304 Notes, December 2016

for solo violin precedes the Adagio. Bach’s ric. In Gustav Mahler’s Symphonic Landscapes,
Goldberg Variations, though clearly a poten- Thomas Peattie cites these authors often,
tial model for the “Diabelli” Variations, are and constructs his own framework for un-
not founded on a “simple dance tune” (p. derstanding the ways in which Mahler rein-
777) but on a ground bass. That said, Bach vented the genre of the symphony through
does bring a pair of rustic folk tunes into a “radical approach to the presentation and
the contrapuntal mix in the concluding ordering of musical events” (p. 7).
quodlibet, balancing artifice and naïveté in Peattie outlines three “thematic anchors”
a way that Beethoven might have found in his introductory essay, “Hearing
stimulating whether or not he recognized Mahler,” each of which aims to capture as-
the tunes themselves. These are, to reiter- pects of Mahler’s music that are at once dif-
ate, minor issues. Indeed, one could hardly ficult to grasp yet somehow immediately
wish for a more compellingly-written ac- palpable, and to connect the music to
count of this most major of major com- Mahler’s cultural context. Depictions of
posers; it is, in the end, a captivating read. “landscape” are notable in many of the
Mark Ferraguto symphonies, for instance, and they are also,
Pennsylvania State University through the perspective of train travelers
across Europe in the later nineteenth
century, a “principal site of modernity.”
Gustav Mahler’s Symphonic “Mobility” is similarly “emblematic . . . of
Landscapes. By Thomas Allan Peattie. both transatlantic and metropolitan mod-
Cambridge: Cambridge University ernism,” and metaphorically related to
Press, 2015. [xi, 220 p. ISBN Mahler’s frequent “mobile spatial deploy-
9781107027084 (hardback), $99.99; ment” of instruments in (and located out-
ISBN 9781316308561 (e-book), $80.] side of) the orchestra (p. 8). The notion of
Illustrations, bibliography, index. “theatricality” captures numerous gestures
in Mahler’s music as well as aspects of poli-
Though Gustav Mahler’s symphonies tics and culture during the Viennese fin de
were created near the end of the “long” siècle (p. 9).
nineteenth century, and in many ways self- Chapter 1, “The Expansion of Sym-
reflexively comment on the classical– phonic Space,” uses the early cantata Das
romantic musical tradition, they continue klagende Lied and the First Symphony to ex-
to hold a central position in the orchestral plore tensions between theatrical gestures
repertoire and in many listeners’ musical in opera and their use in conventionally
imaginations. Scholars are increasingly oc- “abstract” genres of music, such as the sym-
cupied with interpretive approaches to the phony. Peattie cleverly links the careful
composer’s music, extending the founda- placement of offstage instruments in
tional investigations into biography and Mahler to distinctive uses of offstage instru-
creative process. A special challenge in this ments in Beethoven’s Fidelio and Wagner’s
work, as witnessed in books such as Tristan und Isolde, for example, describing
Raymond Knapp’s Symphonic Metamorphoses: the phenomenon as creating “works that
Subjectivity and Alienation in Mahler’s Re- tend towards opera, but opera that has
Cycled Songs (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan been, so to speak, purified of any outer ac-
University Press, 2003) and Julian tion” (p. 41). He also explores an 1895 at-
Johnson’s Mahler’s Voices: Expression and tempt Mahler made, in his role as conduc-
Irony in the Songs and Symphonies (Oxford: tor, to place offstage the “Turkish march”
Oxford University Press, 2009), and build- passage of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony fi-
ing on the seminal example of Theodor W. nale. Peattie argues that through passages
Adorno’s 1960 Mahler: A Musical like these Mahler was attempting to
Physiognomy (trans. Edmund Jephcott reestablish the vitality of the symphony at a
[Chicago: University of Chicago Press, time when the genre’s influence was on the
1992]), is how to grapple with Mahler’s co- wane. His analysis extends recent discourse
pious intertextuality, and the ways in which in the field that foregrounds nuances of
he juxtaposed manifold elements and dis- genre, which have tended to be marginal-
rupted musical processes rather than sub- ized in favor of formal structures. Most fas-
suming such seams within the musical fab- cinating are the ways Peattie shows that
Book Reviews 305

Mahler is not using offstage instruments as larly ones marked by the use of cowbells, a
static planes of sound, but rather setting “startlingly inappropriate sonority” in a
the instruments in motion through symphony (p. 83), are now seen as disturb-
provocative notations in the score, and in- ing and intrusive. Mahler’s revisions to
deed, he posits “mobility” as a “guiding these passages once again highlight how
metaphor” for understanding Mahler’s ap- sounds could be made metaphorically mo-
proach to the symphony (p. 46). bile with directions in the score such as
Peattie shows in chapter 2, “Distant “coming nearer” and “going further away”
Music,” that Mahler is not only concerned (p. 108).
with the literal use of offstage space, but, In chapter 4, “Symphonic Panoramas,”
intriguingly, also with the “illusion of dis- Peattie explores further how the experi-
tant sound” created by onstage instruments ence of the modern traveler at the fin de
(p. 50). While most commentators search siècle was determined by technology. The
for programmatic explanations for these visual successions experienced by train trav-
passages, such episodic structures may be elers gazing out of the window—an impor-
better conceived as juxtapositions of unre- tant part of Mahler’s day-to-day existence as
lated tableaux. Using the Third Symphony a virtuoso conductor in high demand—can
as his main example, Peattie reworks the be seen to represent a “powerful metaphor
standard notion of romantic “distance,” for coming to terms with the panoramic
showing how Mahler’s music instead tra- unfolding of musical events” (p. 117) in the
verses space, often moving progressively Seventh Symphony’s fast-changing episodic
closer to the listener. In the first move- construction, especially in the finale.
ment, for instance, with its surfeit of “pro- Against the checkered reception history of
cessional” passages, Peattie describes “the this work, which often cited such juxtaposi-
potential of a static orchestral apparatus tions as evidence for the work’s weakness,
to produce the effect of a mobile sound Peattie instead conceives of the work as a vi-
source” (p. 66). The third movement’s fa- tal cultural expression of its time, compar-
mous post-horn episodes allow Peattie to ing it closely to nineteenth-century paint-
probe the subtle differences between direc- ings of trains, commercial entertainments
tions in the score such as “in the far dis- like the “moving panorama” that aimed to
tance,” “in the distance,” “as if in the far recreate the experience of rail travel, and
distance,” and “as if in the distance.” the new medium of film, such as a Lumière
Peattie concludes by exploring how brothers experiment where a camera was
Mahler’s approach to musical distance placed inside a train carriage while taking
“continued to resonate well into the twenti- in, through a “breathtaking and disorient-
eth century” (p. 73), with provocative ex- ing” single shot, a “fleeting glimpse of a
amples drawn from both Alban Berg and continuously unfolding landscape marked
Luciano Berio. by constant interruptions” (p. 131). Peattie
Chapter 3, “Alpine Journeys,” argues posits a provocative relationship between
convincingly that romantic notions of na- the increasingly industrialized landscape at
ture and solitude need deep rethinking the turn of the century and the position of
when applied to Mahler and his cultural the modern subject as expressed by
context at the fin de siècle. For Mahler, Mahler.
traveling to the mountains was a modern In “Wanderers,” the final chapter, Peattie
experience fundamentally shaped by train explores the notions of “farewell” and
travel and masses of tourists. Peattie uses “late” music in the final movement of
this cultural context, supported by evi- Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, “Der
dence from Mahler’s correspondence, to Abschied,” but not from the familiar per-
reread the Sixth Symphony against conven- spective of “premonitions of death and
tional views. As he puts it, “Mahler may world-weary reflections on mortality”
have believed in the restorative power of (p. 156). Instead, he incorporates letters,
nature, but . . . the manner in which he early biographical accounts, and under-
chooses to evoke landscape also reveals the discussed photographic evidence to con-
extent to which this power has been com- sider the composer’s athletic and therapeu-
promised” (p. 95). Passages often inter- tic approach to extended daily walks,
preted as peaceful and pastoral, particu- particularly his “purposeful gait” and
306 Notes, December 2016

“heightened intensity” in urban settings sonal story of biographical subjects:

(p. 167). Peattie argues that important styl- “Biographies are but the clothes and but-
istic aspects of “Der Abschied,” such as its tons of the man [sic]—the biography of
“frugality” of orchestration and “modera- the man himself [sic] cannot be written”
tion” of expression, create an introspective (p. xi). Cooper examines Bartók’s clothes
“turn away from the theatrical use of space” and buttons, that is to say, the composer’s
in the earlier works, leaving “gestures of compositions and professional pursuits (in-
collapse and disintegration . . . largely cluding his ethnomusicological “forays and
stripped of the violent force they so often collections” [p. xiv]) in engaging and well-
carried” (pp. 183–84). We are left to con- researched detail. He leaves to the side
sider an image of Mahler not in the throes most speculation about the composer’s
of “despair but rather” exhibiting “an un- inner life and his own commentary about
bridled desire to live” (p. 189). biographical events.
Peattie approaches Mahler’s music imagi- Each of Cooper’s twelve chapters covers
natively, and in ways potentially influential approximately three years of the com-
for general cultural studies of the late nine- poser’s life, except for the first chapter,
teenth and early twentieth centuries. His which deals with Bartók’s family history and
book is often a model of musicological early childhood. In the course of these
scholarship, as Peattie uses various sorts of chapters, the reader will find analyses of
primary documents, paired with close read- nearly every work Bartók wrote within the
ings of musical substance, to make notable chronologically-organized narrative of his
claims concerning broad cultural contexts. life. Cooper also provides brief and useful
At times the frequent section breaks seem excursions into relevant cultural and politi-
to disrupt the trajectory. And too often cal contexts. Though written for an aca-
large portions of chapters can come across demic and musicologically-informed audi-
as merely introductory, with phrases like ence, Cooper confines scholarly debate to
“as we will see” employed much of the way the postlude, notes, and brief asides
through, as if the discussion proper has not (thereby also creating difficulties that I will
yet quite begun. The book also contains no address later). He also keeps each of the
notated music examples, though the discus- twelve chapters relatively independent, of-
sions are often specific and detailed ten reintroducing key figures, so that read-
enough that a reader would need to keep ers can easily zero in on years of interest
scores close at hand to be able to engage or specific compositions. In addition to his
with depth. That said, Peattie’s ideas lucid prose, Cooper includes a useful list
progress comfortably through the chapters, of works that concatenates four different
and his chief music examples align chrono- thematic catalog systems for Bartók’s works
logically with Mahler’s oeuvre across the (the Belá Bartók, Sző llő sy, Waldbauer,
book. Overall, Gustav Mahler’s Symphonic and Denijs Dille thematic catalogs), opus
Landscapes develops a persuasive and astute numbers, year(s) of composition, and
perspective with admirable clarity and a instrumentation.
minimum of jargon. Though Cooper tends to avoid specula-
John J. Sheinbaum tion, he occasionally integrates moments of
University of Denver intimacy where I as a reader felt drawn into
Bartók’s inner world. Cooper achieves
these moments by effectively drawing on
Béla Bartók. By David Cooper. New quotations from letters and Bartók’s own
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015. scholarly work as well as recollections from
[xiv, 436 p. ISBN 9780300148770. the composer’s friends and acquaintances.
$40.] Illustrations, works list, notes, I was transfixed by Cooper’s descriptions of
bibliography, index. Bartók’s inspiration for the First Violin
Concerto, the composer’s love letters, his
Music scholar David Cooper begins his favorite poem, and his interactions with
latest work on Belá Bartók with a delightful Benny Goodman, Henry Cowell, and Peter
caveat about biographies from Mark Twain. Warlock, as well as his time at a nudist
That American author points out the im- colony. These brief moments ephemerally
possibility of excavating the complete per- achieve what Twain did not think possible.
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without
permission.