Listening to a recording of the Seventh Symphony of Sibelius with Jan.
At the very first moment the first movement begins, I find myself looking out the window at the ample crown of a Silver Maple in the east woods. Appropriate that it is the tallest tree in sight. Very tall. Sibelius’s size. The height of his depth. The leaves billow with the music. The branches seem to bounce. One must be ready to hear the Seventh Symphony. It takes much patience. Much like the patience stored in the rings of a mighty tree. The tree holds my attention, in balance with the splendor of the orchestral stamina, and the very quick, deftly placed alarms of vitality in the brass like sparks of wisdom.
Mahler told Sibelius that “A symphony must contain the whole world.” What Sibelius understood him to mean by “the whole world” is the whole, capacious world of the composer’s being— what it means to be human. The Seventh is a tremendous work— his final symphony and probably the great msn’s most organic.
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Janet and I listened to a rebroadcast of Mahler’s magnificent 9th Symphony performed by the Philharmoniker at Carnegie Hall. By the time the Orchestra reached the final movements, it was time for bed. The next night, we listened to those movements (Molto Adagio and Adagissimo) on an incomparable recording by the Concertbebouworkst of Amsterdam conducted by Leonard Bernstein.
When Mahler wrote his 9th, he was fixated on the coming of death. The closing moments are celebrated as the composer saying goodbye and letting go, letting go until there is nothing ore to let go of. It is as though Mahler and his music have run out of breath, and there is nothing. How is nothing achieved in art? Only through two geniuses, Mahler and Bernstein, now one. “I am Mahler.”
It has long been my contention, from my experience, that a conductor cannot hope to realize the profundity of the 9th until they are in their seventies. Bernstein was 68 when the Concertgebouw performance was recorded in 1986. I recall attending a close to satisfying but not great live performance by Bernard Haitnk, who was then in his seventies.
Bernstein’s conducting has often been criticized as being too self-indulgent. But in the 1986 performance, the “self” is as organic, as essential as a beating heartbeat, and “indulgence” is to be recognized as “fearlessness.” The fearlessness in representing the slowness of life’s leave-taking in a man of Mahler’s sensitivity. The letting go of the body of the orchestra happens as we the listeners let go of our bodies. It’s Samuel Becket’s line, “I can’t go on. I will go on” reversed: “I will go on. I can’t go on.”
I believe the moving tenderness, the fervent, wistfully, beautiful inevitability of death achieved by Mahler and Bernstein is one of the greatest moments in all of music. In the hushes silence after the final bar they are saying, “Now there is no more music in all the world.”
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Gregory Abels is a Zen Master who taught at Still Mind Zendo in Manhattan. His books of poetry are: Where to Begin (Lightwood Press), Glimpses & Pointings and Never Something Else (Seven Meadows Press). He enjoyed a 50+ year career as an actor, director and Master Teacher of Acting. Gregory holds a B.S. in Theatre and Religion from SUNY. He lives with his wife in Greenwich Village and on a sheep farm in the Hudson Valley.
Gregory Abels is a frequent contributor to Lightwood. His poems and articles can be read here. Scroll to our Search Button and insert his name.
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