Some interesting thoughts by a working conductor on Mahler and Sibelius and how they wrote their scores.
In his own music, it sometimes seems as if Mahler has tried to make his scores conductor-proof. He doesn’t trust a conductor to ask players to release a chord to a softer sustaining dynamic to allow the melody to come through, so he marks fp. He doesn’t trust the conductor even with understanding the basic form and shape of the piece- every transition and arrival is somehow clarified, underlined and pointed out, through tempo changes, instrumental changes, modulations and so on. He knows what you shouldn’t do — “nicht schleppen!” and what you should do — “drängend!”
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Sibelius, on the other hand, writes only the piece, no instruction manual provided, and in doing so, forces you to analyze his music. He writes the music as he wants it to sound, while Mahler writes it as you should perform it — two radically different approaches to notation.
RTWT here.
On The Road To Prohibition
