Overblown great music?

[Alan Howe]

Sure, Mahler was widely known by the early 1970s; my point was that the boom followed rather later - two complete cycles do not a boom make! And by now the boom has reached saturation point, to which I say: enough already!

[eschiss1]

Let me be the first, and last, to bring up the irrelevant point of Mann and Adorno, in this thread. Done.

(But thanks for reminding me that on the 40th anniversary of the death of the composer of a opera on Death in Venice, I've yet to hear it. Must...)

[adriano]

Yes, please do, eschiss1 :-)
Unfortunately the main part of that Venice opera had to be sung/recorded by that usually "pleurnichant" Peter Pears. And it has a terrific part for baritone in it. Although the music is very intellectual, if it's good staged, it can work :-) Still, earlier Britten operas are more enjoyable: Screw, Grimes and Budd are masterworks.

[chill319]

What 'Death in Venice' did was to popularise Mahler's music - especially the Adagietto from Symphony No.5.

Just as a point of historical interest, that moment of popularity had been coming for a while. If memory serves (not near my references) one of the first U.S. performances of a symphonic piece by Mahler -- perhaps the first such -- occurred during the 1906/07 season when Leopold Stokowski led the Cincinnati SO in a performance of the Adagietto.

[eschiss1]

If by more enjoyable you mean "less modern" and vice v,  no worries, I know that going in.

[exlight]

Hey, I was searching for some resources, lay-targeted about Satie, as I used to listen to him in my teens a lot (yeah, romanticized age) abut also got interested somehow in his musique d'ameublement idea, from which allegedly ambient stemmed (how..? really?). And then I heard that some music teacher of my gfs told them once that it's a "music for ladybugs" thus dissing it. And I'm looking for info on why.

[eschiss1]

This may be the wrong forum for discussing Satie because of a change in guidelines (quite unclear from the name of the group "Unsung Composers" in and of itself, I'm afraid- sorry!) of more recent date - but individual members should I think be willing to take that interesting discussion of a thought-provoking and influential French 20th-century composer (and fellow Eric- well, Erik... ) into one-on-one discussion, I hope.