As for Mahler's "My day will come" it appears that, forty years after his death, he was still waiting in the wings. In the 1949 Pelican book of The Symphony -still widely available in charity shops - we find in the chapter on Mahler , among many less-than-enthusiastic comments, such opinions as:
"As a composer he seldom knew where he was going, neither can we; but it is worth while suggesting that the smaller the form in which he wrote the more convincing the result" and goes on to compare to their advantage certain songs with "some of the garrulous and fragmentary pasticcios he calls upon to serve as movements of symphonies."
Mahler's day really arrived in the 1960s when something of a cult developed. I recall , on a visit to inspect the plumbing in the Royal College of Music where I was a student in those days , somebody had scrawled on the wall - in place of the customary limerick - "Mahler is great; Bruckner is ****" the last word being , perhaps, appropriate to the location of the graffiti and best left to the imagination of the reader.
I'm wondering if Mahler's day has begun to pass and that enthusiasm for his music has waned somewhat with Bruckner being the beneficiary of Mahler's decline in popularity (relative, that is, to what it was fifty years ago). Perhaps , in these days of all-round belt-tightening, it could just be that Mahler, with his frequent requirements for large orchestras and choral forces, is just too expensive to mount performances of.
Your comments reminds me of the "That was Mozart" scene in Amadeus, Jeffrey! (
"All very interesting, Jeffrey - except the examples you mention are of contemporary opinions to new music. It does not need me to remind people of the words of Mahler, who effectively said ‘my time will come’ regarding his music. Perhaps one day people will laugh at how so few people appreciated the music of Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez during their lifetimes - however I am not sure I would"
That's true about Mahler, Ned but maybe people should be reminded that Schoenberg was of the opinion that, "One day", people would be singing his music in their bathrooms. It could well have been the case if you'd passed by the bathrooms of the late Hans Keller or Sir William Glock you might have caught the strains of Moses und Aron issuing forth but, generally speaking, what Schoenberg predicted hasn't happened and people still prefer Carmen.
As for Messrs. Birtwistle, Ades and Boulez there could come a time when their output gains a widespread appeal but I'm inclined to think that they will be numbered among those thousands of other composers in music history (maybe like Cecil Gray or Mason) who thought their own works of significance but whose day quickly passed and who are now hardly remembered at all.
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