mahler 6 appreciation
#MAKE THE MAHLER HAMMER AS FAMOUS AS THE TCHAIKOVSKY CANNONS
I am clearly missing something amazing
It’s even more awesome if you know the story behind it. See, the orchestral score doesn’t actually specify the use of a huge wooden mallet. In fact, it doesn’t specify any particular instrument at all: it just describes a completely hypothetical instrumental sound – “brief and mighty, but dull in resonance and with a non-metallic character (like the fall of an axe)” – and leaves it to the orchestra director to figure out how to actually produce it. Apart from the Big Fucking Mallet, past attempts have included custom-made bass drums, smacking a wooden crate with a sledgehammer, and dropping heavy objects onto the stage from a great height.
I don’t know if Mahler actually intended to troll entire generations of orchestras, but if he did, it totally worked.
What about swinging an axe into a log?
Not loud enough, or so I’m told.
mahler hammer? surely you mean mahllet.
holly
See, and this is why percussion is awesome.
“What sound does it make? Can we use that? We totally need to use that.”
Percussionists: banging everything since the beginning of time.
read the captions on the pictures