The Hammer
András Wilhelm
The fourth movement of Mahler's Sixth Symphony
refers twice to a percussion instrument he calls the hammer. Neither orchestration
textbooks nor writings on instrumentation mention such an instrument, but
Mahler gives his own description at rehearsal number 129 (bar 336) where
the first hammer-blow occurs: "short, mighty but dull in resonance, of
a non-metallic character, like the stroke of an axe." Two other instruments
in the percussion section are also played, the timpani and the bass drum,
but at ff, while the dynamic marking for the hammer is fff. At the second
occurrence (rehearsal number 140, bar 479) the hammer-blow is sounded simultaneously
with the timpani and the bass drum; the score also contains strokes on
the cymbal and the tam-tam (the latter resonating for two whole bars, the
others resonating for a quarter of a bar). The dynamic marking for each
is ff, while a note at the foot of the page gives the following instruction:
"cymbals and tam-tam needed only if no hammer player is available."
[...]
There are few examples of punctilious composers-of
the kind who attempt to control every element of the performance of their
work down to the smallest detail, not just the finest nuances of the sound,
but the character and intonation of the piece, and the possible set of
associations these evoke-who fail to describe on just one occcasion their
conception clearly. Mahler's Sixth Symphony is a case in point: despite
the composer's acute but sketchily-defined acoustic conception, he cannot
fully formulate the mode of its execution. He can only circumscribe the
potential solution he was never able to arrive at himself, either as composer
or as conductor.
[...]
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