC, Mahler originally wrote in three hammer blows, but when he revised the symphony, he removed the last one.


Due, IIRC, to superstitious reasons, which certainly fits in with his personality (e.g. the issue over the '9th' symphony.)


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## DavidA

I gave found the reference:

Alma quoted her husband as saying that these were three mighty blows of fate befallen by the hero, "the third of which fells him like a tree". She identified these blows with three later events in Gustav Mahler's own life: the death of his eldest daughter Maria Anna Mahler, the diagnosis of an eventually fatal heart condition, and his forced resignation from the Vienna Opera and departure from Vienna. When he revised the work, Mahler removed the last of these three hammer strokes so that the music built to a sudden moment of stillness in place of the third blow. Some recordings and performances, notably those of Leonard Bernstein, have restored the third hammer blow.


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## elgar's ghost

I think sometimes the final one is replaced with a gong, unless my memory is deceiving me.


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## Larkenfield

Mahler could have added a fourth hammer blow in anticipation of his wife Alma’s devastating love affair with an ambitious architect named Gropius. But it didn’t help his marriage that he had discouraged her from writing her own music and that led her into a great depression. He ended up on Freud’s couch because of it asking for advice, but it was apparently too late... Maybe a fifth hammer blow in anticipation of their final divorce with all the hammer blows seeming to be prophetic in Fate making its heavy presence felt. But he kept creating anyway and rising above his losses with four more unforgettable symphonies... Fate couldn’t prevent his music from being heard after he finally shuffled off his mortal coil, even the Nazis tried, and I believe Mahler had the final say, the last laugh, the final word.


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## CnC Bartok

Larkenfield said:


> Mahler could have added a fourth blow in anticipation of his wife Alma unceremoniously dumping him for an ambitious architect named Gropius.


That lady has a lot to answer for......:devil:


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## DavidA

Larkenfield said:


> Mahler could have added a fourth blow in anticipation of his wife Alma's devastating love affair with an ambitious architect named Gropius. But it didn't help his marriage that he had discouraged her from writing her own music. He ended up on Freud's couch because of it asking for advice.


More seriously when their daughter died he cleared off and left alma to make all the funeral arrangements while he walked in the mountains. Quite a selfish toe-rag really!


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## mbhaub

The real problem with those hammer strokes isn't the number, but the quality. Very seldom is the timbre right. Mahler tried some huge bass drum contraption that didn't cut it. I've heard (and have seen) various attempts. The best was a large wooden box struck with a huge wooden mallet - it gave a terrifiying whack! and of course had no metallic ring about it. On recordings, it doesn't seem to matter too much since even digital technology has trouble with the massive transients created by the sound. And - if a third stroke is used, it should be accompanied by the orchestration used in that version. Too often, conductors add in the third stroke using the softened orchestration. If only someone would record Redlich's version.


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## Larkenfield

Here's a good one... Can't help chuckling every time I see it. In this instance, maybe one hammer blow is enough with splinters flying, lol. Evidently, at the premiere of his 6th, Mahler was reluctant to use the third hammer blow because it was too emotional for him. The question is whether he suffered from _Sfyriphobia_, which is known as "the fear of hammers." 





$


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## MarkW

When he deleted the third blow, Mahler softened the orchestration -- as demonstrated on Zander's disc. I don't know what he used on the recording but when Zander first programmed it in his days with the Boston Philharmonic (a semi-pro pickup orchestra that loved him) he used a wooden tympani crate struck with a length of iron pipe that was alleged to be extraordinarily effective.


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## Kiki

Just curious, has anyone seen (or know of) any A-list orchestra using baby powder to woo the audience?


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## NLAdriaan

In the manuscript of the 6th, there were 5 (five!) hammerblows, ie 5 strikes of a percussion instrument. At the premiere in Essen, three remained (which however could not be heard by the public), the other two were gone. The 3rd was then deleted by Mahler, but eventually returned in the 'Kritische Ausgabe'. So, it depends on the conductor if he chooses 2 or 3 hammer blows, but maybe a 'historically correct original instruments' approach would legitimate 5 blows In order to have it noticed and heard, orchestras started to develop bigger gear, which now seems to culminate in huge hammers and large wooden boxes, sometimes when you witness a performance, it can be a bit funny, this huge lumberjack gear operated by a guy in tails. 

Probably you are aware of another controversy in the 6th, being the order of the movements. The Scherzo is either played as the 2nd or as the 3rd part, exchanged with the andante. The Kritische Ausgabe from Ratz in 1963 mentions the scherzo as the 2nd and the andante as the 3rd, a later critical publication of the 6th changed the order back to 2 andante - 3 scherzo. To this day, both orders can be found in recordings. Haitink, Bernstein, Karajan play the scherzo before the andante. Jansons, Gergiev and Abbado play the andante before the scherzo. On a CD recording you can choose your own order


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## NLAdriaan

Actually, after my previous post (different source) I looked the subject up in the Mahler bible, the monumental de la Grange biography.

De la Grange gives a very refreshing view on the subject matter.

The programmatic and prophetic symbolism in the three hammer blows to be connected to events in Mahlers on life, seems to be far fetched and merely based on suggestions in retrospect by Alma Mahler. The adultery of Alma was only confessed by her 3 years later and his own heart disease was at the time not at all diagnosed as being fatal. So, de la Grange thinks that Alma romanticized the entire story for whatever reason. Therefor, the theatrical effect sought by conductors (as hilariously shown in the youtube fragment in a previous post) would contradict Mahlers intentions. He just needed a percussive sound that would be audible in a large orchestra playing tutti. This means that size does matter, but all kinds of visual effects are just keeping up appearances.

And to the matter of order of movements, de la Grange's research shows that 2 scherzo and 3 andante is the right choice, from a musical point of view. 

So far the highly educated view of Mahler's main biographer.


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## mbhaub

NLAdriaan said:


> Probably you are aware of another controversy in the 6th, being the order of the movements.


On this site? Controversial?


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## DavidA

mbhaub said:


> On this site? Controversial?


Never known any controversy on this site!


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## Becca

NLAdriaan said:


> Probably you are aware of another controversy in the 6th, being the order of the movements. The Scherzo is either played as the 2nd or as the 3rd part, exchanged with the andante. The Kritische Ausgabe from Ratz in 1963 mentions the scherzo as the 2nd and the andante as the 3rd, a later critical publication of the 6th changed the order back to 2 andante - 3 scherzo. To this day, both orders can be found in recordings. Haitink, Bernstein, Karajan play the scherzo before the andante. Jansons, Gergiev and Abbado play the andante before the scherzo. On a CD recording you can choose your own order


There is a very recent thread on that topic which got, shall we say, quite heated!


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## CnC Bartok

Becca said:


> There is a very recent thread on that topic which got, shall we say, quite heated!


Oh! You noticed that too, eh?......:angel:


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## Larkenfield

NLAdriaan said:


> Probably you are aware of another controversy in the 6th, being the order of the movements. The Scherzo is either played as the 2nd or as the 3rd part, exchanged with the andante. The Kritische Ausgabe from Ratz in 1963 mentions the scherzo as the 2nd and the andante as the 3rd, a later critical publication of the 6th changed the order back to 2 andante - 3 scherzo. To this day, both orders can be found in recordings. Haitink, Bernstein, Karajan play the scherzo before the andante. Jansons, Gergiev and Abbado play the andante before the scherzo. On a CD recording you can choose your own order


I'd say there's only a controversy about the middle two movements by conductors who still blindly trust Radz's discredited reversal of the order or are perhaps too lazy to respect Mahler's revised score and the only way the 6th was played during his lifetime and for almost 10 years after. The unauthorized change was made by his wife years after his death. :trp: Expect to hear more new performances of Mahler's desired order in the years to come, already being done by Simon Rattle and Alan Gilbert. Dimitri Mitropoulos and John Barbirolli always used Mahler's desired order. Ivan Fischer too.

Mahler originally wrote three hammer blows but never performed the third one. I believe that he probably felt it was more effective that way to have the drama of the silence, and I believe that he may have been superstitious about the third one as well, that he didn't want to tempt fate further than what he might have already been subconsciously anticipating ahead of him. Of course, some conductors put in the third hammer blow which I'm sure Mahler would have been thrilled about now that he's dead and can't speak up for himself. :/ I do not believe the third blow is necessary because Mahler had already made his point and another one would be overkill.


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## NLAdriaan

Larkenfield said:


> I'd say there's only a controversy about the middle two movements by conductors who still blindly trust Radz's discredited reversal of the order or are perhaps too lazy to respect Mahler's revised score and the only way the 6th was played during his lifetime and for almost 10 years after. The unauthorized change was made by his wife years after his death.


 What is your source? And what is the use of such a strong opinion, when there are more, educated point of views? Mahler himself kept changing his mind over and over on his work and was said to be insecure by nature. This is the case with most composers and even with most artists. It is a matter on which each conductor will have to make a choice. My late grandfather, who was a contractor, used to say: Just as you build it, you have it. 
The same with music, I think.


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## DavidA

NLAdriaan said:


> What is your source? And what is the use of such a strong opinion, when there are more, educated point of views? Mahler himself kept changing his mind over and over on his work and was said to be insecure by nature. This is the case with most composers and even with most artists. It is a matter on which each conductor will have to make a choice. My late grandfather, who was a contractor, used to say: Just as you build it, you have it.
> The same with music, I think.


I have read differing opinions on the order of movements. Most of them begin with the phrase 'There is no doubt......' :lol:


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## Becca

NLAdriaan said:


> Mahler himself kept changing his mind over and over on his workractor, used to say: Just as you build it, you


That is wrong, he changed it exactly once, during the rehearsals for the symphony, when he instructed his publisher to correct it and print an insert in the score about the change to A/S. He only performed it as A/S during the remainder of his life. Any subsequent issues about the ordering come by way of Alma Mahler and have mostly been seen to be misleading. If you want a 'more educated point of view', try looking at the new revised critical edition of the score long with the commentary.

http://www.classicstoday.com/features/ClassicsToday-Mahler6Score.pdf


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## Gordontrek

I don't have an opinion on which option is more authentic, I just think three gigantic hammer blows is more awesome than two.


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## Larkenfield

NLAdriaan said:


> What is your source? And what is the use of such a strong opinion, when there are more, educated point of views? Mahler himself kept changing his mind over and over on his work and was said to be insecure by nature. This is the case with most composers and even with most artists. It is a matter on which each conductor will have to make a choice. My late grandfather, who was a contractor, used to say: Just as you build it, you have it.
> The same with music, I think.


I suggest it's worth investigating this matter further with documented information. It's there for anyone to examine, and the order has been discussed in great detail in other Mahler 6th threads.

It was not an arbitrary decision on his part and he never changed it while he was alive. He only played the 6th one way, period-A-S. He never questioned his final decision, ever. The conjecture, the controversy comes from outsiders and not him. How about the source of the A-S order being Mahler himself and his second and third published scores? Anyone can look them up on the IMSLP website where they can be viewed first-hand. It was premiered with A-S with him personally conducting. How does it get more authoritative than that? 
_
Instant replay:_

_



Three weeks before the first performance [of the 6th], Mahler had the Symphony read through in Vienna under his direction, at which time he irrevocably decided that the correct middle-movement order should be Andante-Scherzo. Mahler conducted the world premiere in Essen on 27 May 1906, with the middle movement order of Andante-Scherzo, after having instructed Kahnt to insert an erratum slip in the unsold copies of the scores and in Specht's booklet, detailing the correct middle movement order, and to republish the scores and booklet with the corrected middle-movement order, which Kahnt did in November 1906.

From that point on, therefore, there would seem to be no question regarding the order of the movements, the more so as the remaining five complete performances of the Symphony in Mahler's lifetime were given with the order of Andante-Scherzo. Chronologically, these performances were:

*October 1906, Oskar Fried conducting, Berlin (Mahler attended the rehearsals and performance)
*8 November 1906, Mahler conducting, Munich
*14 November 1906, Bernard Stavenhagen (a pupil of Liszt) conducting, Munich (the second performance in the city in a week)
*January 1907, Mahler conducting, Vienna (the Philharmonic Orchestra)
*March 1907, Hans Winderstein conducting, Leipzig
*April 1907, Ernst von Schuch conducting, Dresden (middle movements only, in the order Andante-Scherzo). [unquote]

Click to expand...

_


> I believe this matter requires others to do their own homework, not just guess about his intentions or make assumptions, and understand how this work was performed during his lifetime. It was Alma Mahler who told conductor Willem Mengelberg that it should be S-A. It came from her years after his death, not from Gustav Mahler himself. After Mahler made his decision before the symphony's premiere, its first public performance, and forever until he died 5 years later, there was no equivocation, uncertainty, indecision, insecurity, doubt, vacillation, change, second-guessing, or anything else. His decision about the A-S ordering remained firmly and decidedly fixed.
> 
> Documentation: https://www.posthorn.com/Mahler/Correct_Movement_Order_III.pdf


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## Oldhoosierdude

Not sure I much care how many times they use the giant croquet mallet. I have recordings doing different things with this, they're all good.


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## Radames

Larkenfield said:


> Here's a good one... Can't help chuckling every time I see it. In this instance, maybe one hammer blow is enough with splinters flying, lol. Evidently, at the premiere of his 6th, Mahler was reluctant to use the third hammer blow because it was too emotional for him. The question is whether he suffered from _Sfyriphobia_, which is known as "the fear of hammers."
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> $


That's a good one! It's hard to get those hammer blows right. I heard that they sometimes do it electronically.


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## NLAdriaan

In fact it is totally irrelevant to want to arrive at ONE ULTIMATE TRUTH. Equally, it is totally irrelevant to condemn other views, as each individual has his/her own view. 

Music is no math, no rocket science. In every bar and every note, there are multiple options to choose and it is the combined effort of composer and interpreters as to how to do it and it is up to each pair of ears whether to like it or not:tiphat:.


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## NLAdriaan

Just spend some time to listen (and watch) this.


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## Larkenfield

IGlad to have heard the Abaddo. Well done. By the time it was over, he looked completely spent and the audience was sitting in stunned silence. With _two_ hammer blows, not three... My impression of this symphony is Mahler saying to himself: "I don't know what it is... but I feel something gaining on me." _Ka-boom... Ka-boom_.


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## jtilton

Wikipedia has a helpful list for recordings of Mahler's 6th, organized by the order of the middle movements. They also note recordings with a third hammer blow using an *. I did a control F search of * on the page to find all of the hammer blow recordings, as my current recording has two and I'd like to add a performance to my collection with both.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._6_(Mahler)#Selected_discography

On this page I came across Jukka-Pekka Saraste and the Oslo Philharmonic's recording, which I listened to and really loved until the end when I was disappointed to find that while the third hammer blow is in fact included, the original orchestration after the hammer blow is not, reverting to the new orchestration for if there are two hammer blows. I found this to be an odd choice and it doesn't sound quite right. It feels more like he just wanted the third hammer blow in there because the hammer blows are awesome (and, to be fair, they are), but I think the other orchestration really brings home (or hammers home) the difference in the two takes.


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## Radames

I was in Boston last night and Nelsons gave us the 3rd one. It was kind of jarring. I did not expect it.


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## Monsalvat

This is an older thread but in case it triggers some more discussion, I'll quote my comment from the last time we got into a debate about this sort of thing. This all pertains to the third hammer-blow. The details are in that quote but I compared the original, the Ratz "urtext", a page with Mahler's own corrections, and Leonard Bernstein's marked score. Aside from eliminating the final hammerblow, Mahler made some substantial emendations to this part of the score in instrumentation, dynamics and balance. Despite this, Bernstein's marked score simply added in a _*fff*_ hammer without reverting to Mahler's other (simultaneous) revisions, meaning that the balance/orchestration at this moment was in conflict with both versions of the symphony. It's amazing to see the score marked up in the hand of the master himself. My point here is that it isn't as simple as just adding in the hammer; one should consider the other changes Mahler made at the same time and avoid picking and choosing them _a la carte_.



Monsalvat said:


> Fun note about the hammer-blows: IMSLP actually has both the original version and the revised (final) version on their webpage. You can see a color facsimile of the page with the third hammer-blow at the Mahler Foundation's website, _with Mahler's corrections:_ Movement 4: Finale (Allegro moderato)
> 
> Comparing the two versions (the page of interest is the fourth page from the end if you pull up either the original or revised Kahnt edition), there are some really substantial differences!! Aside from the excision of the hammer, Mahler adds a celesta scale in rapid octaves, doubling the flutes and oboes. (He actually cuts the oboes out as well in the measure preceding the third hammer-blow). The harp glissando is moved so it starts two beats earlier, and he gives some cue notes to the harpist so they know just how fast to play this glissando; he also changes the direction "A-dur" to "B-dur" in the harp here. To the percussionists, he adds the instructions "Holzschlägel" to the timpani, and "gedämpft" to the timpani and snare drum. He also reduced the timpani from two players to one in this passage. In the measure which featured the third hammer-blow (bar 783), the dynamics are all _radically_ altered, in some cases (e.g. the flutes) going from piano to fortissimo! He changes a dotted quarter note in the strings to a quarter note with an eighth rest, adds accents and diminuendi, cuts some of the contrabass parts. The A clarinets come in two measures earlier, while the trombones and tuba are removed. The F trumpets, instead of playing forte and fortissimo, are instructed to play piano and _fp_; two measures later, an instruction to play piano is changed to read _sffp_. Oh, and instead of having all eight horns play muted, he instructs 5-8 to play open, even while 1-4 are muted.
> 
> And all of this is on _just one page_! This is a really substantial set of changes in a brief span of time. This tells me that Mahler was _extremely_ particular about his intentions, even if he didn't get it on the first time; I think this line of reasoning could be applied to the ordering of the inner movements as well, but obviously this is up for debate. Obviously, a conductor who wishes to re-insert the third hammer-blow now has to consider all of these other revisions to the orchestral balance at this moment, which are not minor; it clearly isn't as simple as just adding the hammer back in.
> 
> Leonard Bernstein was known for including this third hammer-blow. We can see from his marked conducting score that he did _not_ also change the orchestral balances here back to Mahler's original; he simply included the hammer-blow without re-considering the rest of the changes made at this point. I really, really strongly disagree with this, as it is just an arbitrary mishmash of versions. New York Philharmonic Archives: Viewer (page 267 in their online tool). It is clear that Bernstein was using the revised Kahnt edition here... but Berstein's only change at this point is to add a _fff_ quarter note, and mark it "HAMMER (3!)". I can't endorse this in principle but I need to go back and listen to Bernstein's rendition to hear how it comes across. This afternoon I listened to Kubelík and found that he did a convincing job with the Scherzo-Andante ordering.


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## mbhaub

Monsalvat said:


> My point here is that it isn't as simple as just adding in the hammer; one should consider the other changes Mahler made at the same time and avoid picking and choosing them _a la carte_.


You are correct. And the most amazing Mahler 6th I've ever heard was with the Tucson Symphony (George Hanson, cond) and he did exactly that: added that third hammer blow and used the original orchestration. Only Mahler nerds like myself would have been able to hear and appreciate the difference. It was thrilling to hear it that way.


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## maestro267

Should be three. What should be the ultimate killing blow of Fate, its Final Victory over our hero, sounds incredibly underwhelming otherwise.


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