MAHLER FLU

A long-distance friend of mine and I have both been recently suffering from a similar affliction of what I have provisionally named, at least for now,  'Mahler flu' or 'Long Mahler'. It is a condition where so sickened does one become with witnessing the sickly sweet fanboying of the composer online that you find you can no longer listen to the man's music anymore. A great loss.

It all started back in January when I began following an academic scholar who regularly tweets about his love of Mahler, Wagner, Sibelius and, just for obscurity's sake, the symphonies of Robert Simpson. At first, we both thought he was a man after our own pure, music-loving hearts but slowly through a fast-moving turn of events we came to realise he was more a covetous Alberich-type, an ivory tower Smaug where it was not gold he slept on and hoarded but cultural treasures.

Often going for long walks with Mahler and Wagner CD box sets tucked inside his backpack, along with a considerable stash of food, rather than living in the present, the scholar appears to live for tweeting or x'ing as it'll probably be known from now on. These weren't your typical hot-off-the-press, white-heat of the moment tweets, however, the kind that gets us free thinkers into trouble. These were more along the lines of carefully constructed and prepared tweets with photos and text that I have always felt more appropriately belonged to that 'Switzerland' of social media - Instagram.

Who knows? Perhaps he didn't get the memo.

At first, it all seemed cute, clean and wholesome stuff and we appreciated the carefully curated, if somewhat contrived approach to sharing that the scholar routinely indulged in. But slowly over time, perhaps a bit like eating too many sweets or rich chocolate, we began to feel increasingly bilious as he continued to present his 'lifestyle' tweets. We watched on as his clamorous, sycophantic gang of 'lost 'boys' actively encouraged his glutinous indulgence as they all appeared to wallow in their online Mahler 'Pleasure Island' like pigs in mud. Suddenly we'd lost our own appetite for Mahler and his work and had to look elsewhere for inspiration.

What began to disturb us even more than this Mahler abstinence though was the scholar's regular threats of writing new books on the subjects of some of our other heroes and beginning yet another endless tweeting cycle of self-satisfied promotion about how he would bring new light to these chosen subjects. Was nothing sacred?

And then a thought occurred to me.

"I've worked it out, mate! This isn't academic writing born from the deep passion of bringing new insight to the table on the subjects at hand for the good of the world. This is cultural ownerism or academic onanism. So possessive does the chap become in his passion for the subject, he has to find a way to own a part of it like a twisted form of possession or like a dog urinating on another dog's piss to assert some social power except it's with symphony cycles or literary and cinematic bodies of work."

"You may very well have a point!" my friend replied and mulled it over.

Since this realisation, I believe this theory of mine has become ever more valid and now when the scholar tweets with all the authority of an oracle we know he is marking his territory, whether it be Mahler, Beethoven or Sibelius.

His love of Kurosawa films also had us worried he might venture into the backyard of our more favoured Japanese director, Ozu and his masterpiece films with a new book on the subject.

"Is there anything he's not going to write about? It's like he won't rest until he's written on everything he wants to own for himself," I said in mildly hysterical fashion.

"He's like a four-eyed Terminator with an unhealthy penchant for tweeting and possessing the legacy of great artists through his writing. And now he's got his grubby paws on our beloved Sibelius with a new book on the composer pending."

I sighed knowing how little we played Mahler anymore as a result of the man's greedy ownerism but offered some small hope to my friend.

"He won't go near Elgar, though. Of all the composers he never once mentions, Elgar is verboten on his Twitter. He tweets about pretty much all other composers under the sun. But never EE."

And so now, here we are on our shrunken island of hero worship where Edward Elgar is the last pillar of our rapidly collapsing outpost.

And Mahler? Well, he's been pretty much a footnote in our lives for the past six months. Until that is, this morning when I played my first Mahler in ages: a beautiful Deutsch Grammophon Wagner/Mahler recital disc from the Salzberg Festival with the soprano Elena Aranča conducted by Christian Thielemann with the Wiener Philharmoniker.

Sipping my coffee and hearing those tranquil opening phrases of 'Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen', I paused and reflected how I mustn't be guilty of ownerism myself. No one likes a hypocrite. And after all, who I am to judge or decide who and what and why a man might enjoy such divine things such as these.

"Mahler is for everyone," I said out loud feeling my spiritual equilibrium fast recovering.

"Even that smug, tweeting Smaug!"