The History Game: Three Modes of Mahler Historiography

Rhizomatic models of historiography have been criticized for dislodging history from its ‘proper’ sphere towards ‘structural atemporalities’. Adherents claim that ‘History is an inaccessible limit’, ‘a transcendental idea’ that cannot be written; instead there exists an incoherent, incomplete and chaotic flux of ramifications that does not lend itself to forms of ordered, teleological representation. Mapping the proliferation of Mahler’s music in the light of these discussions is illuminating. While the counter-cultural becomes establishment art, rescuing the history of the unfavoured becomes a perverse minority pastime. While the historical neutering of a music in the ‘republic of minds’ proceeds towards completion, Schnittke, Caine, and certain film directors have out-pluralized the arch-pluralist, and generated awkward temporalities of reception. A brief case study centring on the Third Symphony explores the properties of ‘improper’ Mahler historiography