And So It Begins: Song of the Week into Symphony of the Week - The Mahler Challenge

I can't believe it's been almost 15 years, but minus some stillborn political philosophy draft posts I began in 2011, I'm finally back in my blog, and necessity has forced my hand. Necessity is the mother of (re)invention, no? Problem statement: I have been posting Songs of the Week to my Facebook feed since Fall 2017, mostly my classic rock, with some jazz and classical thrown in for good measure. But now I have decided to take on the Symphony of the Week challenge: posting my critical commentary on all of Mahler's symphonies over the course of 11 weeks. I found out on my first post very quickly that the size of these posts might be too big for a Facebook post (4 8x11 pages for Symphony No. 1 alone!!!) So I'm cross-posting on this blog at a minimum: potentially, I may post a teaser/tl;dr of my commentary on Facebook and link to the parallel post here. We'll see. Regardless, see below for my Mahler Challenge intro: 

 #SymphonyoftheWeek #SotW Today, I have decided to pull the trigger and begin my most epic #SotW yet: a straight run of all eleven symphonies by Gustav Mahler, one of the greatest symphony composers of all time, if not the greatest. Consistently, five of his symphonies regularly make “Top Symphony” lists by pundits and with good reason: they are epic in scope and complex yet catchy and accessible (barring a few exceptions). There is a phrase Mahler used to describe his own symphonies that captures this grand geist perfectly, but I will save it for the symphony on which he used it. I remember how I first found out about Gustav Mahler, who, to a middle schooler like me, wasn’t as recognizable as someone like Mozart, Beethoven, Bach, or others. I had just bought Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic’s 1959 recording of Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5, and the liner notes described its dance-like scherzo of a second movement as “Neo-Mahlerian” – I was very intrigued, who was this and what was his influence. I must have seen the name Mahler referenced elsewhere too, but that moment has been lost to the mists of time. 

I am not sure how I figured out the composer was named Gustav Mahler, but I went to Tower Records and asked an associate where to start with this Gustav Mahler. He told me that he thought Bernstein was Mahler’s best interpreter, and pointed me in the direction of his Symphony No. 1/Symphony No. 10 Adagio combination CD; I bought Symphony No. 5 and Symphony No. 9 shortly thereafter. And the rest is history. I sillily said to the associate that I was not a fan of choral music and I think that prevented him from recommending to me, and me from discovering for a number of years three symphonies that I now appreciate very much: his Second, Third, and Das Lied von der Erde. 

I began drafting the sketches of my commentary for each symphony here almost two years ago, in the middle of the Pandemic. Since then, I discovered the “Embrace Everything” podcast, which is releasing commentary for each of Mahler’s symphonies, one symphony per season per year. I cannot unhear the opinions of this podcast, which ended up influencing my prior thinking about Mahler’s first three symphonies. But for Symphony No. 4 onward, hopefully you’ll hear fully “original” thinking, if not a little sparser because I wasn’t able to flesh it out with more commentary! 

I was going to post my rankings of his symphonies, but I will save that for the last entry in the series. I will be posting one symphony a week, for 11 weeks straight (yes you read that correctly). Without further ado, let’s commence with his Symphony No. 1 “Titan” – 

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