Recently, a friend lent me Mahler’s Symphony no. six, “Tragic.” He told me it was the most tragic symphony ever written. A few days later I spoke to my dad, a classical music connoisseur. I asked him which symphony he would consider the most tragic. He replied that while there are several extraordinarily sad symphonies, particularly those written by Tchaikovsky, he would have to say that the most tragic symphony ever written is Mahler’s sixth.
Most of Mahler’s symphonies were crushing failures when they premiered at the turn of the twentieth century. They were considered too controversial, too overwrough—he sixth uses a hammer to fill out the percussion section. Mahler thus made his name as a conductor, not as a composer. He was known for his work with Wagner’s operas. Before Mahler, conductors (and audiences) had felt that Wagner’s operas, particularly Der Ring des Nibelungen were too long, and so they had cut the operas to lengths deemed manageable. Mahler returned the operas to their full lengths. He pushed the vocalists to reach the expected notes and had his orchestras practice exhaustively. Since Mahler, Wagner’s operas have retained their original forms.
Mahler was seen as a dictatorial conductor and as a Jew. Although he formally converted to Christianity in his later life, he had a tell-tale “Jewish nose,” and he refused to disavowal Judaism, even after his conversion. His nose cost him at least one position, and his caustic personality cost him several others.
It is said that Mahler wrote his symphonies by thinking of each instrument as a single entity, each equal in importance to the next. He pushes each instrument, each sound, just as he pushes the musicians in rehearsal. Sometimes he pushes the instruments to discord. Mahler took the E-flat clarinet, typically considered fairly low on the scale of musical instruments, and gave it soaring solos. The French horn gained a new fervor under Mahler, and the trumpet was deified.
I did not listen to Mahler much as a child. Instead, I grew up listening to Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach, the great composer of Western music, who began as an organist. My father, determined to create a math genius in me, and to get me to sleep, would play a cassette of Bach’s concertos for me every night. It was a bright yellow cassette tape, not the boring black or clear of most cassettes. I would ask for the “yellow tape” at night, not knowing that it was Bach, not knowing that it was part of my dad’s intellectual endeavors for me that would not stop any time soon.
My dad leaves books for me on the couch, on the table, by the cereal boxes, knowing that I will pick them up, not quite realizing that they were placed there specifically for me.
I don’t have much of a musical background. I played the violin for two years in elementary school. My school was progressive and well-funded, so every fifth and sixth grader was allowed to play an instrument of their choice, string or wood-wind. The music instructors asked me which I wanted to play, and when I said string, they looked at my hands and said I couldn’t play the cello or the base, but one of the smaller instruments would be fine for me. I liked playing the violin, but I didn’t like practicing as much as my father wanted me to. I stopped once it was no longer mandatory.
One of my housemates this year has played the piano for 13 years. She gives me classical CDs to listen to, Yo-Yo Ma, Rokoko-Jazz. She tells me what she thinks is good and then asks what I like best. For a long time I didn’t like classical music. That was my dad’s thing. It took me until college to learn that I could enjoy classical music without feeling as though I was liking it because he does. I still defer to my dad about music though; had he told me that Tchaikovsky wrote the most tragic symphony ever, I would have had a hard time not believing him.
The same friend who lent me the Mahler CD played the opera of “Tristan und Isolde” for me one night. I had read the 15th century tale of Tristan earlier in the semester for COL, and I had loved it. The tragedy of the book was expressed perfectly in the tragedy of the music. While I may not have become a great musician, or a great mathematician, the days of listening to my yellow Bach tape to get me to sleep has served me well in this sense: I appreciate the feeling music evokes.
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