Ives and Mahler: Mutual Responses at the End of an Era

Author(s): Robert P. Morgan

Source: 19th-Century Music , Jul., 1978, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jul., 1978), pp. 72-81
Published by: University of California Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/746192

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 Ives and Mahler:

Mutual Responses at the End of an Era

ROBERT P. MORGAN

Ralph Waldo Emerson once referred toEmerson

himselfwould have it, a Past at their back to
as "an endless seeker with no Past at my hound them into submission and conformity.
back." In doing so, he adopted a perspective Certainly this outlook has characterized
that has often supplied a framework for the much of the recent critical writing on Charles
characterization of American art and artists. Ives that has appeared both here and abroad.
According to this view, the most important Ives is commonly looked upon as a sort of in-
examples of American art-its most charac- nocent at home, a noble savage who, unen-
teristic and individual inventions-have been cumbered by the strictures of inherited con-
largely autonomous, independent of foreign ventions, was able to create a radically new
influences. Relieved, above all, of the heavy kind of music largely independent of the
forces of European music history.
burden of the European cultural tradition, our
native artists have been free to develop in an It is not my wish to belittle this view-
atmosphere of almost limitless possibilitypoint, for which supplies a useful means for
innovation and experimentation--without, focusing
as upon, and thus emphasizing, certain
characteristic aspects of Ives's music. Taken
in isolation, however, it leads to a greatly
oversimplified picture of the composer. Ives's
0148-2076/78/0700--0072 $0.25 @ 1978 by the Regents of music represents as much a confrontation
the University of California. with the larger Western musical tradition as

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 ROBERT P.
with his own vernacular traditions; and it can ical interest. It suggests that the obvious
MORGAN
be properly understood only by considering stylistic dissimilarities between their respec- Ives and
both of these dimensions. Thus a view of tive works may hide more fundamental under- Mahler
lying affinities, affinities which transcend
Ives outside the context of the European tra-
dition, especially that of the eighteenth and
both cultural and personal differences.
nineteenth centuries, is as one-sided and in- This raises an important point that should
be clarified at the outset: the similarities be-
tellectually impoverished as a view of Ives di-
vorced from the context of his native America. tween Ives and Mahler are almost never of a
There are several ways one might go about kind to make their music sound alike, at least
revealing connections between Ives and the in any significant sense. (One thinks, perhaps,
European past. One could show, for example, of the last movement of Ives's Piano Trio,
that Ives's work represents an extension of which has a slightly Mahlerian cast; but even
European conceptions of tonal and rhythmic here the similarities are minimal and super-
structure, or indicate how earlier European ficial.) Rather, the correspondences pertain to
composers anticipate techniques that reappear their basic conceptions of what a musical
later-usually in a more intensified and ex- composition is-how it relates to the sur-
aggerated form-in Ives. rounding world, the types of materials that are
I have chosen a third possibility: that of appropriate to it, and the way these materials
comparing Ives to his European contemporary are to be combined and organized. As Ives
Gustav Mahler in order to indicate the extent himself might have put it, the substance of
to which these two composers shared com- their music is similar, while the manner-the
mon assumptions regarding the materials and specific form of its presentation-is altogether
techniques, as well as the underlying aesthe- different. It is not, then, so much a matter
tic, of musical composition. Mahler was a of the musical surface as of the aesthetic in-
composer totally immersed in the European terior.
tradition--indeed, one sometimes feels that
his music is almost overwhelmed by that tra-
dition. And his similarities with Ives suggest The moment-to-moment succession of their
that the apparent "idiosyncracies" of the latter music sounds very different, then; Mahler is as
were not simply those of a quirky composer unmistakably Austrian as Ives is American.
working in isolation, but were rather a pro- Yet both composers often cling to an histori-
found and articulate response to the critical cally regressive stage of the musical language of
situation in which the Western musical tradi- common practice tonality, a stage long since
tion found itself at the particular moment passed over by the currents of nineteenth-
when both of these composers were active. century evolutionary chromaticism. The chro-
Although Mahler was some fourteen years matic saturation of the tonal field, so consis-
older than Ives, and Ives lived some forty years tently evident in other advanced composers of
after Mahler's death, the two were almost the time, is often absent in Ives and Mahler,
exact compositional contemporaries: their even in their later compositions. Clear exam-
principal works were all conceived within a ples are the largely diatonic opening sections of
thirty-year period extending from 1888 to Ives's Fourth and Mahler's Ninth Symphonies.
1918. This period was, of course, one of ex- Moreover, the dominant retains its structural,
traordinary musical upheaval, characterized key-defining role with surprising frequency-
by an atmosphere of crisis brought on by the and not just in that elliptical, attenuated sense
progressive deterioration of the pitch and (as with Wagner) in which tonics are implied
rhythmic conventions of so-called "common by their dominants but never explicitly stated.
practice" tonality. That Ives and Mahler In both Ives and Mahler tonality in the strict,
should have reacted in certain similar respects functional sense remains an active force.
to this crisis is a matter of considerable histor- Moreover, it is by means of its very retention

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19TH
that. its transformed historical meaning is
Of course, in neither composer is the ul-
CENTURY
MUSIC timate effect one of straightforward restate-
reflected in their works in such a remarkably
pointed way. ment, a point that again suggests an important
Tonal and diatonic conservatism forms correlation between the two. What is in-
part of a more general shared characteris- volved, I think, is a process of "defamiliariza-
tic. This is the blatantly "popular," even tion," an idea that has been extensively de-
"low-life" tone of much of their work, which veloped in art and literature but less so, at
lends it a complexion quite different from the least until more recently, in music.4 It is
"elevated" character of most eighteenth- and grounded in the notion that as objects of per-
nineteenth-century art music.' Folk and popu- ception become overly familiar, our experi-
lar elements are no longer neutralized, as in ence of them takes on an habitual and au-
earlier composers, but appear undisguised-in tomatic character. We no longer perceive the
their own clothing, as it were. The sense of real object at all, but only its vague shadow or
intrusion from a foreign musical realm be- outline. Although the object is recognized, it
comes an essential component of the compo- is not truly seen or heard; it has becomes neu-
sitional statement, and reflects a radically new tralized and thus deprived of its expressive po-
conception of the nature and limits of serious tential. Only by removing what Coleridge
musical language. called the "film of familiarity" can this poten-
It is probably this matter of tone, more tial be re-established.
than anything else, that accounts for the ag- This process, which depends upon both
gressively negative reaction to both com- the use of recognizable, known musical ob-
posers that persists even today in certain mu- jects and their placement in new and newly
sical circles. The apparent ordinariness of the illuminating perspectives, is of the utmost
musical statements leads to charges of ba- importance for both Ives and Mahler. One of
nality, and coupled with yet another shared the most characteristic features of their music
attribute-the stigma of the part-time com- is the way it transforms the familiar, distanc-
ing it so as to rekindle its affective force. The
poser-fosters claims that neither was an artist
of the first rank. quotations and the relative simplicity of large
Significantly, Mahler, who was of course segments of the music are both part of this
much more conscious of the weight of the process, as is the revolutionary way in which
European tradition, was himself beset by such the materials are integrated into the larger
doubts. It is well known that he was deeply musical context.
troubled-and puzzled-by the intrusion of A related charge is that both composers
the commonplace in his work; and this seems were incapable of inventing their own musical
to have been one of the reasons he felt a need materials and thus had to borrow ideas from
to consult Sigmund Freud in the spring of external sources. The use of quotation, closely
1910.2 But Ives too had moments of self-doubt. connected with the previously discussed mat-
One thinks particularly of his poignant re- ter of tone, forms an essential aspect of their
marks made after playing some of his works work. In Ives, of course, the hymn tunes,
for an uncomprehending musician with whom popular songs, and so on, are usually apparent
he was acquainted: "I felt (but only temporar- and are clearly intended to be heard as quota-
ily) that perhaps there was something wrong tions. In Mahler the matter is more complex,
with me ... Are my ears on wrong? No one
else seems to hear it the same way."3
3Charles E. Ives, Memos, ed. John Kirkpatrick (New York,
1972), p. 71.
'Cf. Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler (Frankfurt, 1960), p. 30ff. 4The classical statement is Victor Shklovsky's "Art as
2See Donald Mitchell, Gustav Mahler. The Wunderhorn Technique" (1917), reprinted in English in Russian For-
Years (London, 1975), p. 73ff; also Ernest Jones, Sigmund malist Criticism: Four Essays, trans. and ed. Lee T. Lemon
Freud (London, 1955), II, 89. and Marion J. Reis (Lincoln, 1965), pp. 3-24.

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 ROBERT P.
for his "quotations" are normally not so much models largely neglected by the main tradi-
MORGAN
literal borrowings as synthetic recreations of tion. They thus set about renewing musicaland
Ives
Mahler
certain standard musical types. Literal quota- prototypes that, from the point of view of
tions occasionally do occur: in the third most of their contemporaries, seemed out-
movement of the First Symphony, where a moded and historically regressive.
minor-mode version of the song "Frere The twofold nature of the process required
Jacques" provides the principal thematic that the music be distinctly recognizable as a
material, or in the Scherzo of the Third Sym- representative of its original source, and yet
phony, which incorporates a fragment of appear to be reactivated in a new context. The
Liszt's Rhapsodie espagnole. But more com- ways in which Ives and Mahler achieved this
monly there is an artificial reconstruction of a are essentially the same. Borrowed material is
specific compositional type-the march tunes fragmented and juxtaposed against other kinds
in the first movement of the Third Symphony, of music, combined simultaneously with dif-
the Alpine folk song in its third movement, ferent music, distorted through the appearance
the Bohemian music in the third movement of of unexpected intervals and through complex
the First Symphony, or the bugle calls in the and ambiguous phrase relationships, or dis-
Fifth. Yet in effect-and this is the essential tanced by means of elaborate orchestrations
point-all of these passages are as clearly rep-that contradict the material's true heritage.
resentative of the real thing as are Ives's literal
But in each case the materials are transformed
borrowings. in such a way as to acquire new expressive
What Ives and Mahler achieved in this re- life.
gard represented a highly original reaction to It is these procedures of "defamiliariza-
tion" that refute the charges of banality,
the peculiarities of the musico-historical sit-
uation of their time. The hyperchromaticism charges which take into account the isolated
and concomitant tonal decentralization of event but ignore the larger context that
musical language at the turn of the twentiethsupplies the materials with their expressive
century produced a radical neutralization value of
and justifies their presence in the work
materials. The basic structural functions of of art. Through their context they are trans-
the tonal system became more and more equiv- figured, and take on a new depth of meaning
alent, tending to level out all musical state-
dependent upon the complex system of refer-
ences in which they participate. Thus the al-
ments and thus render them increasingly inter-
changeable. Every advanced composer of the most shocking simplicity of the music in cer-
period faced this problem. Strauss, for exam-tain passages, a matter touched upon earlier, is
normally limited to a single dimension of
ple, countered the tendency by developing
an ever more exaggerated range of musical
what is actually a multi-dimensional process.
gestures, straining the already weakened sub-The straightforward diatonic character of the
structure to its breaking point. This was opening
of of Mahler's Ninth is belied by the
course consistent with the historical evolu- way the music gradually forms itself out of
tion of chromaticism and represented a de- bits and pieces of melodic and accompanimen-
velopment that would ultimately "progress" tal figures, each of which by itself might be
to the twelve-tone system. heard as a stock item drawn from the standard
Ives and Mahler approached the problem catalogue of nineteenth-century musical ef-
from an entirely different direction. Asfects.if Taken collectively, however, they pro-
duce a collage-like continuum of extraordi-
realizing that Western music history, at least
as it had been known, had reached the limits nary subtlety and ambiguity. Similarly, the
hymn tune that dominates the opening of
of its own history-had become, that is to say,
incapable of continuing to generate a consis-Ives's Fourth, "Watchmanr, Tell Us of the
tently progressive evolution-they fashioned a is transformed not only by its tonally
Night,"
new type of music based on older and simpler obscure introduction, but by its remarkable

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19TH
main.heard
scoring (especially telling is the faintly Space is thus provided for elements
CENTURY
MUSIC that, quite literally, could "find no place" in
harp and violin ensemble), its harmonization
earlier Western
(which occasionally-though only occasion- music.
ally-injects a foreign, dissociative element), This happens on various structural levels.
and through the deliberate truncation On aofsmall
itsscale, Ives breaks into the highly
final cadential phrases. dissonant, rhythmically driving music of the
It is sometimes said of both composers, "Hawthorne" movement of the "Concord"
and especially of Mahler, that their Sonata
music to present a brief fragment of hymn
sounds as if we have always known music it. This(which also pre-echoes the music of the
touches upon an essential aspect of their "Alcott"
work movement), just as Mahler intersects
but leaves unmentioned the other, com- the Trio of the third movement of his Seventh
plementary side. What initially sounds famil- Symphony with occasional and sudden bursts
iar always ends up sounding very different of faster music. In both cases, it is as if a cur-
from what we actually expected. The paradox tain is drawn open, giving view to a different
implicit in this conjunction supplies the cru- and totally unexpected musical landscape. Or
cial point: what seems strange and extraordi- on a larger scale, an established, ongoing con-
nary on one level does so only because, on tinuity will be rudely severed, or radically dis-
another, it is so familiar and ordinary. solved, to allow for the interpolation of entire
sections of extraneous music-as in the Barn
Dance episode of Ives's Washington's Birth-
Perhaps even more characteristic than Ives and day, or in the Posthorn episode from Mahler's
Mahler's use of quotation is their handling of Third Symphony. Despite the length of these
form. A high degree of disjunction marks the sections and their apparent independence and
music of both. The underlying continuity often self-sufficiency--or rather, perhaps, just be-
appears to be cut off in mid-flight, rudely inter- cause of these characteristics-they sound
rupted by the intrusion of heterogeneous ele- like isolated moments that have temporarily
ments. There are of course precedents for this broken through from an altogether separate
kind of musical thinking-one thinks of late sphere of musical activity.
Beethoven or of Berlioz, where there is often Such juxtaposed components can occur
an abrupt confrontation of radically contrast- not only sequentially but also simultaneously.
ing musical units-but never before was this The band music in the finale of Mahler's Sec-
done with anything like the same frequency ond Symphony first appears as a momentary
and exaggeration. interruption of the prevailing musical con-
Formal disjunction can be understood as a tinuity; but later it recurs in simultaneous op-
necessary consequence of the reliance on position with the latter, creating a multi-
foreign materials. Since the popular and folk leveled structure made up of two independent
elements are not "house-broken"-that is, not but interconnected textural strands, each with
accommodated to the requirements of tradi- its own rhythmic structure, tempo, in-
tional symphonic structure (as they tended to strumentation and general 'character. In this
be with the nationalist composers, for exam- latter form it provides a striking parallel to
ple)-it becomes necessary to "make room" those moments in Ives-Putnam's Camp, the
for them in the musical structure. In Ives second movement of the Fourth Symphony, or
and Mahler this is often accomplished by Decoration
a Day-where two independent
kind of force majeure: the structure is sim- "musics" collide in mutual and simultaneous
ply broken into, cut open to allow for the confrontation.
in-
sertion of extraneous elements. As a result, The notion of combining or crosscutting
forward motion is suspended, brought to a between two different tempi is conspicuous in
standstill so that a way can be cleared for the both composers. It appears in its most radical
appearance of music drawn from another do- form in Ives, when he actually notates two in-

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 ROBERT P.
dependent rates of speed-as in the second at all, but is rather "dissolved"-gradually MORGAN
and fourth movements of the Fourth Sym- filtered out until it is finally represented by Ives and
phony, Central Park in the Dark, or The Un- only a muffled snare drum figure in the dis- Mahler
answered Question, And there are many other tance. This figure is not completely extin-
passages in his music which give the effect of guished at the return of the first principal sec-
multiple tempi, even though everything is no-tion, but overlaps with the latter, persisting
tated within a common metrical framework with its own tempo in conjunction with the
-as in the Scherzo Over the Pavements, other music. Only then does it gradually sink
where in the cadenza the wind instruments into complete inaudibility. (Indeed, in both
gradually accelerate against steady sixteenth-
composers the independent levels often seem
notes in the piano. to relinquish their hegemony only with the
But Mahler too will disengage one strand greatest reluctance.)
of continuity from another by having it main- This passage from Mahler's Third recalls
tain an independent metric pulse. A common one of his most striking parallels with Ives: an
indication in the symphonies is that an in- interest in exploiting space in their musical
strument is to be played "without reference conceptions.
to Mahler's snare drums sound dis-
the prevailing tempo." In the opening sectiontant, removed from the main locus of musical
of the first movement of the First Symphony, activity, not only because they are muffled;
for example, the cuckoo call (once againthey a are also placed off-stage, and are con-
"borrowed" idea with an independent exis- sequently perceived as occupying a different
tence outside the work) continues at its previ-
physical as well as musical territory. This is
ous pace after all the other instruments haveone of many such placements called for in his
taken up a new tempo. An even more striking scores. As early as Das Klagende Lied, Mahler
example is the recapitulation in the opening locates a wind band off-stage so that it can
movement of the Third. Here the reprise does force itself upon the principal musical con-
not provide, as classical connotations of thetinuum from without. Later, when this band
term might suggest, a "resolution" for the de-
is heard simultaneously with the main or-
velopment section. The latter is not resolvedchestra, the distinct musical difference be-

IN THE NEXT ISSUE (NOVEMBER 1978)

ARTICLES Gerald Mendelsohn: Verdi the Man and Verdi the

Dramatist

Andrew Porter: Les VWpres siciliennes: New Letters

from Verdi to Scribe

Siegmund Levarie: Tonal Relations in Un Ballo in

maschera

Douglas Coe: The Original Production Book for Otello

Richard Swift: Mahler's Ninth and Cooke's Tenth

REVIEWS By Winton Dean, James McCalla, Ruth Solie

VIEWPOINT By Joseph Kerman

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19TH
CENTURY
tween the two combined layers is supported
analysts of this music like to put it, not ful-
MUSIC by an equally pronounced spatial one.
filling a "structural function" essential to the
Several of Ives's scores-the Fourth Sym-
working of the entire system-was thus rigor-
phony, The Unanswered Question,ously
the Sec-
barred.
ond Orchestral Suite-call for a similar In both Ives and Mahler there is a distinct
spatial
separation of instrumental forces. Theshift away from this view of the work. The
famous
"Conductor's Note" to the second movement composition is opened up-made permeable,
of his Fourth Symphony includes a lengthy as it were, so as to be subject to outside
influences. It becomes a more inclusionary
discussion of the effect of hearing music from
different directions and spatial distances, whole,
in vulnerable to the ambiguities and con-
the course of which Ives mentions the specialtradictions of everyday experience, both musi-
quality of a horn heard at a distance acrosscala and otherwise, and more truly reflective of
lake. This passage vividly recalls the footnote
the manifold conditions of human activity.
to the finale of Mahler's Second Symphony, inAlthough the musical result may seem less
which the composer states that he conceived consistent-and thus considerably more resis-
tant to the kind of systematic analysis that
of the off-stage music as the "isolated sounds
of a barely audible music, carried on thewe now seem to view as the only legitimate
wind." And in the same movement, just be- kind-it is both richer in possibilities and
fore the entrance of the chorus, Mahler con- broader in perspective.
cerns himself with the varying distances and Quotations are perhaps the most forceful
specific directions from which four off-stageimage of the work's surrender of its au-
trumpets are heard. Here the music is con- tonomy. One type of quotation that has not
ceived literally as moving in space, approach-
yet been mentioned, the self-quotation, is par-
ing and receding according to such indications
ticularly suggestive in this regard. In both Ives
as "from a great distance," "somewhat nearer and Mahler, the boundaries between composi-
and stronger," "much nearer and stronger," tions are often indistinct. Both are fond of
"again more distant," and "losing itself" into
quoting passages from their earlier works, and
inaudibility. even entire movements may result from a re-
construction of previously used material. One
thinks of those symphonic movements by
The most significant point to be made about Mahler, such as the first movement of the
these similarities is that they are not simply
First Symphony or the third movement of the
isolated correspondences, which, though per-Second, that are to a considerable extent
haps surprising in number, could be passed paraphrases of his earlier vocal compositions;
off as merely superficial or coincidental oc-
or in a less literal sense, of the first movement
currences. On the contrary, they are con-of the Seventh, which can be viewed as an
joined with and subsumed under a more gen- elaborate variation on the first movement of
eral conception that touches upon the naturethe Sixth.s In Ives the tendency is so de-
of the musical composition itself. The ten- veloped that it frequently becomes difficult to
dency in Western music of the common prac- say just where one work ends and another be-
tice period was to treat each composition gins.
as Examples are the second movement of
an autonomous whole, from which all ele-the Fourth Symphony, the "Hawthorne"
ments foreign to the system of relationshipsmovement of the "Concord" Sonata, and the
defined within that whole were necessarily
excluded. Emphasis was on internal consis-
tency, with each contributing element jus- SThe relationship of Mahler's symphonies to his earlier
songs, as well as his use of material borrowed from other
tified by its role in a consistent and congruous
sources, is discussed in Monika Tibbe, Lieder und
structure. Extraneous material-material not Liedelemente in instrumentalen Symphoniesiitzen Gus-
actively participating in this process or, as tav Mahlers (Munich, 1972).

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piano fantasy The Celestial Railroad, all of pressed horror at the caterwauling-which now, ROBERT P.
MORGAN
which are closely interrelated with one however, was beginning to amuse me. And when,Ives and
another and share common material, or the into the bargain, a military band struck up in theMahler
distance, he covered up his ears, protesting
last movement of the Fourth Violin Sonata, vigorously-whereas I was listening with such de-
which incorporates the music of the song light that I wouldn't move from the spot."
"Shall We Gather at the River" in its entirety. When Rose expressed surprise at this, Mahler
There is, then, a pronounced "biographi- said, "If you like my symphonies, you must like
that too!"
cal" dimension in the music of both compos-
ers. One is almost inclined to see their indi-
The following Sunday, we were going on the
same walk with Mahler. At the fkte on the Kreuz-
vidual compositions as parts of, and variants
berg, an even worse witches' sabbath was in prog-
upon, a single aggregate work in progress
ress. Not only were innumerable barrel-organs blar-
which encompasses their entire output. The ing out from merry-go-rounds, see-saws, shooting
galleries and puppet shows, but a military band and
individual pieces provide their own particular
a men's choral society had established themselves
comment on this aggregate work, and make there as well. All these groups, in the same forest
their own unique contribution to it. clearing, were creating an incredible musical pan-
More generally, one notes a desire to ac-
demonium without paying the slightest attention
commodate the contradictory and variegated to each other. Mahler exclaimed: "You hear? That's
polyphony, and that's where I got it from! Even
components of a complex reality quite differ-
when I was quite a small child, in the woods at Ig-
ent from that of the period in which common
lau, this used to move me strangely, and impressed
practice tonality flourished. Ives and Mahler
itself upon me. For it's all the same whether it re-
sounds in a din like this or in a thousandfold bird
no longer see the world as a neatly ordered en-
song, in the howling of the storm, the lapping of the
tity, capable of being rendered into musical
terms that are both consistent in content and waves, or the crackling of the fire. Just so-from
quite different directions-the themes must enter;
syntactically logical. In this connection one and they must be just as different from each other
recalls comments made by both composers on in rhythm and melodic character. (Everything else
the effect of the simultaneous occurrence of is merely many-voiced writing, homophony is dis-
two or more musical events, and on the im- guise.) The only difference is that the artist orders
and unites them all into one concordant and har-
portance of such multi-leveled textures for
monious whole."'7
their own work. Ives's boyhood experience,
reported by Henry and Sidney Cowell, of
hearing a parade in Danbury in which a dis- Excluding Ives himself, what other com-
sonant counterpoint was produced by two poser of the period could, or would, have said
bands playing different pieces in different anything even remotely similar? Yet paradoxi-
meters and keys, both at the same time, is cally, just because the similarity between Ives
widely known.6 But it is perhaps worth quot-
ing in full Mahler's extraordinarily Ivesian de-
scription of his own similar experiences, made 7Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler
(Leipzig, 1923), p. 147. This passage has been quoted and
in the presence of his friend Natalie Bauer- discussed in several recent books: Adorno, Mahler, p.
Lechner, who recalls: 147ff; Flawed Words and Stubborn Sounds: A Conversa-
tion with Elliott Carter, by Allen Edwards (New York,
1971), p. 102fn; and Mitchell, The Wunderhorn Years, p.
Mahler told us at table that, on the woodland path 339ff, from which the above translation is taken. Both
at Klagenfurt with W. (who had come to settle his Carter and Mitchell also touch upon, though briefly,
similarities between Ives and Mahler. Mitchell feels that
repertoire) he was much disturbed by a barrel-organ,
whose noise seemed not to bother W. in the least. "one must not let the parallel, such as it is, carry one
away" and attempts to draw a basic distinction between
"But when a second one began to play, W. ex- the two composers' attitudes toward their material:
It might have been, one guesses, that Mahler would
have been intrigued by the acoustic experience from
life that gave rise to, say, Ives's "Putnam's Camp"
6Henry and Sidney Cowell, Charles Ives and his Music
(the second of his Three Places in New England), but
(New York, 1969), pp. 144-45. one does not need to guess at all that, had Mahler

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19TH who can now be considered "historical"
and Mahler seems so personal, so intimately
CENTURY
MUSIC figures, Ives and Mahler have enjoyed the
tied to the peculiar attributes of these two par-
greatest increase of interest in their music
ticular composers, one may hesitate to accord
them more than coincidental value. That is, during
if the recent past.
the similarity does not embrace stylistic attri-
butes generally characteristic of the period and
thus equally attributable to other important When viewed within a wider context, the
composers of the time (and not just as isolatedcomplex of interrelated techniques and at-
cases, but as essential features of an overall titudes common to Ives and Mahler can be
compositional approach), one may be inclined seen to represent an articulate musical re-
to see these correspondences as only idiosyn- sponse to some of the most important in-
cratic, and thus ultimately insignificant, "ab-tellectual and artistic ideas of the nineteenth
normalities." century. Already at the turn of the century
I have tried to show, however, that the Novalis observed: "There must be poems that
parallels between Ives and Mahler are com- simply sound well and are full of beautiful
prehensible only when viewed within the con- words - but without sense and continuity -
text of the particular stage of Western music at most understandable as individual strophies
history during which both were active. So un-- they must be like so many fragments of the
most varied things." Coleridge spoke of a po-
derstood, the "abnormalities" take on a very
different complexion. Moreover, their sig-etic imagination that "reveals itself in the
balance and reconciliation of opposite and
nificance has become increasingly apparent in
the light of more recent compositional trends.discordant qualities." Both Coleridge and
Wordsworth were concerned with the idea of
If the principal currents of musical evolution
lifting the "film of familiarity." And later, in a
during the first half of this century tended to
place Mahler and (especially) Ives outside the modified form, this same concern reappears as
main stream, the compositional developments an important component of the symbolist
of the past quarter-century have forced them aesthetic. Finally, Hugo von Hofmannsthal,
into its forefront. It would be difficult to name Ives and Mahler's contemporary, formulated
two composers who have had a more profound the matter in terms that get very close to the
impact upon the dominant compositional at- spirit of their music. Commenting upon re-
titudes of the present age.8 And it is no acci- cent French poetry, he remarked:
dent, surely, that among all those composers
The creative individual, surrounded by all too re-
stricted forms of expression, as though by walls,
casts himself into language itself and tries to find in
actually written a piece out of that experience, it it the drunkeness of inspiration, and through it
would have been purely musical considerations that opens up new entries into life in accordance with
would have governed its composition: the original those senses of meaning which are freed from the
acoustic event would, so to speak, have been musi-
control of conscious understanding. This is, and
calized, would have played a far less prominent role
than the one alloted it by Ives (p. 170). always was, the Latin approach to the unconscious:
Although there is no question that Ives and Mahler trans- it occurs not in half-dreamy self-indulgence ... but
form what they have borrowed in very different ways, through an intense self-removal, in intoxication ...
Mitchell's suggestion that Mahler's approach is governed through a simultaneous, confused piling up of ob-
more by "purely musical considerations," while Ives'sjects, is a violation of order.9
more "realistic" or "photographic," seems to me to miss
the point completely. Ives's materials (in "Putnam's
Camp," for example) are every bit as "musically" Nor is this line of thought restricted to litera-
transformed-as "musicalized" (and thus as "unrealis- ture: the manipulation of fragments so as to
tic")-as are Mahler's. Mitchell, I suspect, has chosen the
wrong word. Perhaps what he means is that Mahler's ap-
proach to his material is more "traditional," not more
"musical."
8See my discussion of Ives in this connection in "Rewrit-
9Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Gesammelte Werke, Prosa IV
ing Music History: Second Thoughts on Ives and Varese,"
Musical Newsletter 3 (1973), 3-12. (Frankfurt, 1966), pp. 489-90.

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 ROBERT P.
achieve a reconciliation of "opposite and dis- Finally, there is a well-known incident
MORGAN
cordant qualities" is one of the most charac- that, in light of these considerations, takes on
Ives and
Mahler
teristic features of nineteenth-century ar- particular interest. In 1911, when Mahler was
chitecture, in which the structural surface in New York as conductor of the New York
often reveals an eclectic, though mediated, Philharmonic, he happened to see a score of
conglomeration of heterogeneous details Ives's Third Symphony in the office of his
drawn from a wide range of historical sources. music copyist. Mahler was sufficiently in-
Further elaboration on these more general terested to ask for a copy, which he took with
correspondences would take me too far him when he returned to Europe shortly be-
afield.10 I mention them, in any event, only to fore his death.l" I like to think of this as more
indicate that Ives and Mahler's procedures are than just a pleasant anecdote; for it indicates
in fact less peculiar than they may appear if that Mahler saw something in this extremely
considered solely within musical terms. They individual composition-which on the sur-
form close parallels with some of the main face, at least, was worlds removed from all the
currents of nineteenth-century thought. In- music he knew and respected-that interested
deed, it is surprising that similar procedures him and struck a responsive note. Ives was
were not more widely developed in completely unknown, not only in Europe but
nineteenth-century music. Of course they in America; no other major composer of his
were not completely absent, as I have time ever showed the slightest concern for
suggested. But only with Ives and Mahler do his work. The similarities that have been
they begin to be extensively and consistently pointed out above may help explain why it
(one might even say "systematically") trans- should have been Mahler, and Mahler alone,
lated into musical terms, so that they assume who was able to discern in his music some-
a principal role in shaping the compositional thing recognizable, something
statement and defining its aesthetic intent. of interest and value.

10For a wide-ranging collection of essays on fragmentation11Ives, Memos, p. 121. For evidence that Mahler might
as an historical phenomenon in the arts, see Das Unvol- have performed the symphony in Munich in 1910, see
lendete als kiinstlerische Form, ed. J. A. Schmoll gen. David Wooldridge, From the Steeples and Mountains
Eisenwerth (Bern and Munich, 1959). (New York, 1974), pp. 150-51.

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