Disseminating the music of Mahler: early performance history and critical responses, 1889–1914
Dr Paul Banks (HonRCM) and Professor Rainer Kleinertz (Universität des Saarlandes)
Monday 7 December 2015, 5.15 to 6.45 pm
Room 261, Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1
In 2014 a project on Mahler reception started at the Universität des Saarlandes, the aim of which is to produce a complete set of documentation about Mahler performances up to 1914 including virtually all available documents in contemporary newspapers and journals. On the basis of Paul Banks’ research on Mahler’s output, an enhanced understanding of the early performance history of his large-scale works is possible, and many unknown records of Mahler performances and their critical and public reception have been identified and gathered in a database. An analysis of these documents – which may lead into interdisciplinary work utilizing digital linguistic methodology – shows that early Mahler’s symphonies were regarded as historical events from early on. Examination of positive and negative reviews clarifies the aesthetic and cultural basis of sharply differing responses as well as their common ground.
Rainer Kleinertz is Chair in Musicology at the Universität des Saarlandes in Saarbrücken, Germany. He studied music (viola) at the Hochschule für Musik Detmold, and Musicology, German and Romance Literature at Paderborn University. He was visiting professor at Salamanca University (1992–94), reader and professor at Regensburg University (1994–2006) and visiting fellow at the University of Oxford (2000–2001). His present research focuses on the works of Tomás Luis de Victoria, Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler. Among other publications, he is co-editor of the Complete Writings of Franz Liszt (Sämtliche Schriften, Breitkopf & Härtel, from 1989 onwards) and author of two volumes on eighteenth-century Spanish music theatre (Grundzüge des spanischen Musiktheaters im 18. Jahrhundert. Ópera – Comedia – Zarzuela, Kassel, Reichenberger, 2003). He is currently directing a research project on ‘Computer-based harmonic analysis’, funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).
Paul Banks studied music at the University of Exeter and undertook his doctoral research on Gustav Mahler at St John’s College, Oxford. He was lecturer in music at Goldsmiths’ College, London (1979–88) and Librarian at the Britten-Pears Library, Aldeburgh (1988–98). At the Royal College of Music he held a number of posts including Research Development Fellow (1998–2003), Head of the Centre for Performance Studies (2004–14) and Chair of Historical Musicology (2007–14); while there he was also co-investigator for the AHRC Concert Programmes project (2003–07). He prepared the first scholarly edition of Hans Rott’s Symphony in E major (1989) and other publications include editions of music by Berlioz and Busoni; he edited Benjamin Britten: A Catalogue of the Published Works (Britten Estate, 1999) and The Making of Peter Grimes (Boydell Press, 1996, 2000). His current research focuses on an online catalogue of the music of Mahler and the history of music printing and publishing in Vienna from 1870 to 1914.
