taking sides: schubert vs mahler

Mahler, on the other hand, was the Classical mutant Journey -- overblown, over-sentimental, and too much indebted to the thoroughly awful Wagner. Dud with a capital D.

schoenberg : webern :: sex pistols : wire

Mahler is tremendous, totally sui generis, and to call him sentimental is to miss the point utterly.

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also 1,000 kisses

i'm going to listen to kindertotenlieder tonight and cry like a baby

Schubert's 9th Symphony is kicking my ass! so great. the recording i'm listening to is by old man george szell and the cleveland orchestra.

schubert was the bomb.

i love mahler too.

did any goth group ever cover schubert's winterreise song cycle? someone should. or a black metal band. i mean, all those songs are about being inconsolably sad in the snow!

Schubert all the way. Mahler does very little for me.

in fact, speaking of mahler, just today i got an original london stereo copy of kirsten flagstad and adrian boult (with vienna philharmonic) doing kindertotenlieder cycle and lieder eines fahrenden gesellen cycle.

might play that next.

you have to allow mahler to take you away and do unspeakable things to you. with schubert, he has you at hello. but they were both beyond genius. its just that schubert is maybe more easy to like when you first hear his stuff. i had to listen to some of mahler's symphonies a zillion times before i really heard them. and i still need to listen more. they have secrets in them! wonderful secrets!

i had to listen to some of mahler's symphonies a zillion times before i really heard them. and i still need to listen more. they have secrets in them! wonderful secrets!

totally. i think he had trouble working a lot of his weirder ideas into symphonic form but like you say, they are little gems all over the place. the thing i like about mahler is that he could take fairly standard language to places it hadn't been before. incredible command of texture, especially with strings, he really hits on some deep shit. i do have trouble getting all the way through some of his larger works, but there are certain movements and passages that are among my favourite bits of music ever.

i don't know much schubert tbh but outside of the songs... "death and the mainden" string quartet in d minor is worth checking out as is the piano trio in b flat. also, like scott says the great 9th symphony in C, it's great.

note to self: read what you've written before you hit submit. duh.

schubert OTM. mahler takes some getting used to, although i'd make exceptions for parts of DAS LIED VON DER ERDE and the songs, e.g. the KINDERTOTENLIEDER. still i probably listen to schubert's goethe songs more than any other "art music."

ha i meant SEWARD OTM. but schubert too i suppose.

Don't know much Wagner apart from what's been used in movies now and then. I'm a little intimidated by the pomposity but it seems a bit of stamina might remedy that.
Schubert on the other hand...4th chakra type stuff. His Impromptus as performed by Maria João Pires are fantastic.

no mention of mahler's 5th on this thread? or is that too obvious? the adagietto is his most famous thing.

Mahler, mostly because of the adagio from Symphony N.10.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfAjioz1LWc

I heard this on R3 the other day and it's so haunting and beautiful, one of the finest vocal performances of all time.

Wonder if Joyce or Beckett knew of it (both Schubertians iirc)

if Mahler is the Meat Loaf of classical what does that make Schubert?

sorry that was 19 years ago. I get the point about his cheesiness but his willingness to go there makes his music more enjoyable than e.g. Wagner

Mahler would have kicked Wagner's arse and then wrote a longform tone poem (to be played by three thousand musicians) about it. And Wagner would have subsequently stolen ideas from that piece, a piece about his own shameful beating.

And I *like* Wagner.

But this is Schubert all the way.