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I cannot understand why some who loves Wagner would dislike Mahler

15K views 91 replies 32 participants last post by  Machiavel 
#1 · (Edited)
Mahler extracted from Wagner so much of what made Wagner's writing great and then improved it. Gave it much more form, more counterpoint, more emotion, and toward the end of his life, more dissonance. He also removed the distraction of opera and got to the music much more directly. In my eyes, Wagner is Copernicus and Mahler is Galileo.
 
#60 ·
Wagner lovers, like Wagner himself, fully feel that the most meaning from music comes when it is allied with theater - something Wagner held so high as to be 'holy.'

Mahler never wrote theater work in his entire career - maybe he'd had enough conducting operas, including those of Wagner, and having dealt with all the kerfuffle of Divas, Divos, set designers and stage machinery to turn him off it completely.

So with Wagnerites, I am venturing a rather precarious guess that it is not wholly about music, or a similar musical vocabulary, but attachment to theater, and the import of the psychology of the literal drama which holds them in thrall, and also often enough makes them 'certain' that nothing else comes anywhere close.
 
#61 · (Edited)
There are disputes among Wagnerites over what his music "means" and which aspect is paramount and which aspects should be emphasized, which is why you have the Karajan/Solti divide and their partisans. Some Wagnerites emphasize the theater aspect, but that has changed over time - apparently while Wagner was alive the performers were zen like and didn't move around much. Again, I think Wagner is too rich and Wagnerites too diverse and divergent to fit into these nutshells.

http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2005/06/a_discussion_on.html

Richard Loeb's comment (in another post in this thread) that,

>I think we get closer to what this work [_Tristan_] ...
>with Flagtad and Melchior giving us the essence of these characters
>with tinny orchestras in the background than with current mediocre
>voices and orchestras right up front. Pieces have been written about
>the importance of the orchestra in this work- of course it is, but
>its the voices that give us the specifics and details of the drama -the
>orchestra gives us underlying feelings but without the voices we aren't
>left with much of anything certainly not the drama....

is exactly wrong, and exactly what a performance of _Tristan_ (or any other mature Wagner work, for that matter, _Meistersinger_ perhaps excepted) should *never* be. Ditto that wrongness in Richard's,

>No amount of
>rationalization can justify the voice-orchestral balance - I have heard
>it all before and all I hear in the love duet is two miniscule voices
>in a vast space which is exactly the opposite of the intimacy and
>personal connection with these two characters that is needed.

"[T]wo miniscule voices in a vast space" is exactly *right* for the Liebesnacht episode, and a focusing on "the intimacy and personal connection [of Tristan and Isolde]" exactly *wrong*. To the extent that the "intimacy and personal connection" of Tristan and Isolde is focused on in this episode, to that same extent has the entire point of the episode been distorted or missed.
http://www.soundsandfury.com/soundsandfury/2008/08/oh-dear-here-we-go-again.html

Responding to an eMail of mine on a Wagner list wherein, with the exception of Das Rheingold, I declared the Karajan recording of Wagner's Ring a "perverse joke" because of Karajan's bizarre conceit that Wagner - even mature Wagner - should be made to sound as intimate and lyrical as Verdi, a TOF (True Opera Fan; like a teenage movie fan, only worse - much worse) lodged objection, and went on to cite his reasons, all of which had to do with the singers involved.

How did I know the responder was a TOF? He went on, and on, and interminably on about the singers and the singing, that's how. The principal (but not sole) distinguishing hallmark of the TOF is that he's convinced opera means Italian-form opera, and is therefore about one thing and one thing only: the singers and the singing. Whenever one encounters a critique of a performance of a mature Wagner work (i.e., those works post-Lohengrin) that dwells interminably on the singers and the singing, one can be certain one is dealing with a TOF, and safely dismiss the critique as being near-worthless. TOFs imagine that the works of the mature Wagner are nothing more than Italian opera writ large and sung in German; a bit like saying the noble elephant is merely a piddling rock hyrax, only bigger and with a trunk.

The mature Wagner operas (more correctly called music-dramas) are, of course, nothing of the sort. They're animals of a different order altogether from Italian and Italian-form opera, and share with them only the technical apparatus of performance: an orchestra and conductor, singers, a sung text (libretto), an orchestral score, and mise en scène. Beyond that they've nothing in common.

If one were pressed to choose the principal element of a Wagner performance - that element on which the success or failure of the realization of the work most depends - the choice, hands down, would have to be the orchestra. Without a first-rate orchestra with a first-rate Wagner conductor on the podium, not merely a first-rate conductor, nothing - and I do mean nothing - can save the performance from being second-rate at best; not even were all the sopranos Nilssons, all the tenors Melchiors, and all the bass-baritones, Papes. By contrast, a performance of an Italian opera with a merely competent orchestra with even a mere accurate time-beater on the podium would prove just dandy if less than ideal so long as all the voices were superb.
 
#76 · (Edited)
To explain some attention Wagner receives, it's first interesting that Mahler's 2nd alone is considered greater to most people on this forum than Der Ring des Nibelungen, as well as Mahler's 9th greater. The popularity of Wagner is represented in some way by an upside to Science's project where Wagner actually gets attention and people actually listen to his works and place them above Mahler's. However, I don't think this has any merit according to better tabulation, like the above the 50 works submission requirement of Periphery's tally: In other words this is just speculation, but the true downside to Science's ranking of Der Ring des Ninelungen is described here, and because of that, I don't think many people really like his works as much as they vote, or listen to them as though they're longing, wistful Tier 2 works like they voted (not saying some don't,) but that's what that link means by 'lukewarm voting' in Science's tab, the praise of Wagner is not strongly felt by most. Instead, it seems like more of a reflex of convention.

Now, this has nothing to do with the subjective or actual qualities of the composers, but rather why Wagner and Mahler may get compared as equals more than is logical. Mahler is definitely much more popular, so the popularity of Wagner isn't as warranted.
 
#77 · (Edited)
To explain some attention Wagner receives, it's first interesting that Mahler's 2nd alone is considered greater to most people on this forum than Der Ring des Nibelungen, as well as Mahler's 9th alone. That upside to Science's project where Wagner actually gets attention and people actually listen to his works and place them above Mahler's, I don't think has any merit above the 50 works submission requirement of Periphery's tally: In other words, this is just speculation, but the true downside to Science's ranking of Der Ring des Ninelungen is described here, and because of that, I don't think many people really like his works as much as they say or listen to them as though they're longing Tier 2 works like they vote. That's what that link means by 'lukewarm voting' in Science's tab, the praise of Wagner is not strongly felt by most--instead it may be more of a reflex of convention.

Now, this has nothing to do with the subjective or actual qualities of the composers, but rather why Wagner and Mahler may get compared as equals more than is logical. Mahler is definitely much more popular, so the popularity of Wagner isn't as warranted.
I think you're forgetting to take into account that many members of the opera subforum rarely come here at the main forum, and that Wagner's works are probably much more popular among them. So, to have a big picture of a Wagner vs Mahler in terms of popularity here at TC, it would be needed to consider the results of a poll/project in that subforum as well. Also, Periphery's results represent a single moment here in these forums (July of 2020), while Science's project has been running for years and received the attention of far more members and, therefore, has yes more merit in terms of statistical relevance in my opinion.

You may be interested in the results of this poll. Wagner eclipses Mahler in it (at least for now), and it has more than three hundred votes.

This poll shows how popular Wagner is among the members of the opera subforum.
 
#78 ·
Both composers are like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to me. Some of what Wagner wrote is among my favourites yet I dislike a lot of his output.

I love Mahler's 1st, 2nd and 5th symphonies, really like the 3rd but his later symphonies leave me cold. I don't see what the big deal about his 9th is, which for many is his best. It bores me to death; actually worse, it makes me want to turn it off as it begins to irritate me 10 minutes in. It sounds like the mad ravings of a schizophrenic.
 
#79 · (Edited)
Xisten267, while it's noted the project took place at one time, and is the one project that required one to list more than 50 greatest pieces (a task many can't do with conviction), the other polls you link, similar to Science's and this poll, aren't qualitative polls. They don't measure actual strength of opinions. Most polls that get created don't. This is why they're less relevant no matter how long you run them. I made an analogy once with a Shostakovich vs Prokofiev poll. Prokofiev won by a hundred votes, but when people actually listed how strongly they liked the composers, the results shifted the other way. The Mahler/Wagner question is even more obvious. I don't believe it has anything to do with actual quality in their music, just that people like Mahler a lot more on average. The popularity of Wagner here is a bit of an illusion, kind of like Chopin or Vivaldi, where more threads get made more than people actually care.
 
#80 · (Edited)
Xisten267, while it's noted the project took place at one time, and is the one project that required one to list more than 50 greatest pieces (a task many can't do with conviction), the other polls you link like Science's, aren't qualitative polls. They don't measure actual strength of opinions. Most of the polls in the opera forums don't. This is why they're less relevant no matter how long you run them. I made an analogy once with a Shostakovich vs Prokofiev poll. Prokofiev won the poll by a hundred votes, but when people actually listed how strongly they liked the composers, the results shifted the other way. The Mahler/Wagner question is even more obvious. I don't think it has anything to do with actual quality in their music, just that people like Mahler a lot more on average. The popularity of Wagner is a bit of an illusion.
Frankly, I don't believe that these results are so obvious. I, at least, cannot tell which of the two is the most popular at the moment - there's no data available aside from Science's project, the polls and Periphery's project and, as I told you, the latter isn't really representative of TC as a whole because it didn't cover an important portion of it's members. Perhaps you may want to create a project simultaneously in the opera subforum and here to test your hypothesis that Mahler is much more popular than Wagner. My two cents is that he probably isn't.
 
#81 · (Edited)
Well you're probably correct on an opera forum (which is 85% smaller than the main forums.) It wouldn't be fair to add that information to the main forum, because the main forum already included those people. A global poll is just that. This is why opera-lovers already voted him into these global polls, we don't re-add their information twice. A baroque forum might say Wagner is a great composer but Vivaldi is better :lol:. Either way this subject is not too important. But I do think certain composers get discussed more than people will actually listen to them. Wouldn't be surprised if there's a Wagner bible of eternal salvation sitting in many members' rooms, probably collecting some of his dust.
 
#82 · (Edited)
Well you're probably correct on an opera forum. A baroque forum might say Wagner is a great composer but Vivaldi is better :lol:
Ok, but there's no baroque subforum here at TC, and most users of other subforums tend to come here at the main one anyway, contrary to what seems to happen with those of the opera subforum that, by the way, is the larger of all subforums here aside from the main one. You can't just ignore it if you want to talk about popularity of something in TC as a whole.

Besides, it makes even more sense to take into account what the people that like operas think in this case because Wagner is mainly a composer of operas. Your data is biased if you don't.

It's reasonable to think that Mahler is more popular than Wagner among people who doesn't like opera, and that the opposite is true among people who like. So, both parts must be considered if one wants to know their overall popularity.

Well you're probably correct on an opera forum (which is 85% smaller than the main forums.)
Why 15% of your universe of possibilities should be ignored? To me it looks like an important portion of this universe.

It wouldn't be fair to add that information to the main forum, because the main forum already included those people.
Actually, no. Most users of the opera subforum don't come here frequently. Take a look at the non-anonymous polls or in the many rounds of Science's project and you'll see this.

Wouldn't be surprised if there's a Wagner bible of eternal salvation sitting in many members' rooms, probably collecting some of his dust.
All great composers have their obsessed fans. This includes Mahler, Wagner or any other of them.
 
#85 ·
I don't know about Scriabin but I didn't realize Mahler had a cultish following, the most cultish following I encountered with some frequence was Wagner, then Bruckner.

As someone wrote above or in a similar thread, it is only from a very skewed perspective in the age of internet fora that someone could think Mahler was more popular than Wagner. While the popularity of Mahler has exponentially increased in the last 50 years and both have been controversial figures since their lifetime, Wagner is a different order of magnitude.
I am too young to recall that Mahler's symphonies were rare occurences but old enough to remember that they were still considered a bit of a niche in the late 1980s. Of course, some Wagner operas were also considered heavy and for dedicated listeners but you have all these famous bleeding chunks and preludes and at least, Holländer, Lohengrin and Tannhäuser have been quite popular even with the average opera buff, not Wagnerians only.

Anyway, they are rather different composers, so it is not unlikely that many will like one but not the other.
 
#87 · (Edited)
Though Wagner and Mahler worked in different genres and though their music reflects rather different personalities, in the whole context of music's possibilities they are much more similar than different. They both epitomize the Romantic idea that music is primarily a vehicle of expression - the expression of emotions, feelings, sensations, impressions, atmospheres, etc. The main difference is that Wagner gives us a plot and dialogue to provide an explicit context for understanding what his music is about, while Mahler's symphonies (traditionally a fundamentally "abstract" form) don't tell explicit, sequential stories. But Mahler felt the need to incorporate words in many of his works, and whether with words or without, his kaleidoscopic, impulsive flow of musical ideas often conveys an intense sense of narrative and characterization, even within the frame of a predetermined form. We feel a drama transpiring without a literal stage.

We can speculate on what Wagner would have produced had he lived long enough to compose the symphonies he said he wanted to write after Parsifal, but he remarked that writing symphonies and writing for the theater involved different thinking and procedures, and he cautioned against trying to incorporate into the latter the kinds of ideas appropriate to the latter. We'll never know exactly what he meant by that, but I wonder what he would have thought of some of Mahler's highly dramatic symphonic movements. My suspicion is that he would have been somewhat dubious about the programmatic feel of some of them, and there may be support for this in the tight thematic construction of some of his own overtures and other orchestral passages, not to mention the Siegfried Idyll.
 
#88 ·
I cannot describe this in any technical language but I think that we can glimpse from Wagner's Ouvertures, orchestral interludes (like Dawn and Rhine Journey) and Siegfried Idyll, that mature Wagner symphonies or tone poems would be quite different from Mahler's symphonies. They would be more "seamless", gradual, organic, less use of pre-shaped material (like recognizable (pseudo) folk/march/dance/chorale tunes), they would have fewer jarring contrasts. If one compares the beginning of Rhinegold or "Forest murmurs" to "nature music" by Mahler like the beginning of the 1st or some passages in the 3rd symphony, the contrast seems quite clear to me. (Mahler is alsp more raw, less romantically idealizing
It's a very clumsy description but a Wagner symphonic poem or symphony might have been some mix between a more smoothly orchestrated and less four-square Bruckner and Smetana or Richard Strauss tone poems.
 
#89 ·
That sounds plausible. If I recall correctly, Wagner did say something to Liszt about a "new" kind of symphonic development based on the metamorphosis of themes. That's certainly consistent with his endlessly resourceful transformation of the leitmotivs in his operas in order to suit every dramatic situation, and it also brings Sibelius to mind. Then there's that Strauss piece titled, aptly, Metamorphosen.
 
#90 ·
I'm happy Wagner stuck mainly to opera then. I feel orchestral composers like Ravel, Karayev and Schreker have more of that 'space' and 'narrative I enjoy from Wagner that I don't get as much from Mahler. Sucks because I enjoy Mahler's orchestration, just wish it was a little more visionary, less symphonic.
 
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