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His symphonies abound in senseless repetitions, in all sorts of eye-music. And in the Eighth Symphony, the apotheosis of his reliance on the physical, he calls for a chorus of a thousand men, women and children, and at the end, I believe, the descent of the Holy Ghost. But the ultimate effect is exactly the reverse of what Mahler planned.
Or, like Mendelssohn, they tried to adapt themselves to the alien atmosphere of Teutonic romance, and produced a musical jargon that resembles nothing in the world so much as Yiddish. Or, with Rubinstein, they gloved themselves in a pretty salon style in order to conceal all vestiges of the flesh, or tried, with Gustav Mahler, to intone "Ave Maria."
I believe it was Mahler who once gave out a beat very distinctly one, two, three told his orchestra players to count the beat silently for twenty measures and then stop. As each felt the beat differently from the other, every one of them stopped at a different time. So tempo, just like intonation, must be 'tempered' by the four quartet players in order to secure perfect rhythmic inflection.
In the Fourth Symphony in G major, the last part alone is sung, and is of an almost humorous character, being a sort of childish description of the joys of Paradise. In spite of appearances, Mahler refuses to connect these choral symphonies with programme-music.
"Oh, but that was a great night at the inn. Gretchen was so happy that she spilled the beer down the apothecary's back and the landlady could talk of nothing but Fiddles's release. But the real fun began an hour later, when shouts for the Herr Mahler, interwoven with the music of a concertina, made me step to the door.
Soon, nevertheless, there insinuates itself the realization that there is in this work neither the all-creating spirit the composer so magniloquently invokes, nor the heaven he strives so ardently to attain. They are in the music of a score of other composers. For these men had lived. And it was to real life that Mahler never attained.
Mahler, we feel again, realizes all the craving that Bruckner breeds for a kernel of feeling in the shell of counterpoint. Though we cannot deny a rude breach of ancient rule and mode, there is in Mahler a genuine, original, individual quality of polyphonic art that marks a new stage since the first in Bach and a second in Beethoven.
And the symphonies of Gustav Mahler seem an assurance of present tendencies. The influence of Bach, revived early in the century, grew steadily as a latent leaven. It is well known that Bruckner, who paid a personal homage to Wagner, became a political figure in the partisan dispute, when he was put forth as the antagonist of Brahms in the symphony.
Seattle had but two officials under pay on November 5th Herbert Mahler, secretary of the I. W. W., and J. A. MacDonald, editor of the Industrial Worker.
Herbert Mahler, former secretary of the Seattle I. W. W. and at the time Secretary-Treasurer of the Everett Prisoners' Defense Committee, was next upon the stand. He was asked to name various committees and to identify certain telegrams. The unhesitatingly clear answers of both MacDonald and Mahler were in vivid contrast to the mumbled and contradictory responses of the deputies.
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