On 29.May I began to work on the first movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1. My very first attempt to "midify" this work was actually done on 11.May 2001, more than 9 years ago. However, I got stopped in my tracks right at the beginning, when trying to render those very long sustained notes in the strings, until measure 47 or so: my samples and my synth just stopped looping these notes after about half the time that they were supposed to be played. I would have to record those notes in segments, and then cross-fade between them. Seemed like a bad workaround, with lots of time to be invested, and I never pursued this any further.
When I resumed the rendition two weeks ago, I started a fresh file, with the Garritan Personal Orchestra samples in Sonar 8.5. The long notes were sustained ok this time, and I progressed rapidly.
In Sonar 8.5 the drawing of the controller values is a bit awkward: there is no longer a simple line drawing tool, but instead one has to keep Ctrl and Shift pressed, then left-click the mouse and draw the line. Also one has to catch a gap between existing controllers; if these controllers are too dense, one easily catches one of the existing controllers, and instead of a line being drawn, this controller value is then modified and shifted. So the drawing of controllers has become a bit of a pain, and I have therefore changed my approach for entering controller values and have used the wheel in life play, as suggested by the GPO manual. I first record the track notes in live play, then do some adjustments of note quantisation, length, and attack, then I replay the recorded track and move the wheel. This allows actually a much more intuitive and musical conveyance of the expression as the line drawing method. Interestingly the GPO maps both controller #11 and and controller #1 (wheel) to the same expression (this leads to caution: there can be contradictory simultaneous controller values in control #1 and control #11). Maybe that change of allowing both controllers to map onto expression resulted from a talk I had back at the NAMM 2004 with Tom Hopkins from Garritan? This is actually really great: I could use the foot pedal or the wheel. My first tries with the foot pedal had not been very satisfying - I could excert a better and finer control using the wheel. This method also works much faster than the drawing method - I have used this wheel-recording method now since January 2010, with all recordings done on the new MAESTRO-2 system.
I progressed quite fast, although this first movement is quite a challenge: 550 bars, on 45 pages! measures! On 31.5. I already had completed the first part, up to marker 12, where the repetition is indicated. I had completed all the instrument parts up to then, which allowed an easy copy-and-past of the part to be repeated.
On 3.June I reached the end of the movement with the bass line, on 5.June I had completed cello and viola, the day after I completed the whole string section, then the harp, and yesterday evening I completed percussion, trombone and tuba.
The sound is just incredible: the wonderful melodies and themes in this symphony go around my head all the time, and I can admire the exquisite instrumentation which created that sound colour, as I am building up the orchestral score.
I cannot wait to add the proper tempo, so that I can hear all the progressions in their intended way... but if I would do that now, I would be a bit in trouble when adding the remaining instruments, because I would then have to play them in "real-time", which would undoubtedly lead to inaccuracies and mistakes... so I keep recording it at a slower tempo than indicated.
I hope to be able to complete this movement at the upcoming weekend. This means that by then I have officially 3/4 of the symphony completed: The 2nd and 3rd movements are already online. And then the real challenge will come: the enormous 4th movement, 76 pages - I have not counted the bars yet.
Also I have ordered a score of the Blumine. I never heard this movement before, and I would like to do an experiment: creating the rendition without ever listening to a real recording. All of my past and current recordings are from music which I had heard before - so I do have an acoustic image of that music in my mind, which of course influences how I interpret the printed music score. I would be very curious how the result would be, if I had not heard the music before - just looking at the music score and getting the music out from there. Once I have created the rendition of Blumine, I will then try to compare it with other recordings, to hear the difference in interpretation.
There is this discussion, if Blumine should be part of the symphony or not. Mahler has eliminated it from the score, and most conductors respect this. However, there are also good reasons to put Blumine into the score: the rejection of this movement by Mahler may have nad not necessarily musical reasons, but also personal ones: after all, his love story with "Blumine" Johanna Richter was already over, and maybe he was embarrassed of that personal display of affection... I would not trust the sentiments of an older guy about his youth "errors", as these sentiments are biased too. From what I read, critics at the time did in particular not like this Second movement Blumine, when the symphony was performed. This in turn would be for me a reason to put it in - those critics have been morons anyway, not understanding Mahler's music for a long time.
And from structural point, that 5-movement structure in two parts makes to me more sense than the standard run-of-the-mill symphonic 4-part structure: the Scherzo would be the center part, then would come the turning point with the "Funeral March". So once I get the hands on the Blumine score, I plan to put the symphony in the order as it was intended in the beginning. This will, however, depend on how the Blumine music sounds: I will judge if it makes sense, musically, of if it is indeed too sentimental, as Mahler once remarked.
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