Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy by Theodor W. Adorno

Author:Theodor W. Adorno [Adorno, Theodor W.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

6

Dimensions of Technique

The antagonism within Mahler’s technique between a repetition-shunning fullness on one hand and a densely interwoven, advancing totality on the other not only concerns the form in the narrower sense of the successive complexes, but informs every dimension of his composition. For Mahler uses each of them equally to realize his intention; his work is a preliminary stage of the integral art-work. They support each other, one compensating weaknesses in the other. Paul Bekker—perhaps oversensitive to the fervent, grieving tone of its melody, reminiscent of the Kindertotenlieder—has criticized the triviality of the main theme of the Andante of the Sixth Symphony, which later soars magnificently toward fulfillment. Yet its powerful cantabile quality may not have satisfied Mahler himself. He therefore so arranged the ten-measure theme metrically as to produce ambivalences between the ends and beginnings of phrases. The repetition of the opening idea falls on the third beat instead of the first, and so on a relatively weak part of the measure; metrical irregularity is the dowry which folksong-like melodies bring with them to symphonic prose. In the ingenious Scherzo of the Fourth the stress of a main rhythmic shape displaces itself by an eighth note.1 Mahler’s use of rhythm is a delicate and favored means of his technique of variants. With constant increases and diminutions he preserves the melodic unity intact in the agogically simplest way, while still modifying it. The Kindertotenlieder are particularly rich in such formations. Thanks to arrangements of this kind, Mahler’s themes lose the trace of banality that someone so disposed could criticize in some successions of intervals; usually in Mahler the charge of banality dogmatically isolates individual dimensions, blind to the fact that in him character, “originality,” are defined not by single dimensions but only by their relationships to each other. That Mahler’s procedure is exempted by its multidimensionality from the reproach of banality in no way denies the existence of banal elements or their function in the construction of the whole. What artifices such as these metrical devices bring about in banal musical material is the very refraction that integrates the banal into the art-work, which needs it as an autonomous agent, as an element of immediacy in the musical totality. Even the category of the banal is dynamic in Mahler; it appears in order to be paralyzed, not dissolved in the musical process without residue. This process is the opposed force imparting discipline—in brief, Mahler’s “technique.” The concern for realization is expressed, in face of the music’s abundance, in the demand for clarity in all strata. So well did the great conductor know the limitations of the orchestra, and of other conductors too, that he foresaw all the havoc they wreak through slovenliness, deficient understanding, lack of time, or under the pressure of the musical fabric of his works. The expression marks, like many peculiarities of the instrumentation in the mature works, are protective measures against the performers. The inevitable breach between the music itself and its adequate reproduction is registered by the former: Mahler attempted to achieve a foolproof composition.

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