On Demand
Mozart; Mahler: Loss and Transformation
By Terrance McKnight
July 28, 2008
Louis Langrée (Chris Lee)
This year’s Mostly Mozart Festival is themed “Loss and Transfiguration.” The festival opens with Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 and the “Song of the Earth” by Mahler. I’ll be at Lincoln Center Wednesday to co-host our live broadcast of the opening night’s program. Join me at 7pm for some pre-concert interviews and music.
The works on the program were composed more than 200 years apart, but were written while both composers were coping with the deaths of their first-born daughters. Perhaps in these compositions both men sought understanding and comfort of a world beyond life on earth.
Most of us have dealt with (or are dealing with) loss. Where do you turn to find peace, understanding and solace?
A particular piece of music… a place… visual art; literature… or religion?
Your comment may make all the difference for someone who reads it.
Comments
Comment from Dan Harris
Date: July 28, 2008, 8:06 pm
Music seems to reign supreme in situations of loss. Mainly because of it ability to transcend the verbal and touch the emotional directly.
Vis-a-vis the New York area drownings. This quote from Synge is appropriate:
A man who is not afraid of the sea will soon be drowned, for he’ll be going out on a day he shouldn’t. But we do be afraid of the sea, and we do only be drowned now and again.” From The Arran Islands, by J.M. Synge
Comment from Lynn
Date: July 28, 2008, 8:47 pm
My cousin killed himself 31 years ago, when I was 18 and he was 20. At that time, he was the person I was closest to - my best friend, and I was severly traumatized by his sudden loss. I don’t think that trauma has ever left me.
About 10 years later, I went to see “Man of LaMancha” performed by the opera in Norfolk, VA. I had seen my cousin perform in that play several years before his death - enough years that I wan’t much interested at the time. But hearing it that day, with those beautiful operatic voices reached down into my long held and hidden pain. I started crying so hard that people from 10 rows around me were passing me tissues.
I still cry anytime I hear that music. And I have a CD of it, becauase sometimes I know I just need to cry for whatever reason, and that score will do it for me every time. Just thinking of it and typing this has me crying again. I still miss him, and, still love hearing that music, espcially “Dulcinea”. Like Aldonzo/Dulcinea, when I was 18, it felt like he was the only person in my life who truly “saw” me, understood me, and accepted me. And, still liked me.
Comment from dave
Date: July 28, 2008, 10:35 pm
I know nothing about music or formal religion or culture. But
I am agnostically spiritual, and I am a musician. Thank you
for asking, Arvo Part always changes me for the better.
Thank You For The Great Sounds,
Dave.
Comment from K.L.Mallow
Date: July 29, 2008, 12:23 am
Love, loss, renewal.
Music is the greatest healer.
In the midst of my father’s death, I’m immersed in “adaptive regression.” Everyday, I pull up a Youtube favorite: Tony Bennett & Elmo’s “I Believe in Little Things.”
It’s added to the DVD I’m compiling for my father’s memorial service, along with pictures from his 8 decades. With the finale, Jo Stafford’s, “I’ll Be Seeing You.”
Comment from marilyn
Date: July 29, 2008, 10:50 pm
Thank you, Lynn, for an extremely moving comment. Sixteen years ago I lost my 22-year-old nephew, my parents’ only grandchild. My brother’s life was decimated. I began to feel that only whatever mystery transcends this fragile world, if any, can heal. Thank you, Terrance, for hymns and spirituals, jazz and classical music. The mix is healing. The mystery I call God.
Comment from John Perkins
Date: July 31, 2008, 7:26 pm
You need to get your facts right. Mahler wrote Kindertotenlieder, which is about a man losing his child, years BEFORE his daughter died. Song of the Earth is based on Chinese texts that he set to music. It is not about the death of a child.
Comment from Curtis
Date: July 31, 2008, 8:30 pm
So…sometimes you ask people to tell you what they are doing when they listen to you. I am mired in writing a book about Angels at this exact time, though I realize I’m happy to make some money putting pen to paper. This particular Angel booklet involves the Ecstasy of Saint Theresa, early angels representing “other” gods in Sumerian, Babylonian, Greek and Roman history. And for good measure, throw the story of Eros in. My question for you, Terrance? Got anything to inspire the process. Thanks and great show, which I listen to always, Curt
Comment from K.L.Mallow
Date: August 3, 2008, 5:00 am
Re 6.: Harsh, Mr. Perkins. Can you move beyond the fact-checking, to the spirit of what T.M. was endeavoring to spark in this thread?
Comment from Hermit
Date: August 3, 2008, 11:44 am
Re: Song of the Earth
I think Terrance explained that Song of the Earth was written in 1907, the year that Mahler’s daughter passed away. It is not directly about the death of a child, but is inspired at least in part by his daughter’s death (that same year Mahler was diagnosed with a heart condition).
Terrance, you never post to the blog! Things posted on the blog stay around, but the things you say on the air are ephemeral, and the separate conversations often miss each other.
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