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http://universitypublishingonline.org/cambridge/companions/
The Cambridge Companion to Mahler
Edited by Jeremy Barham
Book DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521832731
Online ISBN: 9781139001694
Hardback ISBN: 9780521832731
Paperback ISBN: 9780521540339
Chapter
3 - Music and aesthetics: the programmatic issue pp. 35-48
Chapter DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CCOL9780521832731.005
Cambridge University Press
3 Music and aesthetics: the programmatic issue
VERA MI CZNI K
Evaluating a composers aesthetics of music and its relation to pro-
grammes is fraught with diculties, not least because the historical
meaning of aesthetics as a discipline has undergone changes since its early,
1750 denition by Alexander Baumgarten: Aesthetics (a theory of liberal
arts, of inferior mode of knowledge, the art of beautiful thinking, in a way
analogous to thinking about reason [logic]), is the science of sensual
cognition.
1
It was thus conceived as a philosophical category denoting
the knowledge of the beautiful through the senses (a lower form of knowl-
edge than logic, which deals with intellectual concepts). By the middle of
the nineteenth century, as universalist philosophical aesthetic theories
distanced themselves from professional criticism, the demise of the meta-
physics of the beautiful became inevitable. Music criticism which centred
more directly on the musical works themselves, and addressed more
practical questions of knowledge and meaning was able to come closer to
elucidating the inner workings of music, and thus became more inuential
in the aesthetic tastes of the time. This situation was recognized by none
other than Eduard Hanslick, the aesthetician of absolute music when he
wrote in 1854: Formerly, the aesthetic principles of the various arts were
supposed to be governed by some supreme metaphysical principle of
general aesthetics. Now, however, the conviction is daily growing that
each individual art can be understood only by studying its technical limits
and inherent nature.
2
Adorno situates this distancing of the fundamental theoretical pro-
blems of aesthetics from the specic, more concrete studies of art later in
the century, in Benedetto Croces introduction of radical nominalism
into aesthetic theory,
3
while Carl Dahlhaus also states that the metaphy-
sical foundation of aesthetics came to an end around 1900, surrendering
its constituent parts to historical studies or philosophy of history, to
technology or psychology of art, only to be revived again in the 1920s
in a new, phenomenological, incarnation.
4
A possible resistance to the notion that philosophical aesthetic ideas
may underline Mahlers works has not deterred critics interest in explor-
ing these relationships. An overview of the main nineteenth-century
philosophical and aesthetic trends cited as having a possible impact on
Mahler is summarized below. [35]
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Aesthetic theories
Early nineteenth-century German aesthetics had praised absolute
instrumental musics emancipation from imitation of passions or lan-
guage, placing music above all other arts for its ability to signify on its
own with no reference to the real world, in a general, immeasurable,
realm of the innite.
5
Among its representative gures, Mahler admired
Jean Paul Richter and E. T. A. Homann, whose irony and sense of humour
became part of his musical language,
6
while Hegels aesthetics did not
seem to preoccupy him, perhaps due to the philosophers favouring of
vocal music over the imprecision of pure instrumental music because
a text provides . . . denite conceptions and thereby rescues consciousness
from that dreamier element of feeling without concepts.
7
Whether directly inuenced by Schopenhauer, or only through his
philosopher friend Siegfried Lipiner and later through Nietzsches philoso-
phy, we know that Mahler read and admired his work.
8
Schopenhauers
aesthetic conception, somewhat like that of the early romantics, considered
that music articulates the innermost nature of the world the will without
the mediation of reason, ideas or representation: unlike all other arts . . .
[music] acts directly on the will, that is, on a listeners emotions, passions,
and aections, quickly elevating and transforming them.
9
Because of this,
music stands highest among the arts, and even higher than philosophy which
is only translating into concepts and words what music says intuitively.
10
It
is very likely that some of Mahlers statements, such as the important
question [is] how, or perhaps even why, music should ever be explained in
words at all might have been inuenced by Schopenhauer.
11
Mahlers early fascination with Wagners ideas has been widely
discussed.
12
Wagners aesthetic theory in Music and Drama displayed
some similarities to Hegels, in that his proposed union of music and
dramatic text within the new concept of music drama aimed precisely at
an ideal balance between feeling and understanding which he considered
to be missing from each of the two media in separation. Though his
symphonic conception of music drama relied on a profound recognition
of the practices and meanings of absolute instrumental music, his need
to fertilize it with the textual component removes him from absolute
music adherents. It was only later, through reading Schopenhauer, and in
the context of Tristan und Isolde and the essay The Music of the Future,
that he modied his views to promote the supremacy of music, thus
giving back to music its metaphysical dignity.
13
The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, whose writings Mahler certainly
knew,
14
shared Wagners interest in Greek tragedy and, in the years between
Tristan and Parsifal, his love for Schopenhauer. Like Schopenhauer,
36 Vera Micznik
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Nietzsche had great disdain for programmatic or illustrative music which he
articulated in his early philosophical work The Birth of Tragedy of 1872:
music itself in its absolute sovereignty does not need the image and the
concept, but merely endures them as accompaniments.
15
Although he
renounced both Wagner and Schopenhauer later in life, Nietzsches position
on the superiority of absolute music never wavered, and as late as 1887, in
The Will to Power, he again expressed his scorn for words in relation to
music: Compared with music all communication by words is shameless.
16
Despite the above, we might agree with Adornos statement that,
at least by Mahlers time, there was a fundamental diculty, indeed impos-
sibility, of gaining general access to art by means of a systemof philosophical
categories.
17
The general philosophical aesthetic theories, rather than inu-
encing directly the making and the reception of music, would have left their
imprint on the aesthetic debates of the time in a dierent way, through more
concrete and practical discussions of musical works and tastes voiced by
musicians and critics themselves. One of the most inuential late nineteenth-
century manifestations of this mutation from universalist philosophical
aesthetics to nominalist debates focused on how particular works produce
meaning, was the politically partisan debate in the public music critical arena
between the representatives of absolute versus programme music.
The remainder of this chapter will attempt to unravel the issues
involved in the evaluation of Mahlers apparent inclinations towards
absolute or programmatic music positions as articulated in the reception
history of his works, through an examination of this reception and
through readings of the music. Rather than provide an answer or side
with one solution or another, I will suggest ways of broaching the issue
calling on theoretical ideas from literary criticism and semiotics which
accommodate Mahlers and his own contemporaries beliefs (insofar as
they are recoverable), as well as todays more relativistic approach to truth
and evidence in aesthetics and semantics. Such a multi-textual approach
to the case of Mahler is intended to advance the understanding not only
of his music, but also of the dierent ways of thinking critically about the
relationship between music, programmes and historical evidence.
Programme versus absolute music
Amongst the most ardent promoters of the theory of programme music,
Franz Liszt and his music historian acolyte Franz Brendel postulated, like
Wagner, that instrumental music had reached an impasse because it
lacked the ability to communicate precise ideas. Liszt proposed that a
verbal programme attached to his symphonic poems would restore the
37 Music and aesthetics: the programmatic issue
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poetic dimension to absolute music, the denition of ideas which the
composer wanted to communicate through his music.
18
To a certain
extent this theory returned music to the position of an incomplete
art in need of extra-musical textual ideas to make itself understood.
Countering this and other theories which distrusted the ability of music
to signify on its own, and more concretely than in the spiritual realm
of the innite propounded by earlier metaphysical idealists such as
E. T. A. Homann, Hanslicks On The Beautiful in Music resituated the
essence of music in pure musical sound in motion (melody, harmony,
rhythm),
19
thus encouraging a reappraisal of the symphony as an auton-
omous instrumental genre in the 1870s.
The historical and critical assessment of Mahlers works cannot be
understood outside the prevailing late nineteenth-century paradigmatic
dichotomy of programme versus absolute music, which by the 1880s
had become so entrenched that Mahler and Richard Strauss were
seen, rightly or wrongly, as situated on opposite sides of the debate.
20
Inuenced by this situation, critics and scholars have long been obsessed
by the thorny issue of classifying Mahlers aesthetic beliefs and his music
as either absolute or programmatic. Sides taken within this dichotomy
have varied throughout the generations, and continue to be negotiated
even today. There is good reason for this: the case of Mahler presents us
with one of the most complex networks of corroborating and contra-
dictory musical, aesthetic and documentary evidence, as well as misin-
formation, which depending on when and by whom it is interpreted
have led to a wide variety of conclusions. When the complexity of
this problem is acknowledged, it provides grounds for fruitful discussion
and ingenious interpretations. Donald Mitchells recent statement, for
example, that (during the Wunderhorn Years (18881901)) the tension
generated by Mahler trying to pursue two opposed ideologies simulta-
neously, one dedicated to the path of the symphonic poem, to the pro-
grammatic idea, the other to the path, the tradition, of symphony,
unpolluted by programmatic aliations or associations,
21
at least recog-
nizes the antinomy of the problem, even if it does not provide a solution.
But alongside such thoughtful attempts to come to terms with the issue,
one unfortunately still encounters unqualied statements such as Mahlers
symphonies are long, complex, and programmatic, which instead of
clarication, promote further confusion.
22
Perhaps in asking whether Mahlers music is absolute or program-
matic we are asking the wrong question, since this polemic, as Carl
Dahlhaus has pointed out, is rather academic, and belongs to the ideology
of reception.
23
A better path of discovery might be to pursue the question
of why and how this whole issue became so much more crucial to the
38 Vera Micznik
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interpretation of Mahlers thought and works than to that of other
contemporary composers. Perhaps it is possible to understand from
the case of Mahler that the so-called objective proofs invoked in sup-
porting historical or aesthetic questions the documentary evidence
including letters to critics, Natalie Bauer-Lechners recollections, Almas
writings, suppressed programmes, inscriptions on the scores, and Mahlers
text-based symphonies shape our questions in the rst place. In other
words, had Mahler not left behind the wealth of verbal simulacra of his
thoughts, but only non-texted music, we would not have asked the same
questions and in the same ways. Recognizing and addressing this issue not
simply as a paradox, but as a productive act in the hermeneutic circle,
24
according to which we must go back and forth between evidence and the
interpretation of the text, will certainly lead to a closer elucidation of the
relationship between production and reception.
In approaching this subject, most Mahler scholars have employed a
positivistic historicist methodology which privileges gaining knowledge
and truth about a work through recapturing as accurately as possible the
composers views, and the contemporaneous cultural context, facts, com-
ments and situations. Aside from the paradoxical illusion that there is only
one truth to be recaptured, the initial problem of this is that the cultural,
ideological, political conditions perceived to exist at a certain moment in
time, while often inuential, are not related to the artist and the work of art
in a deterministic, causal fashion; rather, when translated through human
subjectivity into an artistic medium, they can manifest themselves in the
most unexpected congurations. Secondly, the statements made by compo-
sers or their contemporaries can be contradictory, and hence, depending on
which sources one reads, the ensuing conclusions may support opposite
sides of an argument. Thirdly, aesthetic and musical interpretations are
historically contingent practices, that is, they are founded on yet further
sets of intersubjective assumptions and conventions of the interpreters that
should be taken into consideration. For these and many other reasons, the
notion of truth needs to be challenged, and countered with the recognition
that every statement owes its explanation at least in part to the contextual or
contingent status of both the person who made the statement and of the
reader/scholar who interprets it: in other words, to both parties competence
and contextual paradigms. Readings of contemporary evidence might give
us some valuable information about what Mahler himself and other people
thought publicly of his music, about his and his contemporaries conception
of absolute or programmatic aesthetics, but will not tell us the truth
about Mahlers music or indicate a precise way of interpreting it. Ultimately,
as Adorno observed, truth content quality does not fall prey to histori-
cism. History is immanent to artworks.
25
Mahler inscribed his historical
39 Music and aesthetics: the programmatic issue
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moment and aesthetic position in the music, and the only way that we can
get closer to its understanding is by reading (interpreting) critically both
the evidence and the music.
Assessing the evidence
Because of the absolute-programme-music dichotomy, some of the earliest
critical reactions to the unusual musical characteristics of Mahlers works
presumed the existence of underlying, suppressed programmes. Typical in
this respect were, for example, the reactions of the Swiss critic WilliamRitter
to Felix Weingartners performance of Mahlers ostensibly non-program-
matic Fourth Symphony in Munich on 25 November 1901: The rst move-
ment could be Daniel in the lions den, Orpheus slaughtered by the Maenads
. . . Its nothing but acrobatics and the performance of a lady in tights in a
menagerie;
26
or that of the Allgemeine Zeitung critic referring to the Finale of
the Symphony: The grotesquely comic means something in the theatre, but,
in a symphony, it must at least be justied by a precise programme.
27
So
aected by the controversy were those times that both Strauss, the paradig-
matic representative of programme music, and Mahler, who claimed not to
belong to that trend, ended up defending purely musical logic.
28
Even
Hanslick, the doyen of absolute music, contaminated by this same debate,
read programmes in Tchaikovskys Pathetique Symphony, although none
had been provided by the composer. Yet, unlike Ritter, he was grateful that
the composer lets the music speak for itself and prefers to leave us guessing
rather than force a laid-out course upon himself and us.
29
The contradictory evidence Mahler left behind, especially his obvious
vacillation about programmes transmitted through sources of varying
reliability, contributed to the confusion over his absolute or program-
matic stance. Despite the programmes that Mahler provided for the early
symphonies, the rst biographical-analytical studies, such as, for exam-
ple, that by Ludwig Schiedermair (written under the composers super-
vision), make clear that Mahler wanted to promote himself as a composer
of absolute music. Schiedermair certainly echoes Mahlers wish to be
presented as such when he comments To believe that Mahler wanted to
put down precise facts in his works amounts to misunderstanding the
composer entirely.
30
On the other hand, as Peter Franklin has recently
pointed out, Insucient attention has perhaps been paid to the corre-
sponding strength of his [Mahlers] public commitment to programmati-
cism during the same period.
31
Franklin, like many others, rightly
emphasizes the opposite kind of evidence: the numerous programme
outlines for the early symphonies that Mahler promoted to his friends
40 Vera Micznik
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and to critics, as well as all the titles and inscriptions found on his early
autograph manuscripts, which together seem to support Mahlers alleged
reliance on programmes. However, can evidence alone provide answers to
this dilemma?
The reception of Mahlers First Symphony will demonstrate both the
beginnings of certain interpretive trends and the mercurial way in which
evidence was construed. At its premie`re on 20 November 1889 in Budapest,
after having referred to the piece as a symphonic work or symphony,
32
Mahler performed it with a generic title: Symphonic Poem in two parts,
wherein four out of the then ve movements simply bore tempo indications,
while only one, the Funeral march, was labelled A
`
la pompes fune`bres.
33
In an attempt to clarify Mahlers attitude towards the fashionable topic of
programme music, the preview in the local newspaper Pester Lloyd by the
critic Kornel A