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Re: Articulation question

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2016-05-28 19:46

Well, with or without the dot on the second note of a slurred pair, there are a number of ways it can be managed, but to my mind none of them would involve tonguing the second note, or what's the slur for? And there are tied notes at #10 and #11 in the 2nd movement that can't, to my mind, possibly be tongued - Mahler had to have meant not to hold them out to full value. I even see one spot after #11 where a grace note is slurred (unsurprisingly) to the main note but there's a staccato dot above the main note. It can only mean to shorten the main note.

The ambiguous ones are the figure in the 14th bar of symphony (and following) with a 16th-note triplet slurred to staccato 8th note. I'm sure I've heard this played both ways, and I really tend, for no particular reason, to favor tonguing the 8th note. Especially since in the sixth bar of #4, the figure is extended to a slurred 16th note triplet, followed by two staccato 16th notes, where the note after the triplet (now not under the slur) is clearly to be tongued.

I know I'm nit-picking and in the larger cosmos this really isn't important. But Mahler in particular marked his music *so* heavily with detailed expressive marks in German, it's a little puzzling why he might have been cavalier about standard expression marks - in this case legato and staccato marks.

I guess in a way I'm also still arguing with Gigliotti, who wasn't doctrinaire about very much, but was adamant that day that a staccato dot on those notes at the ends of slurred figures meant to tongue them (but we were working on Baermann, not Mahler).

I'm beginning to sound like I've typed this while lying on a psychiatrist's couch. What do I owe you, doctor?