Word: mahlers
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...DRINK, AND BE MERRY, for tomorrow we...hear Mahler's Sixth...
...Mahler's "Tragic" symphony ends like Apocalypse Now. It is perhaps the most terrifying chord in all music. Mahler (1860-1911) gave more than a ten-minute appearance however (unlike Brando). His wife Alma said in her letters that the Sixth is autobiographical, like most of his other symphonies. Mahler has the last word in romantic program music--music that suggests events and images. No other composer has chosen the same hero...
...adventure, love and almost militant drive and power until the five angels ascend, Wormwood falls, locusts emerge from the great pit, or--is it possible to compare--Brando gets what he deserves. The Pentagon might object to this violent death, or respond by sending in troops of its own. Mahler, who became a Roman Catholic in 1997, seven years before he completed the symphony, does not even give his hero a priest for the last rites...
...Chicago Symphony plays chimes, cowbells and celesta (a cross between a harpsichord and a xylophone) that give the impression of mountains and lakes at Maiernegg, where Mahler composed. The first three movements suggest rest and relaxation. Two children make castles and zigzags in the sand in the Scherzo. The kids are Mahler's, according to Alma...
...deeper and darker up this river that snakes through the jungle like a bird--the "silly little bird" of Heart of Darkness--trailing like a serpent. Mahler's dense harmonic texture surrounds the flow, but does not stagnate it. Joseph Conrad, a riverboat man himself, especially in his Malaysian period, would have liked this bastard child as much as a trip...