• Home
  • Listen
    • List of Compositions >
      • Opera/Music Drama/Film >
        • 1619 Opera Cycle >
          • About 1619 Opera Cycle
          • So Far Behind Now Because of Then
          • Opera #2
        • Four Freedoms >
          • About Four Freedoms
        • The Grey Land >
          • About The Grey Land >
            • The Grey Land NOTES & INFO
            • The Grey Land WORDS
            • The Grey Land SESSION PHOTOS
            • The Grey Land PRESS_REVIEWS
        • The Loves of Pharaoh >
          • About The Loves of Pharaoh
      • Large Ensembles (18+) >
        • Changing Same
        • The Grey Land
        • The Loves of Pharaoh
        • Vipassana
      • Choir >
        • Everywhere in the World, prologue from Four Freedoms
        • Everywhere in the World, epilogue from Four Freedoms
        • The People Get Tired of Dying from The Grey Land
        • The Undisappeared
        • We Couldn't Wait Anymore from Four Freedoms
        • We Have it in Our Power from To Begin the World Over Again
      • Orchestra >
        • Pharaoh Scrolls
        • The Loves of Pharaoh
        • Vipassana
        • The Polar Express
      • Band >
        • Climb
        • The Gates of the Wonder-World Open
        • The Long Now
        • Quiet Earth
      • Solo & Chamber Music >
        • Bushwhack
        • Limn
        • Fire Quiet
        • Erelong
        • Lovivance
        • Never Has Been Yet
        • Shibboleths
        • Scission
        • Es Stehen Unbeweglich
        • Serendipity
        • The Red Book
        • Pharaoh Scrolls
        • To Begin The World Over Again
        • Unlimited
        • The Distance of the Moon
        • 110 Percent
        • Memory of Red Orange Laid Out in Still Waves
        • Liquid Timepieces
        • Beautiful Thing
        • Usher (Variations)
        • Kelip-Kelip
        • Rihla
        • Race
        • The Lady Who Sailed the Soul
        • Seeker
        • The Eloquent Light
        • Still Love Remains
        • The Spell of a Vanishing Loveliness
        • Tapestry
        • The Sun at Midnight
        • Passion of a Quiet Flower
        • Adrian
        • Sweetness
        • The Polar Express (Chamber)
        • Quantum Fluctuations
        • Keyser Söze
        • Penumbra
        • A Tear of the Clouds
        • Flying
        • Madame Press Never Had to Holler at Morty
        • To Kyoto
        • Lost in the Stars
        • rothko
        • The Smoke that Thunders
        • Urban Sketches
      • Music for Dance
      • Electronic Music >
        • The Bellagio Fountain Has Been Known To Make Me Cry
      • Miscellaneous >
        • To the Land Touching the Heavens
        • Seeker
        • Into all the Valleys Evening Journeys
    • Recordings
  • Feel
    • The Numinous Experience
    • Photos
    • Videos
  • Think
    • About Joe
    • About Numinous
  • Know
    • News
    • Press
    • The Numinosum Blog
  • Contact
  Numinous The Music of Joseph C. Phillips Jr.

The Numinosum Blog

Der Mahler

7/7/2010

0 Comments

 
Picture
WEDNESDAY, JULY 7, 2010

"But I have written to you that I am engaged on a great work. Don't you see how that claims one completely, and how one is often so engrossed in it that one is virtually dead to anything else? Now think of a very great work in which the whole world is reflected--oneself is, so to speak, merely an instrument on which the universe plays...At such moments I do not belong to myself...There are terrible birth pangs the creator of such a work has to suffer, before it all arranges itself and constructs itself and flares up in his head, there has to be a good deal of absent-mindedness and self-absorption and deadness to the outside world...My symphony will be something such as the world has never heard! The whole of Nature finds a voice in it, and tells of such secret things as one may perhaps divine in a dream. I tell you, I myself get an uncanny sensation at certain points, I feel as though I hadn't written this myself."
-Gustav Mahler discussing his Third Symphony to Anna von Mildenburg (from "Mahler" by Kurt Blaukopf translated by Inge Goodwin, Praeger Books, 1973)
 "And so we come to the final incredible page [of the Ninth Symphony]. And this page, I think, is the closest we have ever come, in any work of art, to experiencing the very act of dying, of giving it all up. The slowness of this page is terrifying...It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate. We hold on to them, hovering between hope and submission.And one by one, these spidery strands connecting us to life melt away, vanish from our fingers even as we hold them. We cling to them as they dematerialize; we are holding two--then one. One, and suddenly none. For a petrifying moment there is only silence. Then again, a strand, a broken strand, two strands, one...none. We are half in love with easeful death...now more than ever seems it rich to die, to cease upon the midnight with no pain...And in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything."
 -Leonard Bernstein, from his The Twentieth Century Crisis, the 5th part of "The Unanswered Question", the Harvard University Norton Lecture Series (1973)
"I have been going through so many experiences (for the past year and a half) that I can hardly discuss them. How should I attempt to describe such colossal crisis? I see everything in such a new light and I am in such continuous fluctuation...I am thirster than ever for life, and I find the 'habit of living' sweeter than ever..."
-Gustav Mahler in a letter to Bruno Walter, 1909 (from"Mahler-The Man and his Music" by Egon Gartenberg, Schirmer Books, 1978)
Happy 150th Birthday, Herr Mahler!

(Text in the below video is from the last part of the 5th lecture, The Twentieth Century Crisis, of the riveting 6-part The Unanswered Question, Leonard Bernstein's Harvard Norton Lectures talks from the 1970s; )

(photo credit: Mahler on his way to conduct the Court Opera in 1904 from Kurt Blaukopf's Mahler)

POSTED BY NUMINOUS AT 10:55 PM 
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    The Numinosum

    To all things that create a sense of wonder and beauty that inspires and enlightens.

    numinousmusic.com

    Archives

    December 2021
    October 2021
    October 2020
    May 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    October 2016
    August 2016
    May 2015
    August 2014
    December 2013
    September 2013
    May 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010
    May 2010
    April 2010
    March 2010
    February 2010
    January 2010
    December 2009
    November 2009
    October 2009
    September 2009
    August 2009
    July 2009
    June 2009
    May 2009
    April 2009

    Categories

    All
    Album Review
    Analysis
    BAM
    Book Review
    Changing Same
    Composer Salon
    Concert Announcement
    Concert Review
    Ecstatic Music Festival
    Film
    Inside Vipassana
    Interlake HS
    Mixed Music
    Music Announcement
    New Amsterdam Records
    Next Wave Festival
    Opinion
    Performance Review
    Press
    Program Notes
    PS 321
    Pulse
    Remembrances
    The Loves Of Pharaoh
    The Numinous
    To Begin The World Over Again (Thomas Paine Project)
    Truth
    Video
    Vipassana

    RSS Feed

Thanks and credit to all the original photos on this website to: David Andrako, Concrete Temple Theatre, Marcy Begian, Ed Lefkowicz, Donald Martinez, Kimberly McCollum, Geoff Ogle, Joseph C. Phillips Jr., Daniel Wolf-courtesy of Roulette, Andrew Robertson, Viscena Photography, Jennifer Wohrle, Carolyn Wolf, Mark Elzey, Numinosito. The Numinous Changing Same album design artwork by DM Stith. The Numinous The Grey Land album design and artwork by Brock Lefferts. Contact for photo credit and information on specific images.