Presented By: School of Music, Theatre & Dance (SMTD)
“Why did you live? Is it all a terrible joke?”: A Mahler Talk by Joseph Horowitz
Sally Fleming Master Class Series
Join the University Symphony Orchestra for a program with guest artist and author Joseph Horowitz, generously sponsored by the Sally Fleming Master Class Fund. Free and open to the public.
Gustav Mahler once said: “Why did you live? Why did you suffer? Is it all a terrible joke? We have to solve these questions in some way if we are to continue living. Anyone whose life has heard this call must give an answer.”
Among Mahler’s nine symphonies, the Sixth – known as “The Tragic” – furnishes the darkest record of his inner life. After conducting the dress rehearsal for the premiere, in 1904, he paced up and down, sobbing, wringing his hands, unable to control himself. At the concert itself, he was so afraid of the demons he had unleashed that he conducted badly. He subsequently conducted his Sixth Symphony only two times. According to his wife Alma: “No other work flowed so directly from his heart. We both cried at the time; we felt so deeply what this music meant, what it forebodingly told us.” Mahler himself felt he possessed a power to intuit the future.
What happens in Mahler’s Sixth? What is the “dark omen” of the finale, with its three hammer blows of fate? And why should it matter to us – more than ever – today?
Mahler also said: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” His disciples revered him; one – the conductor Oskar Fried – called him “pure in a superhuman way”
Joseph Horowitz’s Mahler talk – with copious audio and video clips – will explore Mahler’s Sixth Symphony in the context of Mahler’s life and times. Then he’ll be joined by conductor Kenneth Kiesler to ask: What can we learn today from Mahler the conductor?
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
JOSEPH HOROWITZ is an award-winning author, concert producer, film-maker, and broadcaster. He is one of the most prominent and widely published writers on topics in American music. As an orchestral administrator and advisor, he has been a pioneering force in the development of thematic programming and new concert formats. Horowitz’s most recent books include a novel, The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York, about which Clive Paget wrote in Musical America: “With his unparalleled knowledge of fin-de-siècle classical music in America, Joseph Horowitz [has] brought us closer to Mahler and his wife Alma than any other author I have read. . . . At times, your heart breaks for them both. . . . In Gustav and Alma Mahler, Horowitz has created two of classical music’s most convincing fictional portraits.” Another Horowitz book, Dvorak’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music, tells a story that “must be heard if classical music is to contribute to the national discussion on racial justice” (according to Mark Clague of the University of Michigan). A former New York Times music critic, and Executive Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Horowitz works as an artistic consultant for orchestras throughout the US, and also regularly produces 50-minute “More than Music” documentaries for National Public Radio.
Gustav Mahler once said: “Why did you live? Why did you suffer? Is it all a terrible joke? We have to solve these questions in some way if we are to continue living. Anyone whose life has heard this call must give an answer.”
Among Mahler’s nine symphonies, the Sixth – known as “The Tragic” – furnishes the darkest record of his inner life. After conducting the dress rehearsal for the premiere, in 1904, he paced up and down, sobbing, wringing his hands, unable to control himself. At the concert itself, he was so afraid of the demons he had unleashed that he conducted badly. He subsequently conducted his Sixth Symphony only two times. According to his wife Alma: “No other work flowed so directly from his heart. We both cried at the time; we felt so deeply what this music meant, what it forebodingly told us.” Mahler himself felt he possessed a power to intuit the future.
What happens in Mahler’s Sixth? What is the “dark omen” of the finale, with its three hammer blows of fate? And why should it matter to us – more than ever – today?
Mahler also said: “Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.” His disciples revered him; one – the conductor Oskar Fried – called him “pure in a superhuman way”
Joseph Horowitz’s Mahler talk – with copious audio and video clips – will explore Mahler’s Sixth Symphony in the context of Mahler’s life and times. Then he’ll be joined by conductor Kenneth Kiesler to ask: What can we learn today from Mahler the conductor?
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
JOSEPH HOROWITZ is an award-winning author, concert producer, film-maker, and broadcaster. He is one of the most prominent and widely published writers on topics in American music. As an orchestral administrator and advisor, he has been a pioneering force in the development of thematic programming and new concert formats. Horowitz’s most recent books include a novel, The Marriage: The Mahlers in New York, about which Clive Paget wrote in Musical America: “With his unparalleled knowledge of fin-de-siècle classical music in America, Joseph Horowitz [has] brought us closer to Mahler and his wife Alma than any other author I have read. . . . At times, your heart breaks for them both. . . . In Gustav and Alma Mahler, Horowitz has created two of classical music’s most convincing fictional portraits.” Another Horowitz book, Dvorak’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music, tells a story that “must be heard if classical music is to contribute to the national discussion on racial justice” (according to Mark Clague of the University of Michigan). A former New York Times music critic, and Executive Director of the Brooklyn Philharmonic Orchestra, Horowitz works as an artistic consultant for orchestras throughout the US, and also regularly produces 50-minute “More than Music” documentaries for National Public Radio.
Cost
- Free - no tickets required
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