Some mean looking people playing some mean sounding music.
Mahler’s Death
Mahler’s death makes me sadder every day. But it was certainly predestined. You said that you have the impression his work was fully completed. I have the feeling that Mahler knows how much we grieve for him. I will always think of the cemetery up there where his body now rests. Do you still sense that enigmatic silence when his coffin was lowered into the earth? Never to see him again! That time in Munich, as the train departed, he looked long at us through the window. That was the last time I saw him.
Webern to Scohenberg, May 24, 1911, quoted in Moldenhauer.
Concentration and self-pity
“You can stretch every glance out into a poem, every sigh into a novel. But to express a novel in a single gesture, a joy in a breath—such concentration can only be present in proportion to the absence of self-pity. These pieces will only be understood by those who share the faith that music can say things which can only be expressed by music.”
Schoenberg’s introduction to Webern’s Six Bagatelles, op. 9.
