Mitchell, Mahler and Nature Das Lied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

Embed Size (px)

Citation preview

  • 7/28/2019 Mitchell, Mahler and Nature Das Lied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

    1/7

    SCRCTINY

    culture of Mahler's day, and has continued to be, to our own day.We might well think that Mahler here was pursuing the merely

    decorative, but we vvould be wrong on two counts. First and foremost, perhaps, because of the wealth of imagination, the sophistication subtlety of nuances, and refinement he brought to these, 'numbers; and second, because, while the decorative was not hisobjective- though it seems to me that even here he achieves muchmore than any of his contemporaries- communication was; and itis in fact as a means of communication, of virtually instant accessibilitv to the idea of relocation, to awareness that we are now somewh;re else than the world with v.rhich we are familiar, that Mahlerputs overt pentatonicism to use. It is a means of preparing us forthe eventual 'otherness' of'Der Abschied', its music and its narrative in which the 'Chinese' dimension of Das Lied finds its ultimateand most profound musical and philosophical expression.

    There is much to be thought about, discussed, contended,debated, decoded; and there are surely fresh approaches still to bemade. But of on e thing I think we can be certain: that in thehistory of the creative relationship between East and West in thetwentieth centurv, 'Das Trinklied von der Erde' must stand as an'achievement of genius that has no t been equalled or surpassed. Itrepresents music's own contribution to the philosophy of life, deathand - bv \vav of that final draught - transcendence, no less.

    Mahler and Nature:Landscape into Music

    1986I am going to speculate about a possible relationship between landscape and music; and about one particular landscape-Toblach, nowDobbiaco, in the Italian Dolomites - and Gustav Mahler. Beforethe First World War the area was part of the Austro-HungarianEmpire and accessible by train from Vienna. It \vas t h e r e ~ amid thislandscape of forests, lakes and mountains, that Mahler m the lastsummers of his life, from I 908 until his death in May I 9 I I, \\TOtehis last works, Das Lied vo11 der Erde, the Ninth Symphony and theincomplete Tenth.

    Wh y Toblach? To answer that one has to look back to I907,when Mahler spent his summers composing in the only house heever mvned, at Maiernigg on the Worthersee. Here, three heavyblows fell on him: it \vas in this year at Maiernigg that on e of hist\vo daughters, Maria, caught diphtheria and cruelly died; at almostthe same time, Mahler's doctors diagnosed a heart condition thatcertainlv caused him amciety, restricted his physical activities,though' not his creativity, and contributed to the weakening ofhishitherto pmverful constitution, vvhich finally succumbed to a viralinfection in 1911. In addition, in the same year, I907, he found himself at loggerheads with the bureaucrats in Vienna; and, frustratedand taxed beyond the tolerable, he resigned as Director of theHofoper- Vienna Court Opera - an d signed a contract to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera, Ne w York.

    Maiernigg could no longer offer him the serenity of spirit heneeded for composition. He had to find a new place to make a newstart. What was found \Vas a farmhouse near Toblach, at Alt-

    Lecture. Musikwoche i11 m c t m n i ~ m ! GustaY Mahler'. Toblach. 22 July 1 9 ~ 0 ; originallygiven with recorded musical illustrations.

  • 7/28/2019 Mitchell, Mahler and Nature Das Lied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

    2/7

    SCRUTINY

    Mahler walking in the mountains nearToblach

    MAHLER AN D 479Schluderbach, on the second floor of which M ahler in those lastsum mers lived with his wife and surviving daughter. (It standstoday virtually untouched.)

    From that farmhouse Mahler continued to explore and absorbthe sights and sounds of ature, something he had done all his life,the impact of which we encounter in his earlier symphonies asmuch as in his later. But Mahler's enthusiasm for N atu re was perhaps of a rather different order from the conventional kind. He wasno passive observer of landscape bu t an active explorer of it , especially on foot.We know of his fondness for walking amid the lakesand mountains, and can guess w ith some certainty of being rightthat what attracted him to mountains at least was their silence- thatunique silence which in fact constitutes an aural experience initself, a silence that is itself a sound. It is a silence moreover thatmagically articulates any natural sound that may impinge upon i t -the cry of a bird, cowbells from the valleys below, the murmuringof a mountain stream. All these sounds, the individuality of whichmight be lost when they form part of the larger chorus of noisethat surrounds our day-to-day life on earth, are heard sharp andclear, each wi th its own sonorous physiognomy, in the context ofsilence.

    Now all this may begin to sound like poetic 'rhapsody'; bu t infact my purpose is no t to rhapsodize but to remind us of somethingvery essential about Mahler, namely that he walked not only on hisfeet bu t also with his ears: that a walk for this wholly extraordinaryma n was as much a sonorous experience as a matter of physical loco-motion.We have to remember that for a walking composer his earsare at least as important as his eyes; while Mahler 's eyes performeda much more complex role than drinking in, in a general way, thegrand beauty of lake and mountain. His eyes, I think, could bealmost as specific as his ears. (Th is is a point to which I shallreturn.)

    To one form of Nature 's mu sic, birdsong, Mahler's ears hadalways been open. We don't have to wait until his late works, forexample, to encounter the incorporation into his music of the songor cry of a bird. (I have often thought that in this respect aloneMahler and Messiaen might have had much to say to each other.)

  • 7/28/2019 Mitchell, Mahler and Nature Das Lied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

    3/7

    SCRUTINY

    I could quote many examples from the earlier works. Bu t perhapson e is of particular interest and importance, the great cadenza inthe finale of the Second Symphony, Der grosse Appel ('The GreatCall'), the summons that leads to the final elevation of the dead toparadise. At this critical juncture in the symphony, which is both awttp de thedtre and a radical exploration of acoustic space, Mahler,after a great release of orchestral hubbub and activity, creates amoment of silence and then fills it \Vith a huge instrumental cadenzacompiled from horn calls and trumpet fanfares, and, no less significantly, birdsong. It is indeed the liquid aria of the bird, the fluteand piccolo combined, that surely represents after the travail andtension of life on earth, the promise of hope, light and eternal life.Th e distant rumble of thunder on the drums also has a role to playin this remarkable passage, the innovatory techniques employed inwhich continue to surprise one. Bu t what grips the attention especially is the free, quasi-improvisatory character of the cadenza andin particular the free, unmeasured nature of the birdsong, no tbound by the tyranny of the barline, any more than the birdsthemselves in the real \vorld are subject to the rules of composition. I have no doubt, moreover, that while that great cadenza inthe finale of the Second is pre-eminently symbolic no t naturalistic inits intention and effect, it none the less had its roots in Mahler'sacoustic experience of the universe. Th e free mi x of the sounds, theunmeasured birdsong, all these speak for the response of Mahler'sears to what they heard about them and to his capacity - whereinof course lies his genius - to assimilate them and transform theminto music.

    Th e free profile of the flute song in that cadenza reflects, on emight think, the _freedom of Nature, unconstrained by considerationsof art, of classical proportion, of a need to discriminate bet\veensounds and events which are proper to art while others are improperand to be excluded. Mahler, as he gre\v older and as his workdeveloped, moved away more and more from a figurative, decorative or symbolic representation of Nature, and ofbirdsong in particular, towards a (for him) ne\v kind of naturalism, of realism, inwhich the barriers between art music (Krmstmttsik) and the soundsand events of Nature were further and radically lowered. There is a

    'v!AHLER A:--10 :--JATURE: LANDSCAPE !:o-;TO :vtCSlC

    remarkable example of this development in the 'Abschied' of DasLied 11011 der Erde- the passage where Mahler graphically describesthe nocturnal stirrings and t\vitterings of the birds and other noisesand creatures of the night at the moment when night and silencedescend. 'Description' indeed is entirely the wrong word. Mahlerdoes no t so much describe as faithfully dommetlt the sounds ofNature just before the world surrenders to sleep:

    Die Vogel hocken still in ihren Zweigen.Die Welt schlaft ein!71ze birds crouch in silence on their branches;the world ,'?oes to sleep'

    Here, the music that surrounds the voice is a music taken fromNature, received by Mahler's ears and then transformed by hisimagination, bu t certainly not out of recognition. I have writtenabout that passage elsev,rhere' and suggested that its extraordinarymotivic organization and audacious instrumentation amount to akind of Mahlerian Impressionism, but an Impressionism that doesnot aspire to a blend, a blur, bu t comprises a brilliant and incisivearticulation ofbirdsong. Once again Mahler has created a momentof silence, as he did in the finale of the Second Symphony, bu t thistime filled it no t \Vith symbolic bu t as it were with actual birdsongand other nocturnal noises. There is a big difference bemreen thet\vo aesthetic approaches.

    Mahler of course did not altogether abandon in his last periodthe figurative, decorative or symbolic use of birdsong. When heneeded it as a resource he made use of it. Indeed, in Das Lied 11011der Erde itself, the two modes of incorporating Nature, the t\vostrategies, are juxtaposed in the same work. Take the fifth movement of Das Lied, 'Der Trunkene im Friihling'. In the third stropheof the song, it is a bird that brings the pessimistic singer a messageof hope and reconciliation, a confirmation of the presence ofspring- 'Der Lenz ist da, sei kommen iiber Nacht!' ('Spring is here,I See D.\1SSLD. pp. 373-6 and 38o-8 r.

  • 7/28/2019 Mitchell, Mahler and Nature Das Lied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

    4/7

    SCRUTINY

    it's arrived overnight!'). And Mahler permits us to hear the tenoroverhearing the bird singing in the tree. But this is a very \veiltrained and musically educated bird which impersonates the soloflute, with a highly developed sense of melody, of symmetricalphrasing and above all with a striking capacity to build its song ou tof the motifs with which the composer has obligingly provided it(see figs. 6+3-6+ 10 and 9- 2 - ro- 2 ). In short, this is principally a symbolic bird, whose song has been conditioned by long-establishedtradition, a very ditferent concept of sound from the nocturnalpassage from the 'Abschied' to which I referred above, or trom thetree untrammelled birdsong in the cadenza trom the SecondSymphony.

    On e might argue that there is nothing exceptional about a composer with an emphatic love of Nature building birdsong into hismusic. Birds are Nature's musicians. Nature's own singers, and composers have long been in the habit of conscripting birdsong to servetheir ow n purposes. In 'Der Trunkene im Friihling' Mahler had on etoot in tradition; in the 'Abschied' he established a IICII' tradition. akind of authenticity of reproduction that tormed no part at all ofthat earlier decorative or svmbolic tradition. But Mahler we mav. ' .be sure, was no t in the business of achieving a faithful, literal replica-tion of birdsong. What was it, then, that \Ve should try to identifYas Mahler's particular interest in birdsong, in the sounds of thenatural universe? Or, to pu t it another way, are we able to identif)in any meaningful way other than the decorative the influence ofNature on Mahler's musical thinking?

    Th e aspect of the relationship between Mahler's own music andthe music of Nature that interests me most is the unmeasured freedom that characterizes the latter and the ever increasing treedomof Mahler's late compositional techniques, especially in the fields ofrhythm and melody. I have perhaps talked about birdsong to excess.But I should like to bring forward one fmal example tram thissphere. though in fact it is no t a literal represen tation ofbirdsong atall. You remember the cadenza trom the finale of the SecondSymphony, and the marvellously tree, quasi-improvised duet forpiccolo and flute which unfolds a continuous flow of unmeasuredmelody. In a famous passage from the 'Abschied'- the first of the

    \1.\HLER A:--;D NATCRE: LAKDSCAPE J:--;TO :\!CSIC

    recitatives - the flute obbligato that accompanies the voice has aninnovatory, improvisatory unmeasuredness (see figs. 3-4). Now Iam not suggesting that what we hear there is undiluted birdsongif that were the case, it would be a virtuoso bird indeed! Moreover,it is clear to me that the concept of that recitative has its roots inBach, in Bach's recitatives trom the Passions in particular (Mahlerwas a great admirer of the St ;\Jattlzcw Passi011) and in the style ofBach's instrumental obbligatos in his Passions and cantatas. On emight think on e could no t get further away from Nature than themusic of Bach. But as so often in Mahler's music, one thing doesnot exclude another; or, to pu t it another way, he integrates in andthrough his music elements and influences that normally wouldhave been thought irreconcilable. In short, while recognizing thepredominant Bach influence, at the same time the free shape of thatextraordinary flute obbligato has been conditioned, I suggest, ifonly unconsciously, by the asymmetries, the irregularities, of themusic of Nature. And when we take into account the poetic context and content of that first recitative from the 'Abschied', inwhich the protagonist responds to a nocturnal mountain landscape,it is no t altogether far-fetched to hear in it an audacious mi x ofBach and the last song of the bird before nightfall.

    Let us leave birds to r a moment and move on to other featuresof Nature which might have caught no t only Mahler's ears bu t alsohis eyes. No doubt you \Vill be asking whether it is really possiblefor a composer's music to be influenced by what he perceives withand through his eyes. I am reminded of something Mahler himselfonce said to a triend wh o >vas visiting hi m at Steinbach and admirin g the mountain landscape. 'There's no need to look at that,'Mahler said, 'for it's all in my music'- he was working on his ThirdSymphony at the time. 2 Mahler of course was expressing thethought of the relationship between landscape and music in theform of a joke. But it is my conviction that there is more than anelement of truth in it, a truth that became more pronounced asMahler moved into his late phase. Let me illustrate this point withanother example from the' Abschied' of Das Lied, the extraordinary2 Bruno Walter. G t ~ s t . H ' JL.1hlcr. p. 33-

  • 7/28/2019 Mitchell, Mahler and Nature Das Lied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

    5/7

    SCRUTINY

    oboe melody that introduces the text describing both the sight andsound of a murmuring stream creating its mvn melody in the darkness amid flmvers fading in the twilight (see figs. 7+ 2 -8+-+). It istechnically one of the most radical and challenging inspirations inDas Lied, and what is particularly striking about it is its rhythmicasymmetry. There is no bar in the melody that repeats a previouslyestablished rhythmic pattern: each bar is rhythmically unique. Th emelody extends itself systematically through bar-by-bar rhythmicvariation. Moreover, this melody, which is built ou t of an additivechain of asymmetries, is itself accompanied by figuration \Vith itsmvn built-in rhythmic asymmetry: at the outset the clarinets' andharp's articulations of the rocking minor third make their irregulareffect by alternating within the bar groups of 2s and JS. There isscant harmonization of the melody in any conv entional sense. Afterthe ambiguous tonality of the first two bars of introduction, F isestablished, but an F - f or the ensuing three bars - with a persistently sharpened fourth degree of the scale, B natural instead ofB flat. This Lydian inflexion introduces a diatonic 'irregularity' intothe melody that complements the associated irregularities ofrhythm and asymmetries of phrase. Small wonder that the melodyseems to \Vander irregularly on, without punctuation or traditional cadencing, until it is abruptly cut off, just before the voiceenters with 'Der Bach singt . . .' ('The stream sings . . .') and withthree words accounts for the characteristic of the musical processin one simple poetic image drawn from Nature.

    This passage is not only a remarkable manifestation of Mahler'slate style, of the development of new and surprising features, it isalso something else: it is a graphic tone-picture of a mountainstream pursuing its irregular course, singing its song as it flows. Itwas no t only the SOlllld of it that worked on Mahler's imagination,bu t also the sight of t. It is a passage in which one might claim sighthas been transformed into sound. This takes me back to the pointI made earlier: that Mahler was as much a pair of walking eyes as apair of walking ears.

    I do no t want to exaggerate the influence of Nature on Mahlerto the degree that it loses all sense: I am far from suggesting thatMahler in his music was a kind of gazetteer or Baedeker. I am

    \IAHLER A"iD 'IATURE: LANDSCAPE IKTO ML'SIC

    suggesting, however, that when \Ve analyse some of the characteristics of the late style of Mahler and his growing preoccupationwith the potentialities of asymmetry and irregularity, we shouldbear in mind that \vhat \Vas perhaps a development in his musicthat would have happened anY'vay, for purely musical reasons, wasbacked up, intensified, reinforced, by his absorption of the irregularities and asymmetries of the sounds and sights of the world ofNature by which he was so often surrounded. And where, as in DasLied, the poetic content of the \vork is much bound up with observation of an d reflections on Nature, then the influence surfaces ina highly original and immediately identifiable manner.

    I have been expounding relatively marginal detail in order tosupport my general proposal that we may perceive a connectionbetween Mahler's response to Nature and the manifestation ofasymmetry and irregularity in his music. But while it is true thatsome of the asymmetries I have commented on and illustratedfrom Das Lied very clearly have their origins in Nature, there areother aspects of his systematic employment of asymmetry whichaltogether escape the graphic or depictive an d assume a profoundformal an d symbolic significance. Perhaps no t altogether surprisingly we find an elaborate example of a symbolic/formal use ofasymmetry - the employment of asymmetry as a major musical andpoetic resource- in the finale, the 'Abschied' of Das Lied. If I amto explain, even in the barest outline, ho w Mahler's method works,then I must say something very brief about what, I suggest, DasLied is about, the poetic meaning of Mahler's song-cycle, and inparticular the content of the 'Abschied'. I think there are variouspoints on which we might reach ready agreement: for a start, thatDas Lied's principal preoccupation is with the idea of man's mortality, his struggle against the idea of death, the possibility of hisbeing reconciled to the inescapable fact of his extinction. All this,we may think, \Vas bound up with Mahler's ovm personal history,the events from 1907, and in particular the diagnosis of the heartcondition that \Vas to contribute to his untimely death in 191 r.

    Das Lied, I suggest, concerns itself both with the fight againstoblivion and the transcending of it, an altogether typical Mahlerianconflict and dichotomy. It is a conflict that is played ou t and finally

  • 7/28/2019 Mitchell, Mahler and Nature Das Lied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

    6/7

    SCRCTINY

    resolved in and by the 'Abschied' and in terms of the contrast, theopposition - I am no w speaking purely musically - between thesymmetrical and the asymmetrical, the regular and the irregular, thestrict and the free.

    We all know how important for Mahler was the concept of themarch - march es of all shapes and sizes abound in his symphonies.Bu t has it struck us that the finale of the 'Abschied' is also conceived as a gigantic march? Though with this difference: that it is amarch that from the very outset of the movement never succeedsin establishing itself until a very late stage in the movement hasbeen reached. Th e very opening prelude to the 'Abschied' unfoldsthe dichotomy: we hear the march, and above all its symmetricalmarch rhythm, trying to assert itself. But within the space of a fewbars, the march breaks up or, rather, breaks down, disintegratinginto a fragmenting music that leads us naturally into the first recitative and introduces us for the first time to the remarkable freedomand asymmetries of the flute obbligato. An d Mahler, having thusconcisely juxtaposed at the beginning of his finale the symmetricaland the asymmetrical, the regular and the irregular, then proceedswith extraordinary logic and consistency, to play off one kind ofmusic against the other. Furthermore, as the movement extendsitself, we come to realize that the two types of music, the strict andthe free. the symmetrical and asymmetricaL are brilliantly identifiedwith the t\vo poles of experience which the song-cycle as a wholeencompasses: the fact of mortality on the one hand, and the possibility of its transcendence - mit ig at io n, reconciliation - on theother. Mortality and death are represented by the constraints ofsymmetry. Th e escape from mortality and its metrical bonds is represented by asymmetry, a freely conceived music, the irregularity ofwhich is the very opposite of the metrical and the predictable. Th econtrast is as sharp as that between the fear of annihilation an d apositive embracing of it. It is precisely the reconciliation of thoseseeming irreconcilables that it is the main formal business of thefinale of Das Lied to achieve.

    Th e march idea. naturally enough, represents the most intensiveconcentration of symmetry and rhythmic regularity; and \vhenfinally the march succeeds in establishing itself unequivocally in

    ~ \ A H L E R A"'D :-;ATURE: LANDSCAPE IKTO \\CSIC

    that extraordinary interpolation for orchestra alone that precedesthe closing stages of the 'Abschied', Mahler leaves us in no possibledoubt of the symbolic relationship bet\veen the concept of deathand its embodiment in music \vhich, of its very nature, is born outof symmetry and metricality. Moreover, it is a grandJimera/ march,a ritual celebration of death, that Mahler releases, has in truthreserved to r this moment; could he have spelled ou t for us moreclearly in the context of the finale of Das Lied the identification ofmortality with metricality? This is the moment vvhen what hasbeen anticipated in -announced by - the prelude is at last fulfilled,at last materializes: a march.

    Bu t mortalitv and the metrical are not to triumph in Das Liedand do not, distinctly not, provide the work vvith its ultimatedenouement. Throughout the' Abschied', as I have already suggested,Mahler, \vith consummate skill, has played off the free against thestrict, the asymmetrical against the symmetrical. Some of thoseintimations of the escape from mortality through a conspicuouslytree, unmeasured music I have already mentioned: no t only thenocturnal passage, 'Die Welt schlaft ein' ('The world is fallingasleep') -and it must have been just such music that Adorno hadin mind when referring in his monograph on Mahler to the'unregimented voices ofliving things'J- bu t also that amazing passage, the oboe melody, \Vhich I have spoken about in connectionwith Mahler's observation, through his ears and eyes, of a mountainstream. It seems hardly credible that one movement should containtwo such radically contrasted musics, one so improvisatory andirregular, and rhythmically amorphous. the other so definedly symmetrical in melody and regular in rhythm. Bu t it is precisely thetask of these two contrasted compositional techniques to representthe t\vo poles of experience that I have suggested the 'Abschied' isbuilt around.

    It is revealing, I think, that one could argue that the innovatingoboe melody - the liberated song of the stream - has its roots, itsorigins, in Nature. Bu t by no means all the music that I should allotto the 'free' category in the 'Abschied' is bound up quite so

  • 7/28/2019 Mitchell, Mahler and Nature Das Lied Von Der Erde (Discovering Mahler 2007)

    7/7

    SCRt:TINY

    unequivocally with Nature, with Mahler's depiction o r observationof it. Take the long, seamless string and horn melody, for example,which, in its own \vay, is quite as free as the oboe melodv, 'Der Bachsingt' - transferred to the flute on the entry of th e v o i ~ e , which itsucceeds and complements. Th e freely evolving, spontaneous char-acter of that melody, which uncoils itself unpredictably across thebarlines and is rarely punctuated by them, is typical of the asvmmetrical, irregular and often very long string melodies that e m ~ r g ewith increasing frequency in Mahler's late works, though perhapsnowhere is there such a concentration of them as in the finale ofDas Lied. In the example I have just cited, \Ve may note that themelody is no t directly linked with observation of Nature. On theother hand, it \Vithout doubt articulates the response of the pro-tagonist in the 'Abschied' to the overwhelming beauties of Nature,of the physical vvorld. I find it altogether fascinating that the pro-tagonist in the finale, \Vho was surely Mahler himself, chose toexploit the resources of asymmetry in expressing his felt responseto Nature, just as asymmetry and irregularity \Vere the means bywhich elsewhere he incorporates into his music the actual sounds(and some of the sights!) of the natural universe. Whatever Mahler'spredisposition was towards the asymmetrical in shaping hismelodies, \Ve may conclude, I believe, that the influence of Naturewas a heightening factor, especially in those works in which Natureis a central preoccupation, of which Das Lied is a prime example.Is there no t something very magical, as well as logical, aboutMahler's unleashing his tumultuous feelings about Nature in amelody whose contours are as unregimented as those of Natureherself?

    And so amidst the very landscape amidst \vhich Das Lied wasconceived and created and which, I suggest, exercised a profoundinfluence on the profile the musical materials assumed, we come tothe apotheosis with which Das Lied ends. As I said earlier, it is no tthe metrical that finally triumphs in the 'Abschied' but its veryopposite. In the ecstatic coda that rounds of f the finale indeedMahler achieves an unprecedented beatlessness, a suspe,nsion ofpulse and beat which virtually erases rhythmic measurement. This,combined with the proliferation and heterophonic combinations

    \ IAHLER A:--10 NATt;RE: LAKDSCAPE !:--ITO 'v!USIC

    of long spans of asymmetrical melodies, provides Mahler with thatconsummation of the free style - that other pole - in the'Abschied', which at the same time signifies the tra115ce11dence ofdeath, the reconciliation and identification with the perpetualrenewal of earth's beauties which has been the goal of Das Liedtrom the outset. Through the manipulation of two contrastedcompositional techniques, the strict and the free, Mahler plays ou tthe poetic drama which is at the heart of Das Lied and brings it toits radiant denouement. I do no t doubt myself that landscape andNature - no t pictorially, bu t at far deeper levels of the creativeimagination - were profoundly influential in, as it were, drawingthe contours of some of the music we find most remarkable in DasLied. Landscape into music. A unique act of transformation, and likemost things about Mahler, without precedent, and unsurpassed.