Spring Books (2)

Richard Luckett on the making of a composer

In his splendid new biography of Mahler* Henry-Louis de la Grange gives what we must presume to be the definitive version of a famous exchange. Mahler was walking with the elderly Brahms through the Ischl woods, beside the river Traun. Brahms could seldom be persuaded to talk about music, reserving his energies_ for the actual process of composition, but on this occasion Mahler finally managed to coax him into some professional discussion.

Brahms lamented the state of modern music, and said that he could see no future for it; no road remained open. At this Mahler pointed towards the water, saying: " Master, look, the last wave is rolling by!" Brahms responded, with characteristic irony: " May it flow toward the sea and not toward a swamp."

To many people his fears will seem prophetic. But Brahms was contemplating the decade of the eighteen-nineties and the years immediately ahead, not the state of his art eighty years on. For Mahler as a conductor he

had a profound admiration. It was with the

greatest unwillingness that he had first been taken to hear Mahler conduct in Budapest;

the work was Don Giovanni; Brahms said that

he had never yet heard a good performance, that he would rather read the score at home, and that a cafe and a glass of beer would suit him better. When the friends whom he was with finally manoeuvred him to the theatre he consented to go in for half an hour or so provided that the box had a sofa on which he could sleep. In the event he was quite con verted, going to congratulate Mahler in the interval, and subsequently speaking of him in terms of the highest praise. Brahms's approval was to help Mahler greatly in the next stage of his career. Yet Brahms could never bring himself to admire Mahler's compositions, and his comments on them were at best lukewarm. Hans von &flow, the celebrated conductor and one of the most respected and influential musical figures in the Germany of

his time, shared this opinion. To him Mahler was a superb performer, worthy to be en

trusted with the direction of von BUlow's own beloved orchestra, but his attempts at composition were largely misconceived. Both Brahms and von Billow felt that Mahler displayed little grasp of form, that he strove too hard for effect, and that much that he wrote was inherently grotesque.

Such an opinion of Mahler's music was not restricted merely to the greatest composer and the greatest conductor uf the day. Mahler's compositions, even his lieder, all met

with a mixed reception from the public, and when they achieved public acclaim they were

generally assaulted by the critics. The corn*Mahler: A Biography, Henry-Louis de La Grange (Gollancz £7.50)

ments that they provoked were remarkable not only because they were often virulent, but also because they revealed that, though the critics knew that they disapproved, they round it hard to agree on what they disapproved of. Accusations of'sentimentality,' affectation; and 'vulgarity' were promiscuously intermingled with charges of 'naivety,' 'complexity,' 'incomprehen sibility,' and 'cacophony.' It was a long time before any lind of consensus was achieved. It was as though the river had flowed into the swamp, and Brahms's fears were fulfilled.

Today this does not seem to be the case, though something very curious has happened.

The current has found its own way through the terrain; Mahler's advocates are in themselves an indication of its direction. Schoen berg was a devoted admirer and propagandist. Theodor Adorno has constantly argued for Mahler's significance and his crucial role in the development of the 'new music.' Berg idolised him and, as a young man, led a storming party of admirers who invaded Mahler's room after the Vienna premiere of

the Fourth Symphony, and personally carried off his baton. To de La Grange's biography

Karlheinz Stockhausen contributes an euthusiastic introduction, and long before the appearance of this specific acknowledgment critics had observed that Stockhausen was indebted to Mahler's extraordinary care in indicating on his scores the precise effects that he desired (at times this amounted to a new dimension in notation) and to his concept of 'spacial organisation.'

At the same time another current has flowed. There can be no doubt now of Mahler's popularity, and the spread of enthusiasm in Britain during the last twenty years is a remarkable proof of this. On the whole it has occurred without the posturing that has played such a part in the Berlioz revival, though it is interesting to note that the composers have certain common features: a fanatical concern for details of orchestration, strongly literary imaginations, a fas cination with the grotesque, and a tendency to include 'popular' material in a way that is quite distinct from that of the various ' na tional' schools. But Mahler left no memoirs, and his wife's account of his life, fascinating and revealing as it is, has obvious deficiencies.

The personalities involved were too strong for objectivity, and every fact had its emotional colouration. De La Grange is clearly devoted to Mahler, but his biography is in another tradition.

The present volume covers the first forty years of Mahler's life. De la Grange is concerned with establishing a record, not with offering an evaluation, or with any kind of critical analysis of Mahler's works. He records

how, where, and when the works were cornposed, when and where they were performed, and how they were received. He also goes t° great lengths to give an account of Mahlees professional career as a conductor, and to ascertain just what it was that made Mahler so renowned an interpreter. All of this is c°°tamed within the framework of a detailed investigation into Mahler's personal life. The broad outline is familiar, but much of the detail is new. Without attempting t° minimise the effect of Mahler's Jewish ao' cestry,de La Grange suggests that it may have, played a smaller part in the formation 0' Mahler's temperament and outlook than smile writers have suggested. He also goes on t°, show that Mahler's family was better off, a' least in the immediately preceding generation, than has hitherto been believed. But this did not make Mahler's time as a student any the less hard, and the necessity to earn a living condemned him to what he would refer to as "the hell of the theatre." If it was hell then was often Mahler who made it so, for he ha°, a burning ambition to succeed and a natural intolerance of anything but the higheststan' dards. He would not compromise either With the theatre direction or with singers. At the end of a day's work he would go home to PIO Bach's Cantatas, which he described aial "the Castalian spring in which I Wasd away the dust of the theatre." above everything else he valued the holidaYs' when he could escape to some place conduci tive to composition. Yet it is hard to see ths this tension was anything other than creative; just as in his two great love-affairs, with the singer Anna von Mildenburg, and with Alio! Schindler, whom he married, he seeMeut deliberately to choose storm where he rnigh; have been expected to search for calm, s° his professional life he seems to have neede the occasion for an equivalent stress of Passion. Mr de La Grange's sense of this has enabled him to present a rounded portrait; he gives us the full range of Mahler's activities and con,: veys a sense of the full scope of Mahler,S. extraordinary personality. De La Grange', style is not distinguished; this is not one 0'

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those rare biographies that has an indeperl dent life of its own; but he does manage t° present a mass of information in a high;)" readable way. His most remarkah'` achievement is to resurrect Mahler as Per.: former; by quoting contemporary reports hel;, able to pin-point just those features of Mahler performance that marked it out frorne the work of his contemporaries. Indeed, th„ area in which he is least successful is that 11' which he might have been expected to slicrs ceed most easily: his account of Mahler , spiritual development. It is this aspect 0' Mahler that Stockhausen stresses in his ill; troduction, and it is their mystical ao" religious concerns that link Mahler, Schoeni berg and Stockhausen most strongly. r de La Grange, though he tells us what Mahle,, was reading and writing, does not isolat' particular concerns with sufficient clarity Or any vivid impression to emerge. Perhaps this, reflects a deficiency in his subject rather tha'; in his biographical technique; the 'coherence., of the musical philosophy of Mahler and hi„' followers often seems a matter of asserti0P rather than established fact. he But it Mr de La Grange fails here, then •;s succeeds in as difficult a task, for Mahle,r,„, essential strengths, the humour and sanT that survived family troubles, the seemingli endemic suicide and madness of friends, al the trials of his profession, are effortless )15 established. The picture of the man emerge through the detail, and because of it. Evell reader will wait eagerly for the final volunlei And it would be wrong to end witho,a0 congratulating the publishers on managing produce this volume at a price which, thougr it may seem high, is more than reasonable f° a thousand pages.