Gustav Mahler was a composer of superlatives. Why have one hundred musicians on stage when you could have one thousand? His Fifth Symphony‘s famous slow movement, Adagietto (meaning “just a little slow”) has a tempo marking of Sehr Langsam (meaning “very slow”).

Teasing aside, the music is marvelous and it’s easy to hear why it is his most played piece. There’s a touching story that this was a love-song he composed for his new wife. Mahler wrote this poem for her, and attached it to this movement:

“How much I love you, my sun, I cannot say to you in words.
Only through my lamenting can I show my longing and love.”

Musically, it’s a very slow lyrical song, played by the warm sound of the strings playing very slowly; the harp provides a sense of rhythm and motion through its arpeggios. The sense of longing comes through as practically every phrase is ripe with instances where you expect a certain note at a certain time, but are denied that expectation for an extra beat or two.*** And at a slow tempo, the wait for the musical fulfillment can be painful – that kind of wonderful pain of wishing yourself in your lover’s arms.

*** need a specific example? Right at the beginning – you’ll hear the violin melody come in at 0:10. It plays sol – la – ti – do … a simple musical idea that most anybody will recognize and know (think the theme song of the Adams Family, just very very slow.) You expect to hear the final note “do” at 0:15 … but you are denied that pleasure until 0:18. It’s only 3 seconds, but practically every phrase in the piece uses this compositional trick. And there’s even a marvelous 7-8 suspension at 0:58.

In the King Arthur legends, there’s all kinds of adultery, usually achieved by one person tricking another through magic. While everybody knows the famous love triangle of Arthur – Guinevere – Lancelot, fewer know about the directly attached love triangle of Guinevere – Lancelot – Elaine.

It’s all so screwed up. Lancelot is mad because he got tricked into marrying Elaine (NB: make sure you actually look at somebody before you sleep with them); Elaine is mad because Lancelot doesn’t love him (NB: don’t use trickery to get someone in bed); Guinevere is mad because she has to share her lover now (NB: don’t be so greedy); Arthur is mad because he has to pretend not to notice (NB: laws that demand adulterers be put to death can really mess up your family life); Morgause is mad because Arthur’s family has ruined hers (NB: incest is not necessarily the best form of revenge).

Edward MacDowell is one of the first highly-trained American composers. He is one of the Boston Six, the American answer to France’s Le Six or the Russian Mighty Handful: a group of composers who were shaping a national sound for the relatively young country. His tone-poems are on par with the best of the European masters, though they are largely ignored today. MacDowell’s tragic Lancelot and Elaine borrows its sound from the epic musical legends of Wagner.

We’ve got violin concertos a-plenty. We’ve got piano concertos galore. You want cello concertos? We’ve got twenty. But who cares? No big deal. I want more …

When it comes to solo repertoire, some instruments get all the attention (piano and violin). Then there’s the second tier of instruments that get less play time, despite having a solid repertoire of masterpieces (flute, clarinet, horn, trumpet, cello). Then there’s the “only if we have to” group of instruments that rarely get featured in concerts (oboe, bassoon, trombone, viola, organ). Finally, at the bottom, is the “I didn’t know that existed” repertoire – the Double Bass! ***

Giovanni Bottesini is known as the “Paganini of the Double Bass” (that is, a virtuoso that set the standard for great bass playing). Before Bottesini, the bass was seen as purely a support instrument. The cello is the official bass voice of the violin family, and the Double Bass doubles (copies) the cellos an octave lower, giving gravity to the cello part. The bass is a second-cousin-once-removed to the cello – they’re not actually in the same family (this is why the Double Bass has a different body shape from the violin family and a different tuning system.)

Here is the first movement of one of Bottesini’s concertos for the instrument. It is standard, good romantic writing; it’s gorgeously lyrical and really shows off the instrument as something way more than just a supporting voice in the orchestra.

*** To be fair, there is actually one tier of instruments below the Double Bass. It would be the “what the hell are you thinking” group – any instrument whose name has a modifying word in it, like “contra”, “alto”, or “tenor”.