After Mahler: Britten, Weill, Henze and Romantic RedemptionThe music of Gustav Mahler repeatedly engages with Romantic notions of redemption. This is expressed in a range of gestures and procedures, shifting between affirmative fulfilment and pessimistic negation. In this groundbreaking study, Stephen Downes explores the relationship of this aspect of Mahler's music to the output of Benjamin Britten, Kurt Weill and Hans Werner Henze. Their initial admiration was notably dissonant with the prevailing Zeitgeist – Britten in 1930s England, Weill in 1920s Germany and Henze in 1950s Germany and Italy. Downes argues that Mahler's music struck a profound chord with them because of the powerful manner in which it raises and intensifies dystopian and utopian complexes and probes the question of fulfilment or redemption, an ambition manifest in ambiguous tonal, temporal and formal processes. Comparisons of the ways in which this topic is evoked facilitate new interpretative insights into the music of these four major composers. |
Contents
Music examples | 20 |
Britten and Mahler 60 | 60 |
5a Frank Bridge The Sea Seascape fig 3 86 | 86 |
6b Britten Seascape close 92 | 92 |
opening 112 | 112 |
shocks dreams and temporality in | 131 |
12a and 3 12b Weill Der Silhersee instrumental coda to Act 2 bb 484 | 194 |
Henze and Mahler 196 | 196 |
List of music examples | 217 |
after fig 33 to fig 36 250 | 250 |
Bibliography 254 | 254 |
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Common terms and phrases
Adorno aesthetic affirmation allegory allusion ambiguity artistic Aschenbach bars bass Bassarids beauty Beethoven Benjamin Britten Bridge’s cadence cadential Cambridge University Press chords chromatic climactic coexistence composer confirmed conflict cont contrast counterpoint cresc cultural Death in Venice diatonic dissonant dominant six-four essay evoke Example expressive fig figure final finale first movement Fourth Symphony Frank Bridge fulfilment German gesture Goethe’s Grimes Grimes’s Gustav Mahler Hans Keller Hans Werner Henze harmony heard Henze’s identified idyll influence Kurt Weill Mahagonny Mahler’s Fourth Mahler’s music Mahlerian Mann’s material melodic minor Mitchell modern montage motive move movement of Mahler’s naive neue Orpheus Ninth Symphony opening opera pastoral pentatonic Peter Peter Grimes piano poetic recall redemptive reflected relationship romantic symbol Schiller’s Schoenberg sentimental significance song Stravinsky structural suggests surrealism surrealist theme Theodor W tonal tonic tradition trans transcendent triad Tristan Wagner Weill’s music Werner Henze Whittall