To Bristol’s Victoria Rooms last night for a fine performance of Mahler 6 by the University Orchestra. The moments when the hammer strikes in the final movement were visually, as well as musically, dramatic. Chatting afterwards, I learnt that the conductor had made a special trip to west London, to collect the hammer and its accompanying table. It is a great big mallet like-thing with a very long shaft. It turns out that there’s a special Mahler 6 hammer, there’s only one in the country, and orchestras hire it as necessary. So you couldn’t perform two Mahler 6s on the same evening in different parts of the UK, at least not with _the hammer_. Does each country have a dedicated Mahler 6 hammer as the UK seems to?
{ 29 comments }
jholbo 11.30.08 at 12:39 pm
Hmmmm, I can’t help but think that there’s a bad pick-up line here somewhere. “Is that the country’s only Mahler 6 hammer in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?” Something like that.
Kieran Healy 11.30.08 at 2:33 pm
“If I had the Mahler 6 Hammer.”
eric 11.30.08 at 2:46 pm
When an orchestra’s percussionist picks up the Mahler hammer, does he shout “Hammer time”?
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 11.30.08 at 3:06 pm
If the Hammer falls where there is no audience to see it, is there a performance of Mahler 6?
Righteous Bubba 11.30.08 at 3:37 pm
And yet many countries can perform many simultaneous versions of the 1812 Overture
Steve LaBonne 11.30.08 at 3:45 pm
Hmm, my community orchestra, when we did Mahler 6 (or approximated it- it was a bit of an ambitious choice by our then music director), managed to come up with something suitable (as I recall, a wooden box and a large mallet, which made a pretty respectable noise) without any special trip to New York or what have you. I think this story may say more about the British sense of humor than about Mahler’s hammerblow…
Ben 11.30.08 at 4:27 pm
@eric, #3: I actually LOLed at that comment. Excellent work on the humour-by-incongruous-juxtaposition front.
Keith M Ellis 11.30.08 at 8:08 pm
Speaking as a (former) percussionist, for percussionists, it’s always Hammer Time.
gl nelson 11.30.08 at 8:56 pm
The percussionist’s last words: “Take my hammer Polly Ann and go to that [concert hall],/ Swing that [Mahler Six] hammer like you seen me do it, /And when you’re swinging with the lead man, /They’ll all know you’re [fill in percussionist’s name here]’s woman,/ But tell them that’s not all I can do,/Tell ’em I can hoist a jack, and I can lay a track,/ I can pick and shovel too, ain’t no machine can, /That’s been proved to you.”
Delicious Pundit 11.30.08 at 9:31 pm
“If I had the Mahler 6 Hammer.â€
I’d hammer in the evening
After intermission
And the crowd-pleasing concerto in the first half
It’s a hammer of turmoil
It’s a hammer of
Inner angst
It’s a hammer of Fate coming
For the Western symphonic tradition
All over this land…whoa…
Doctor Science 11.30.08 at 11:50 pm
The Mighty Google suggests that the secret lies not so much in the hammer, as in the wooden box the percussionist hits with it. I haven’t been able to find any really first-rate photos of an official Mahler hammer, though this one is pretty good. I don’t know what makes he Royal Mahler Hammer of Britain so special or what it looks like.
Davis X. Machina 12.01.08 at 5:13 am
There’s a company in NY that rents out Audries — the carnivore plant in Little Shop of Horrors — and nothing else.
Find a niche and fill it, I guess.
Alex Prior 12.01.08 at 7:56 am
You’ve clearly never heard of the Stockhausen ring modulator. There is only one in the world (modulates electronic tones) and can only be hired from the Stockhausen estate.
Stockhausen supplemented his income as a composer by inventing weird instruments, including them in his compositions, and then insisting that the only “pure” performance of his work involved hiring them at completely reasonable rates.
I know about this because my Beloved Other was almost arrested in the UK trying to import the ring modulator, and even in the benign days of Catholic bombs (suicide is a sin) the British authorities seemed to regard Stockhausen as an act of aural terrorism.
Alex 12.01.08 at 9:49 am
“A second hammer is held in deep reserve by the National Defense Stockpile Agency at its Bollocksville Storage Facility, some 31 miles WNW of Buttfuck but conveniently located on the Great Northern main line. Procured originally in 1957 on the advice of the Defense Science Board’s Committee on Cultural Values, the hammer has only been deployed once, as part of Project RENEGADE CUTTLE in 1981…it can be viewed by arrangement, but this permission has never yet been granted.”
John Holbo 12.01.08 at 10:24 am
I think, in an emergency, ‘more cowbell’ is considered an appropriate and acceptable recipe for a hammer-free Mahler 6.
Preachy Preach 12.01.08 at 10:30 am
I’ve often wondered how people get into playing obscure instruments like this – the world’s few onde martenot players must have been fully booked out (for once) for this year’s Messiaen centenary…
ajay 12.01.08 at 12:39 pm
“When the only instrument you have is a hammer, every symphony looks like Mahler 6”.
Or, alternatively, some sort of joke about Mahler’s Silver Hammer that I don’t have the energy to make.
engels 12.01.08 at 1:07 pm
Mahler 6 is not love. Mahler 6 is the hammer which we use to crush the enemy.
belle le triste 12.01.08 at 1:30 pm
ondes martenot playage is something a family business, i think
(ditto stockhausen performance: KS married a lot in order to sire an orchestra’s-worth of kids who were raised to play his works the way he liked)
Dave 12.01.08 at 2:50 pm
Is it just me, or is referring to that particular sixth symphony as “Mahler 6” just not quite right?
If it’s just me, OK, nothing to see here, move along.
chris y 12.01.08 at 3:05 pm
I think, in an emergency, ‘more cowbell’ is considered an appropriate and acceptable recipe for a hammer-free Mahler 6.
Aaaargh! You might as well argue that “more ketchup” is an acceptable recipe for a passata-free ragù.
mds 12.01.08 at 4:24 pm
I suspect that Grabthar’s Hammer would do in a pinch. Plus, it comes with vengeance!
Fortunately, it’s Stockhausen, so no one cares.
And it seems that chris y is not aware of all
internettraditions. But Mahler had a fever, and the only prescription was “more cowbell.”Jon H 12.01.08 at 6:36 pm
“The Mighty Google suggests that the secret lies not so much in the hammer, as in the wooden box the percussionist hits with it.”
Note that the box in the photo is a wooden shipping crate for some kind of big Silicon Graphics hardware. It has a hole cut in one side, through which a microphone is inserted on a boom. (This is not the English Mahler 6 box).
Ruchira 12.01.08 at 11:49 pm
Here’s an interesting article on the hammers and boxes used by the San Francisco Symphony and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Each came up with their own, so it doesn’t appear there’s an Official US Mahler 6 Hammer.
mollymooly 12.02.08 at 1:16 am
Could you use a Mahler 4 hammer and two Mahler 1 hammers?
Freshly Squeezed Cynic 12.02.08 at 9:35 am
Don’t be absurd.
Preachy Preach 12.02.08 at 10:52 am
I suppose that you could use one of the tuned anvils required for Das Rheingold in a squeeze.
Brodysattva 12.02.08 at 5:04 pm
There’s also one or two “Gurrelieder whistles,” made out of (I think) oboe-reed cane for the performance of the unplayable piccolo high-B-naturals near the end of Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder. (The note is unplayable as written: soft and sustained — since it is the most difficult note to produce on the piccolo and can really only be played very loudly and for a short time.) Schoenberg has it played by the first and third piccolo players in the orchestra, but it looks to me as though it could be played with just one whistle. From what I’ve heard, this whistle (or pair of whistles?) often travels around to wherever Gurrelieder is being played. Of course, that isn’t nearly as often as Mahler’s Sixth is played.
rea 12.03.08 at 11:59 am
the British authorities seemed to regard Stockhausen as an act of aural terrorism.
I suspect Stockhausen would be flattered at the notion, considering he expressed admiration for 9/11 as a piece of performance art.
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