Whenever things don't go my way, or get upsetting I find that a dose of Gustave Mahler helps settle me. His music is more uproarious than life, more filled with tumult and stress and strain.
It's his 8th Symphony I've been thinking about. He orchestrated it for more than 1,000 musicians and singers when it debuted over 90 years ago. In a letter to his wife after completing the symphony he said,“it is all an allegory to convey something that, no matter what form it is given, can never be adequately expressed.”
That's pretty heady stuff.
When Stravinsky was asked his views he is said to have replied “was so much machinery really needed just to prove that two and two equals four?”
Music critic James C. Taylor had this to say about that: "My sense is that Mahler needed so much machinery because he in fact was trying to blow apart such logic. With his two very unequal, unwieldy movements, and with texts in two different languages, he seemed to be saying that two plus five equals something much greater than eight. With so much on stage, the excitement of this symphony is that each performance is so unpredictable, even explosive. The fact that it doesn't add up may be the point."
Like I said, I find consolation, inspiration and ambition from Mahler. We can use more Mahler in advertising. Or at least more Mahler-ites.
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PS. The bust here is of Mahler and by Rodin.
This concludes the cultural enrichment portion of your day. We now return you to Michael Jackson and the deification of pederasty.
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