Brucker adagios vs. Mahler adagios FITE

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OK so the accepted line among early-modernist enthusiasts is all "how you gonna beat Mahler's adagios, they're like dying" (NB this is not the accepted line among modernist-proper enthusiasts who cannot agree on anything) BUT!!! Even in the spotty Symphony No. 1 Bruckner shows that his feel for the slow sad quiet part is just eerily instinctive, it's like everytime somebody in the orchestra even breathes you get a little sadder: one feels like the rest of the symphony is there so that lonely Symphony No. 1 adagio won't have to sleep on the freaking STREET, where it will doubless die, sad and neglected, as we all eventually shall

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 9 June 2003 20:19 (twenty-two years ago)

hoping for new answers = waiting for God to break His silence i.e. don't hold "your" breath

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 9 June 2003 20:22 (twenty-two years ago)

"Bruckner" not "Brucker" obviously it is hard to type through these bitter TEARS

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 9 June 2003 20:24 (twenty-two years ago)

Samuel Barber to thread! (i had to do it, sorry.)

― scott seward, Monday, 9 June 2003 20:24 (twenty-two years ago)

of course biographically (and God bless classical music history, which IS pop music insofar as biography=part of the music itself) Bruckner has Mahler beat soundly because whereas Mahler's arrogance & self-confidence vs. his total lack of both in the face of the infinite hath to it a certain appeal, very little in music is sadder than Bruckner's desire that he be loved vs. his vision of Something New: he keeps revising his stuff when other people don't get it, but that doesn't mean he stops blazing new trails: only that he recovers the ones he's blazed when people pooh-pooh him for it

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 9 June 2003 20:29 (twenty-two years ago)

yeah, but when Mahler premiered his 1st symphony and everybody booed, he broke down and cried for hours. he was totally emo.

― scott seward, Monday, 9 June 2003 20:33 (twenty-two years ago)

yes yes of course but Mahler crying="they don't understand me!" whereas Bruckner crying="they do not love me, I HAVE FAILED THEM"

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Monday, 9 June 2003 20:38 (twenty-two years ago)

I want to prefer Bruckner because he probably had the most lovable personality of any major composer. Alas, Mahler's adagios move me more. I agree that this is a preference for the neurotic over the religiose, and hard to defend as a good thing.

― ArfArf, Monday, 9 June 2003 20:57 (twenty-two years ago)

Got any recommendations for places to start with Bruckner, sad or otherwise (but especially sad)? The one symphony I've heard (the 8th, I think, and I only heard it once) left me with mixed impressions.

― Lee G (Lee G), Tuesday, 10 June 2003 02:02 (twenty-two years ago)

I really think Bruckner's Adagio's suffer from being situated in his symphonies. The dramatic pacing in Bruckner is (almost) always so glacial that by the time he gets to an Adagio, I've lost my appetite for it.

I think maybe I like Mahler adagios better in any case. Either way, I certainly like Mahler symphonies better.

― Paul in Santa Cruz (Paul in Santa Cruz), Tuesday, 10 June 2003 04:26 (twenty-two years ago)

a kidney punch to the first to mention samuel barber. oh wait, scott you bastard. well, at least you're apologetic. anyway, gustav "the bruisre" mahler wins by decision.

― j.a.e., Tuesday, 10 June 2003 20:32 (twenty-two years ago)

of course, that's "bruiser." the punchdrunk misspells.

― j.a.e., Tuesday, 10 June 2003 20:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Paul you make an outstanding point but the reason that Brucker < Mahler for you is the very reason why Bruckner seems nowadays so compelling to me! His pacing forces me to re-reckon everything I think I know about symphonic structure/motion, and by the time I get to adagio it's like I'm on this whole separate Bruckner planet, attuned to things that'd normally whizz right past me and then bang, the adagio hits and it's just aching.

NB I got mad mad love for Mahler, Ozawa's version of the eighth changed my life, so this is not really even a fite, just a way into talking about these two amazing composers whose feeling for the symphony as form was so wonderful

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Tuesday, 10 June 2003 22:17 (twenty-two years ago)

i need to brush up on the adagios but the song of the earth is my favorite thing ever.

― amateurist (amateurist), Wednesday, 11 June 2003 01:19 (twenty-two years ago)

john, you made me pull out my bruckner(which sounds like a sports-related injury) and thanks for that. i was listening to the 4th symphony yesterday, and it rocks! sometimes i forget that i have so much beautiful music at my disposal. i want to read more about him too. i'm gonna dig around. is it true that the wagnerites made him change his shit around to make it more in keeping with the big bully's theorys? i dig the anti-Romantic ethos, but i'm a sucker for Brahms too.

― scott seward, Wednesday, 11 June 2003 01:35 (twenty-two years ago)

four years pass...

I think Mahler's early adagios pale in comparison to the later ones....those 8th and 9th are just...so...damn....perfectly....done.
But then BRUCKNER! The form seems endless, yet always driven ...albeit to a distant LED at the end of the channel tunnel... the melodic drive without the need for reliance on harmonic novelty(*cough* Mahler). Sooooo painful but, I'm afraid, superior to M.

― sexyhex, Tuesday, 25 September 2007 23:39 (eighteen years ago)

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/88/242872601_5befc6eb7d.jpg?v=0

go bruckner

― mookieproof, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 03:07 (eighteen years ago)

Bruckner is da bomb. (I would rather listen to his choral stuff, tho.)

― HI DERE, Wednesday, 26 September 2007 15:43 (eighteen years ago)

one year passes...

oh man the Te Deum is like WHOA.

― J0hn D., Thursday, 18 December 2008 21:28 (sixteen years ago)

mahler's adagio from the unfinished 10th symphony.

I rest my case.

― you will be shot, Thursday, 18 December 2008 21:49 (sixteen years ago)

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