MONTH LY LETTER

• 5 -
In his enthusiastic book on Mahler, Bruno Walter compares the two composers
and a short quotation may be of interest:
"It is quite characteristic that Bruckner, in spite
of the venerable simplicity of his mind, generally avoided the
obvious and seemingly commonplace features which made, and still
make, Mahler 1 s music shocking to many of his critics. Bruckner 1 s
work is expressive of his conviction that the late romantic
idiom was susceptible of unlimited evolution on its own terms}
at any rate he did not worry about what should become of it.
The disconcerting musical straightforwardness of Mahler, denounced
by his adversaries as blatant and vulgar, is a striking
foretoken of the great intellectual crisis which with extraordinary
sensitivity he felt looming in the oncoming 20th
century* His regression to primitive musical substances is
more obvious and more far-reaching than Bruckner 1 s analogous
trend. Both were quite clearly oriented toward Franz Schubert,
but while one would always recognize Bruckner 1 s style as an
organic development of the Schubert idiom, one is frequently
struck by some of Mahler 1 s tunes which seem as if they were
actually quoted from Schubert, though brought into a new,
strange context•••••
!l Both composers have in common the truly symphonic
spirit, the propensity for the monumental simplicity of the
fundamental themes, the sense of the magnitude of gesture.
In Bruckner all that is an outgrowth of his unshaken faith in
lasting progress} in Mahler it is arrived at through an everpresent
exertion of will power, under the strain of the
impending crisis of the symphonic form and the tonal idiom*
To Bruckner, the Catholic of age-old tradition, his faith was
unproblematical, like the air he breathed. To Mahler, who
later underwent religious conversion, relation to the Supreme
Being was a matter of endless concern and ever-renewed discussion.
The actual sphere of common interest for Bruckner
and Mahler was undoubtedly their admiration for Wagner....•"
It is interesting to recall that the first performance of the St.
Matthew Passion (in a shortened version) was that given by George D. Atkinson
at Sherbourne St. Methodist Church in 1922. He directed his own augmented choir,
and in addition to the organ and piano employed a double string quartet. Among
the players who were members of the Arts and Letters Club, in addition to George
Atkinson himself, were Frank Blatchford, Frank Converse Smith, Leo Smith and
Horace Corner. Ernest Morgan assisted in the chorus.