It popped up in my little YouTube sidebar, and so I clicked on it and am listening to it as I work on exercises that ingrain JavaScript into my mind. Inevitably I am distracted by such connections as I have written of before. This symphony was published in 1857, a few years after the first opera from Wagner’s Ring Cycle. It’s unclear who copied who, though likely it was the younger Wagner taking ideas from Liszt, since Liszt was (according to the internet) Wagner’s benefactor at one point. What is without debate is that there is undeniable connection between these pieces. It’s pretty incredible to hear Wotan here just as elsewhere, though I suppose the subliminal inspirations for Faust and for Wotan ultimately connect. The orchestration, the melody, the rhythms–they all echo each other in the work of both composers. It’s uncanny.

Also I hear Mahler’s tenderness and pensiveness in solo string lines that might as well rhythmically be the same line, whether a melodic inflection of Mahler’s standard appoggiatura that crops up all over his symphonies, or presaging the ultimate expression of the inexpressible something that Mahler had witnessed in his life via the wandering viola line with which begins the first movement of his unfinished 10th symphony.

Listening so infrequently to this music makes me feel that much more amateurish in recognizing these connections, but then it’s not as though I ever “did” anything with them before, more than just feel their existence and be glad for it. Every time I return to this music I am almost amazed just at the fact that these worlds all continue to exist, even though I have ventured far far away from them.