Federico Celestini: Der Trivialitätsvorwurf an Gustav
Mahler. Eine diskursanalytische Betrachtung (1889–1911)
In the opprobrium Mahler received from the music critique of
his day—specifically, the assessment that his compositions were
trivial—one recognizes aesthetic criteria and arguments stemming from
previously existing music debate. These familiar lines of reasoning came from
two corners: one was the Beethoven-Rossini dispute which preoccupied itself
with the distinction between ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ music,
while the other hails from early antisemitic currents that had found their way
into music aesthetics by way of Wagner’s Das Judentum in der Musik (1851). Both argumentative templates underpin the
phraseology of triviality with regard to Mahler, whereby the various
antisemitic postures are either openly articulated or encoded as a subtext.
Indeed, accusations of triviality appear to function as a paradigmatic
exclusionary defense against a supposed ‘otherness.’ Through
discourse analysis, the author examines the essentialist construction inherent
in these specific allegations.