Gustav Mahler, Symphony No.1, 3rd Movement

The 3rd movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony #1 was inspired by this wood cut by Moritz von Schwind (1804-1871), subtitled "Des Jägers Leichenbegängnis" (The Hunter's Funeral Procession). There is a whole essay written related to this movement, by Francesca Draughon and Raymond Knapp "Gustav Mahler and the Crisis of Jewish Identity", with interesting insight. Not much for me to add here.

I have decided to give my music repository some consistency: the latest version of this music recording of the 3rd movement will be available on the Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra web site under the file name MahlerS1M3.wma. Other recording versions will eventually be collected and made accessible in the rehearsal hall which still is to be created.

The version of the recording that is up to today the most recent one is MahlerS1M3_100324_90vbr.wma.

The same principle I will also apply to the surround recordings: The latest version will always be available under MahlerS1M3_5_1.wma, with the most current one up to date available as MahlerS1M3_100326_5_1.wma.

Next steps to do on my list:
- create the Rehearsal Hall in which all versions of any piece that I am working on will be released,
- create the Dress Rehearsal Hall where recordings will be shown that are "ready for prime time" but are part of larger works (for example single movements of symphonies, with the remaining movements still missing),
- create the Concert Hall where the latest and recordings will be available, which are deemed to be of a release quality,
- change the tempo flow of the Hunter's Funeral. When changing the tempo map, I sometimes felt that a bit of rubato would work well. However, when then listening to the overall work, I often realise that this rubato destroys the consistence and coherence of the musical flow. I have to work on this one still...
- add a consistent and coherent reverb environment for the 5.1 recording.

Lots to do, very little time...

A page devoted just to this music piece has now been set up at www.virtualphilharmonic.co.uk/Mahler_S1M3.php. It will contain all recordings that I made, plus it will in the future be expanded to contain more information.

Gustav Mahler, Symphony No.1, 3rd Mvmnt (first "beta recording")

Yesterday night I have completed the first "rough" recording of the 3rd movement of Gustav Mahler's Symphony No.1. This is the first music recorded on the new MAESTRO-2 computer. It is still quite unbalanced; I need to revise some of the instrumental timbres, attack, volume balance. But I decided to put this one out on the web, as a "beta version".

I had produced the very first MIDI "rendition" of this piece back in January 1995. It was one of my first renditions, after Borodin's "Polovtsian Dances" and Smetana's "Moldau". At that time I was still limited by the 16 MIDI tracks of a standard MIDI file, and I had to do lots of tricks to create a reasonable rendition, using the same tracks for different instruments by patch changing etc. A revision in 1998 allowed for more freedom, since I did no longer aim at creating a single 16-track MIDI file but used both my Yamaha MU-80 synthesizer and PC-based softfonts to create an MP3 recording. However, I was never happy with the result - this was just not the right sound, and I always had in mind to revise this rendition. In 2005 I started an attempt to revise this recording by including the Garritan Personal Orchestra sounds, but I only managed to get a few instruments converted: problems with an upgrade of the MAESTRO-1 PC prevented me to continue further. That PC simply could not handle the many audio and synth tracks.

Now after the new MAESTRO-2 has been set up, with the latest versions of Garritan Personal Orchestra (GPO 4), Sonar 8.5, the RAID-HD array, and the 12 GB triple-channel memory, I felt that the resources would now be adequate to tackle this piece again. Since the big Gustav-Mahler-Year is coming up (July 2010: 150th birthday; May 2011: 100th death day), I wanted to create something nice for this.

I used 5 instances of the VST synth ARIA, each containing a group of instruments. Unfortunately, the GPO4 instruments do not all cover the extreme notes required by Mahler's music, so I had to add a few tracks of standard Cakewalk TTS-1 instruments for the odd note here and there.

The revision took more work than I originally had envisioned: I had to "declutter" my tracks which still had left in them some patch changes from the original 1995 version, and clean this out. Also, because in standard MIDI the multiple playing of the same note causes phase effects, I had originally "simplified" the score by eliminating those duplicate notes (for example when the first and 2nd violins play the same note). Now, with actually having separate sound fonts available for 1st and 2nd violin, I had to recreate those duplicates again.

Yesterday night I did a "bounce-to-track" and created a WMA file, which can be accessed on my Virtual Philharmonic Orchestra website.

I still need to revise several things:
- the overall sound balance is not ideal.
- the brass sounds "too metallic" for my taste, needs to be softer.
- some individual notes are too loud, some phrasing (attack) needs to be corrected and equalised.

I could wait and post only the very final finished version, but I thought it would be nicer to show the progression of this recording in public. So I will release once in a while improved version of this recording, following my old VPO paradigm of the "rehearsal room". When the rendition is such that I feel it has reached its final state, I will then move it into the "Concert Hall".