Muddy Modern Mahler

Each tutorial will, I’m sure, touch on the modernity in Mahler’s music in tomorrow’s section. I think now might be a good opportunity to take a quick look at the Solvik reading and see how that relates to the aspects of modernity that Dr Ansari touched upon in class today (it might even give you some insight you can bring to discussion in tomorrow’s class). Solvik problematizes Mahler’s relationship with modernity in a way that I think it particularly interesting; rather than accepting modernism as a stable term with an easily grasped definition, he seems to present it more as a polyseme (not would be a good time to break out that Google define function, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the terminology of critical theory).[1] I think this is a fairly accurate way of framing something that is notoriously slippery. Solvik makes the term modernism into something that more closely resembles a useful ontological tool than the elusive shadow that it can seem to be when grasped too firmly in the attempt to decipher what it “means”.

Let’s think about the aspects of modernity that we talked about in class today – a conspicuous sense of self-consciousness, an embracing of logic and the sciences, a rejection of formal or societal norms, and the striving for novelty. All of these characteristics can be construed as kind of wishy-washy. Take the acceptance of logic and the sciences, for example. This basic tenant of modernity seems to necessitate a rejection of the seemingly magical world of religion and spirituality; as Solvik points out, however, Mahler took science and the discovery of deeper biological and mechanical systems as proof of the spiritual realm, and of a connection between that and the physical world.

And there seems to be a direct connection between Mahler's beliefs and his contribution to the musical landscape of the late Romantic period. His second symphony, for example, deals extensively (musically, of course) with the prospect of life after death, eternal - that said, nobody is going to accuse Mahler's music of being unmodern because of this fact. Musically, it could be said to be quite modern - mixing song and symphonic form to break from formal norms, eschewing traditional harmonic progression, and often quoting his own music in later works (there's that conspicuous sense of self-consciousness).

So, like Solvik said, Mahler was a 'modern'. It was a complicated sort of modernity, but then in the perspective given in the reading there doesn't seem to be any other type.

[1] Go to Google, type define: search term. In this case you’re typing define: polyseme. This is my favourite function in Google, and it can be *very* handy.