Wouldn’t you just die without Mahler?
I was listening to BBC Radio 3 last night. The evening concert happened to feature Mahler’s wonderful 4th Symphony, so obviously I turned the volume up. All of which reminded me of this scene from the film Educating Rita, featuring Julie Walters and Maureen Lipman. Fortunately in my case nobody rang the doorbell. I am not to be disturbed when listening to old Gustav.
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In the Dark 
February 2, 2016 at 5:05 pm
Mahler was a genius, but I don’t find his gloom cathartic.
February 4, 2016 at 2:00 pm
I once posted the first part of an absolutely hilarious joke about Mahler on your blog, at Ian Smail’s expense, but no-one seemed to pick it up, so I’ll try again, to give your readers a second chance to accord me universal acclaim. Ian/Gustav Mahler was one of your astronomy lookalikes, and in one of Ian’s responses on the topic I posted “what do you think of Alma’s erratic behaviour?”. ALMA (it’s some sort of telescope in Chile, by the way) was being commissioned at the time. Ian duly fell for it, but rather than replying on your blog he emailed me “what ‘erratic behaviour of Alma’? (i assume this means ALMA?)”, to which I was able to reply “She’s your wife Gustav! And I’m afraid to tell you she’s been sleeping with Walter Gropius.”
February 5, 2016 at 7:58 am
February 8, 2016 at 9:14 am
OK World, I get the message
April 28, 2016 at 9:19 pm
A couple of weeks ago Ludwig van Beethoven (@LvanBeethoven) posted on Twitter:
If you feel sad listen to some Mahler, consider how he was feeling, then your own troubles won’t seem quite so bad.
(Although this applies less to Mahler’s Fourth Symphony than many other of his pieces. The Fourth Symphony is mostly sublime.)