Late night thoughts on listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

[longship]

Last edited Sun Nov 20, 2016, 03:02 AM - Edit history (3)

An essay written by physician/biologist Lewis Thomas.
Here:
http://bactra.org/Thomas/mahlers-ninth.html

I read that decades ago. It is as somber as the symphony. My preference is Glorious John Babirolli's performance. And his is truly a glorious and evocative performance.

The essay starts thusly:

I cannot listen to Mahler's Ninth Symphony with anything like the old melancholy mixed with the high pleasure I used to take from this music. There was a time, not long ago, when what I heard, especially in the final movement, was an open acknowledgement of death and at the same time a quiet celebration of the tranquility connected to the process. I took this music as a metaphor for reassurance, confirming my own strong hunch that the dying of every living creature, the most natural of all experiences, has to be a peaceful experience. I rely on nature. The long passages on all the strings at the end, as close as music can come to expressing silence itself, I used to hear as Mahler's idea of leave-taking at its best. But always, I have heard this music as a solitary, private listener, thinking about death.

Now I hear it differently. I cannot listen to the last movement of the Mahler Ninth without the door-smashing intrusion of a huge new thought: death everywhere, the dying of everything, the end of humanity. The easy sadness expressed with such gentleness and delicacy by that repeated phrase on faded strings, over and over again, no longer comes to me as old, familiar news of the cycle of living and dying. All through the last notes my mind swarms with images of a world in which the thermonuclear bombs have begun to explode, in New York and San Francisco, in Moscow and Leningrad, in Paris, in Paris, in Paris. In Oxford and Cambridge, in Edinburgh. I cannot push away the thought of a cloud of radioactivity drifting along the Engadin, from the Moloja Pass to Ftan, killing off the part of the earth I love more than any other part.

I am old enough by this time to be used to the notion of dying, saddened by the glimpse when it has occured but only transiently knocked down, able to regain my feet quickly at the thought of continuity, any day. I have acquired and held in affection until very recently another sideline of an idea which serves me well at dark times: the life of the earth is the same as the life of an organism: the great round being possesses a mind: the mind contains an infinite number of thoughts and memories: when I reach my time I may find myself still hanging around in some sort of midair, one of those small thoughts, drawn back into the memory of the earth: in that peculiar sense I will be alive.

Now all that has changed. I cannot think that way anymore. Not while those things are still in place, aimed everywhere, ready for launching.

This is a bad enough thing for the people in my generation. We can put up with it, I suppose, since we must. We are moving along anyway, like it or not. I can even set aside my private fancy about hanging around, in midair.

More at link

Here's Barbirolli's interpretation of Mahler's Ninth, for those who wish to put Lewis's words in context.

I highly recommend both in these days.

The music is glorious, as glorious John Barbirolli would want it. BTW, It's a very long and wonderful symphony. And Lewis Thomas's words from 1983 are prescient.

Mahler, Barbirolli, and Thomas all died too young.

BTW, Mahler avoided writing a ninth symphony since so many famous composers wrote only nine symphonies (mostly romantic composers, before that era Mozart wrote 40-some, Haydn wrote over a hundred).

So he wrote symphonic works without the title "symphony". Particularly there was "Das Lied Von der Erde" (the song of the earth) which was actually in symphonic form and would have been his ninth. It is an astounding work. I recommend Jessie Norman for that one. She's incredible.

Finally, he composed this ninth symphony... and he died. Both this symphony and Lewis's essay are astounding.

[vlyons]

1. When my brother died in 2000,

Gosh that long ago now! I drove from San Francisco down the east side of the Sierras down through the desert of Nevada all the way to Tucson, listening to Mahler's 9th. Crying all the way and thinking about death. The strings in the last movement stretching out as long as possible, as if to extend life just a little bit more. Somehow the desert was comforting. The irony of life, highlighted by looking out across the Nevada desert and seeing a sign pointing to the "U.S. Naval Testing Grounds." Hmmm what could the navy be doing in the Nevada desert? Ah yes, of course, underground bomb and past nuclear testing. How ironic is that.

Since then, I have converted and formally taken refuge in Vajrayana Buddhism, also known as Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhists don't think about time and death the way Christians do. Rather we think of time in terms of lifetimes and kalpas. A kalpa being an age cycle in billions of years. While death is recognized as annihilation and the outcome of old age and disease, we aren't really afraid of death. Rather, we expect to pass through the bardo, the in between stage to the next life. We hope that our good karma will enable us to be reborn as a human being, because only a human mind can transcend duality thinking and awaken to the shining clear light of ultimate consciousness, which is beyond concepts and description.

I'm 69 and have a serious heart condition. I fear that my nice comfy life will unravel, as Trump destroys my Senior safety net of medicare and SSI. But then nothing lasts forever. All compound things are impermanent. So I guess that I get to find the courage to be present and experience my dissolution and just deal with it. Is it really any surprise that life is difficult? We are all suffering. All of us. In Buddhism, we have the aspiration to be a boddhisattva, which is a highly evolved being, who works tirelessly for the benefit of others. Boddhisattvas take a vow to continue to be reborn again and again until every other sentient being is liberated from this realm of suffering. And so in this life time, we practice as best we can to attain the 6 Perfections of a Boddhisattva: Generosity, Ethics, Patience, Perseverance, Meditation, and Wisdom. Needless to say, I need a lot of practice. Lifetimes, kalpas of it.

Personally, I'm not certain that reincarnation is true or not. I'm OK either way. Should reincarnation be true, I have the modest aspiration to be reborn as a healthy human into a loving family with easy and early access to authentic dharma teachers. But now at 69, I know that my time is winding down. The days pass by faster and faster, as I get older and older. Each day is precious.

[Ilsa]

2. I tried listening while on a long drive

years ago. I had to find a place to pull over, I was crying so hard. The pain of sorrow and then hope tore me up on the inside.

When I walked into the National Museum of Art and saw the bust of Mahler by Rodin, my knees went weak and I lost my breath.

Thank you for the link to the essay.

[hatrack]

3. I remember the first time I heard it, stunned and unable to move

The last movement is breath-taking - pain and beauty in a mixture that glitters like diamonds.

Also, if you've haven't heard his Sixth Symphony, go and listen now - it's not as well known as his others, but probably my personal favorite, particularly the third movement.

[longship]

4. I am well aware of all Mahler's symphonies.

We are old friends.
The fifth is incredible, too.