Craft Notes
Gustav Mahler on Writing
“A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.”
“I don’t let myself get carried away by my own ideas – I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.”
“Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.”
“I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.”
“Discipline, work. Work, discipline.”
“If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.”
“The real art of conducting consists in transitions.”
“It’s not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.”
“I embark on this enterprise rather like a soldier who shoots arrows into the dark at an invisible target.”
“The degree to which the word sustains the sound can be measured when you pass from wordless music to text.”
“The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks.”
“The pointer of a pair of scales always returns to the center.”
Tags: gustav mahler
Great quotes. Thanks, Blake. First one reminds me of Picasso’s quote: “I put everything I love in my pictures. So much the worse for the things, they have only to arrange themselves with one another.”
Great quotes. Thanks, Blake. First one reminds me of Picasso’s quote: “I put everything I love in my pictures. So much the worse for the things, they have only to arrange themselves with one another.”
“If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.”
I like this one a lot. I think my knee-jerk approach to writing knotty moments (moments I am worried will come out boring or flat) is to blaze through them, and hope that the blazing a.) is interesting and b.) immolates the potential boringness.
A slower approach, though– if you do it right, that’s where you (and your audience) can figure out what your piece really wants to be about.
“If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.”
I like this one a lot. I think my knee-jerk approach to writing knotty moments (moments I am worried will come out boring or flat) is to blaze through them, and hope that the blazing a.) is interesting and b.) immolates the potential boringness.
A slower approach, though– if you do it right, that’s where you (and your audience) can figure out what your piece really wants to be about.
“I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.”
New chest tattoo.
“I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.”
New chest tattoo.
Has anyone ever watched Ken Russell’s Mahler?
Has anyone ever watched Ken Russell’s Mahler?
i haven’t. is good?
i haven’t. is good?
Oh it’s weird, weird, weird–a big, beautiful, campy hallucination. It’s one of those movies that make you ask: Did a studio actually spend millions of dollars to allow Russell to make that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GC6KnOoPJA
Oh it’s weird, weird, weird–a big, beautiful, campy hallucination. It’s one of those movies that make you ask: Did a studio actually spend millions of dollars to allow Russell to make that?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GC6KnOoPJA
And this: One of the strangest sequences : Nazism, crucifixes, and Mahler dressed up as a knight battling the evil of Wagner.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYcdInx5LnM&feature=related
And this: One of the strangest sequences : Nazism, crucifixes, and Mahler dressed up as a knight battling the evil of Wagner.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYcdInx5LnM&feature=related
wow. i need to find this.
wow. i need to find this.
“It’s not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.”
Isn’t this what we all do? by writing, living, breathing? Doesn’t this sum it all.
“It’s not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.”
Isn’t this what we all do? by writing, living, breathing? Doesn’t this sum it all.
“It’s not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.”
Yes, nice quotes (all of them), although it seems strange to trace a *new* pathway to a previously unknown summit?
“It’s not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.”
Yes, nice quotes (all of them), although it seems strange to trace a *new* pathway to a previously unknown summit?
Fucking brilliant.
“If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.”
Goddamn.
Fucking brilliant.
“If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.”
Goddamn.
I misread one of the quotes as
“I embark on this enterprise rather like a soldier who shoots arrows into the dark at an invisible angel.”
I think I like mine better.
I also prefer my version of Godard’s King Lear, which I saw in a hallucinatory haze while following asleep during the movie.
Bill
I misread one of the quotes as
“I embark on this enterprise rather like a soldier who shoots arrows into the dark at an invisible angel.”
I think I like mine better.
I also prefer my version of Godard’s King Lear, which I saw in a hallucinatory haze while following asleep during the movie.
Bill
Blake-Loosely related, but do you know Josh Cohen’s piece in Harper’s on four (that’s four) Mahler biographies?
“Playbills are necessary only insofar as the art they describe is not; it is as if listeners have to be distracted from the music they’re supposed to be listening to.”
“If Mahler were to have scored history itself, then that music, like the music he actually lived to compose, would grow to oppose sonata form, in which an exposition is always, after a development, brought back to itself with a recapitulation….
“Revolution is just that, an inability to be reintegrated, and unlike his life, Mahler’s music cannot be reintegrated.”
And favorite side detail: Mahler hiring detectives to pore through the wings to catch people getting paid off to applaud on demand.
Blake-Loosely related, but do you know Josh Cohen’s piece in Harper’s on four (that’s four) Mahler biographies?
“Playbills are necessary only insofar as the art they describe is not; it is as if listeners have to be distracted from the music they’re supposed to be listening to.”
“If Mahler were to have scored history itself, then that music, like the music he actually lived to compose, would grow to oppose sonata form, in which an exposition is always, after a development, brought back to itself with a recapitulation….
“Revolution is just that, an inability to be reintegrated, and unlike his life, Mahler’s music cannot be reintegrated.”
And favorite side detail: Mahler hiring detectives to pore through the wings to catch people getting paid off to applaud on demand.
man, that sounds excellent. i’ll have to dig it up and read in full. thanks Tim.
man, that sounds excellent. i’ll have to dig it up and read in full. thanks Tim.
I find these bits of wisdom (for some strange reason) rather depressing.
Sandra
I find these bits of wisdom (for some strange reason) rather depressing.
Sandra