Talk:Gustav Mahler

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Contents 1 Archived discussion 2 POV Issue - "Music" Section 3 Quotes Need Attibution ("Legacy" section) 4 Relationship with his mother 5 Series of cuts for OR/POV/A 6 Mahler as conductor 7 Attribution (Calling all Mahlerians!)

[edit] Archived discussion

Some past discussion of this article has been moved to Archive page(s). Future archivers, please link and summarize what you moved in this section. Remember to sign & date. ("~~~~")

• /Archive 1 - archived 8 apparently moot sections w/ posts dating from 2004 (some undated) thru June 2006 (+ 2 comments added to old topics in 2007). Topics include: titles to the sym's; key designations; cause of death; last words... —Turangalila (talk) 01:42, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
• /Archive 2 - 11 sections w/ posts fr Sep. 2005 to Sep 2006 (w/ 1 new note from me). Topics include: quotations; more on titles; bibliography/sourcing/summary style; redirect...—Turangalila (talk) 03:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
• /Archive 3 - 7 sections w/ posts fr May 2006 to March 2007. Topics include: minor works; orchestration particulars;Alma (bio & reliability); recordings; song quotes in the sym's...—Turangalila (talk) 03:13, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] POV Issue - "Music" Section

I think the section describing Mahler's style of music needs to be revised and set in a more neutral tone. Take, for example, the following paragraph:

Mahler's harmonic writing was at times highly innovative, and only long familiarity can have blunted the effect of the chords constructed in 'perfect fourths' which lead to the 'first subject' of the Seventh Symphony, or the remarkable (and unclassifiable!) 9-note 'crisis' sonority that erupts into the first movement of the Tenth. 'Anti-modernist' zeal presumably lies behind assertions to the effect that Mahler "never abandoned the principle of tonality, as those following him, in particular those of the Second Viennese School, would later do": anyone who would deny this composer's pre-Schoenbergian exploitation of expressive anti-tonality should be challenged to name the keys that they hear at such points as bb.385ff in the finale of the Sixth Symphony or the most tonally complex areas of the Tenth.

This is clearly argumentative (most blatantly the passage that I've bolded). In addition, the quoted text is not referenced and is therefore not verifiable. I don't know enough about Mahler's compositional style to rewrite this myself, but if anyone else on this page can do so, I think this should be addressed as soon as possible. --Todeswalzer|Talk 02:23, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

No one seems to have made any attempt to address the above-noted concerns, so I've now marked the section as non-neutral. The entire "Music" section is clearly seeking to advance a specific line of (defensive) argument to the effect that Mahler's music is more avant-garde than most people seem (or would like?) to realize. I'm a fan of Mahler's music myself, but this really needs to be rewritten. --Todeswalzer|Talk 18:17, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I agree; the tone of this section strikes me as very non-encyclopedic.Btwied 13:27, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Quotes Need Attibution ("Legacy" section)

The "Legacy" section begins with several quotes or pseudo-quotes. For example,

[Little] common ground can be found between those who revere Mahler for his 'emotional frankness' and 'spiritual honesty', and his equally vociferous detractors for whom the same music displays 'mawkishness', 'tastelessness' and 'sentimentality' (Franz Schmidt clearly spoke for the latter camp when he described Mahler's symphonies as "cheap novels").

It's impossible to tell if most of these are meant to be actual quotes from critics, generalizations of things critics actually said, or representative of things the writer thinks critics might have said. If they're genuine quotes they need attribution. If they're generalized or representative they should be removed and replaced with actual quotes. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Tedd (talk • contribs) 18:45, 29 January 2007 (UTC).

Hi all. Nice article. But yes the legacy section needs proper sourcing. It does seem a little argumentative. I'll see what I can retrieve from the library. AlanBarnet 03:18, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

I have always had my misgivings about that section, specifically that it verges on original research, which is why I just tagged it (and it makes it even more difficult to verify this since no sources are cited). Quotes like

His famous declaration "What you people of the theatre call your 'tradition' is nothing but your laziness and slovenliness" ... might almost be taken as prefiguring the late 20th-century preoccupation with 'historically informed performance' that claimed to be liberating familiar baroque and classical works from thoughtlessly applied performance conventions deriving from later periods; one ought to note, however, that Mahler's own, fascinating arrangement of several movements into a 'Bach Suite' is, in terms of historical authenticity, massively anachronistic.

belong in essays, not encyclopedias. This quote makes an interesting point, but it diverges too much into supposition to make it worth keeping. Gershwinrb 06:53, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Relationship with his mother

I just read that he had a very strange relationship with his mother, and even imitated her limp even though there was nothing wrong with his legs.--Filll 04:49, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Series of cuts for OR/POV/A

Per discussion above, plus a bit of my own initiative, I've taken the scissors to the "Music" and "Legacy" sections over several edits. Here's the DIFF PAGE for those edits. Some of the stuff is interesting & probably worth saving, but as is shouldn't be in the article.

A summary:

1. Deleted the above-discussed polemic declaring Mahler the proto-Schoenberg. Obvious tone problems; no cite; definitely controversial assertions...Mahler certainly knew and encouraged the Second Viennese gang, but whether he would have understood or approved the work they did after his death is unknowable, and shouldn't be speculated on on WP.
2. Deleted the whole "Interpreters" section. inevitable POV minefield & was proving such; the important info is repeated elsewhere in the article. End of the list was devolving into a linklist of every conductor any editor ever liked who recorded a Mahler Sym.
3. cut a lecture-y parens sentence at the end of the "third period" sect. about transposing notes to Alma in teh Sym 10, complete with the strawman pseudo-quotes that are so prevalent still in this article.
4. cut a three-paragraph sect. of "Influence" that contained the worst of the problems mentioned in the topic above.
5. Moved over-detailed Alma/Deryck Cooke/Sym 10 section to Sym 10 article & replaced w/ summary/link.
6. changed Notes/Ref's style -- see below.

I barely touched the first part of the "Legacy" section because I didn't know where to begin. I did replace the Bernstein quote with one I had a ready cite for.

I think this article contains cogent and useful musical discussion, something sorely lacking on much of WP that I've seen so far; but the rampant unencyclopedic tone still detracts from that hugely. —Turangalila (talk) 12:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Mahler as conductor

Despite making the cuts mentioned above, I feel this article is missing one section: a discussion of Mahler the conductor. After all that's how he made his living and earned his first fame. It should focus on what he actually did rather than speculate about his long-term influence on performance practice, or lack thereof. Mention could be made of his reformist zeal, his tendency to revise other people's scores (Schumann for example), his reputation, and his direct influence on at least a couple of famous conductors. I might try to add this later but a true Mahlerian might have a better source. —Turangalila (talk) 12:31, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Attribution (Calling all Mahlerians!)

Many commentators now have pointed out how short this article currently falls wrt to WP:A. To try & kick start the improvement I've rerigged the Reference/Notes structure at the end. Please if you add to or add sources to the article, put a full cite of the source in question in the new section "References and further reading." Then you can just add "<ref>" tags in the text w/ quick Harvard refs ("Norman 1066 p. 123"), or a longer explanation ("While Hal 2001 says 'I'm afraid, Dave', Daisy 1893 says..."). This seems to make sense since there's so few specific cites so far and much of the references listed look like they were put there for bibliography rather than to cite in the artilce.

To see this in action check out Josquin des Prez.

Finally a plea: A look at the article and the talk archives convinces me there are editors out there way better read then me on things Mahler; who have access to good sources and are familiar with them. The archived Talk discussions are in places better referenced than the article--I actually saw a page # back there somewhere. Please if you're out there, help get this article on the GA/FA train. —Turangalila (talk) 12:50, 5 April 2007 (UTC)