Had Mahler Lived On

[goldentone]

Listening to the Adagio of Mahler's 10th unfinished symphony prompted me to this question.  If Mahler had lived 10, 20 years more, where do you think he would have taken his music?  In this Adagio, Mahler's beauty is still there, but seems to be receding to the psychologically haunting.  

[sordel]

I think that Das Lied von der Erde is a better argument for Mahler's continued development as a composer than what we have of the tenth symphony. That said, Mahler was a composer who didn't do exactly the same thing over and over again: the eighth symphony is suggestive of an entirely different line of development. Overall, I don't think that Mahler's death was particularly "premature" ... most of his works are mature and I don't feel that he died with significant promise unfulfilled.

[goldentone]

No, Mahler didn't die with his music inside of him, but you can only wonder, with a composer like him, what would have come in a decade or more.  I will have to listen to The Song of the Earth.

[gep]

Listening to the Adagio of Mahler's 10th unfinished symphony prompted me to this question.  If Mahler had lived 10, 20 years more, where do you think he would have taken his music?  In this Adagio, Mahler's beauty is still there, but seems to be receding to the psychologically haunting.  

You seem to feel that Mahler was somehow reaching a dead end? I could not agree (and what about the 'haunting' of, say, his 6th symphony!?).
I often have wondered what the 10th, had he been able to finish it, would have been like. Or what a 15th would have been like.

For that matter, what would JSBach have become, had he reached Teleman's age....

all best,
gep

[keyboardkat]

I just find it really, really sad that Mahler didn't give us pianists anything (except maybe song accompaniments).   Perhaps his musical imagination was so vast that it required the full orchestra and chorus, and the piano alone was too limiting for him.   But just imagine if he had given us even one sonata, or piano tone poem, on the level of musical conception of his major orchestral works!!

[retrouvailles]

Perhaps take a listen to one of the many completions of the tenth symphony. It isn't 100% Mahler, but all of the musical ideas came from his pen, even if it isn't completely his orchestration.

Also, he did give us pianists some small things. He has that immature unfinished piano quartet. He also has some piano rolls which include some arrangements of his symphony movements and songs for solo piano that give us some insight to his piano playing.