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Liszt, Mahler and the Chorale

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 1981

John Williamson
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Extract

An index reference in Donald Mitchell's study of Mahler's ‘Wunderhorn’ years seems to promise an appraisal of Mahler's debt to Liszt; on the page, however, an assumption precedes an exhortation to ‘serious research and documentation’. The debt is located in Mahler's ‘consistent and brilliant’ use of transformation of themes with particular reference being made to the ‘Faust’ Symphony. Elsewhere, Mitchell cites a trumpet tune from the finale of the ‘Resurrection’ Symphony and its subsequent transformation into a chorale as an example of ‘how closely Mahler had studied Liszt’. The species of transformation demonstrated is common in Liszt, mood and association being altered by radically changing the context while leaving melodic, harmonic and rhythmic contour relatively untouched. All of this, however, Mahler might have learned from Wagner, Smetana, Weber or many another composer of dramatic or programmatic music. Real documentation, in the form of letters or recorded comment, has always taken place in discussion of Mahler's debt to Liszt to the pursuit of technical and aesthetic parallels; Constantin Floras' study in progress is typical in that copious motivic and thematic cross-reference, and extensive documentation with regard to Mahler and Liszt individually far outweigh recorded discussion by Mahler of Liszt's personality and music.

Type
Research Article
Information
Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association , Volume 108 , 1981 , pp. 115 - 125
Copyright
Copyright © 1983 The Royal Musical Association and the Authors

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References

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