Mahler

MAHLER

How do you feel? You’re dropped off?

Fine. I slept like a log.

No, like a rock.

The 1st movement of the 3rd Symphony kept running through my head.

What the rock's tell me?

That's because er... you're conducting it, tomorrow.

I was the music.

Therefore I was the rock and the rock was me.

Close the window. It's cold.

You look feverish. Let me take your temperature.

It has nothing to do with my temperature.

It's chilly. Now close the window.

And don't fuss.

- You were part of the dream too. - Hmmm. A pebble, I suppose.

No.

You were a living creature struggling to be born.

At last, you've noticed.

You are a chrysalis.

Ready to turn into a pretty, painted butterfly.

Where are you going?

Just floating out for a fashion magazine.

Have I the honour of addressing Dr. Gustav Mahler?

Siegfried Krenek, journalist, Toblach News.

Dr. Mahler, is it true

that you cancelled your conducting commitments in New York

because the competition from Toscanini was too strong?

Or because the people didn't appreciate your own music?

Or was it simply ill health?

I was tired of skyscrapers and sarsparilla.

I want to find a place near Vienna where the sun shines,

and the grape grows and I can breathe again.

Congestion of the lungs. So, it was ill health then?

Why is everyone so literal these days?

I was speaking metaphorically.

Why were you forced to leave the Vienna Opera in the first place?

Was it anti-semitism?

Or because you worked your singers and musicians like a slave driver?

I certainly drove one musician too hard.

Dr. Mahler, which do you prefer? Conducting or composing?

I conduct to live.

I live to compose.

Now you've wasted precisely two minutes of my time,

Mr. Krenek.

Why don't you do what I do when I'm teaching

the New York Philharmonic to play in time?

Beat it!

Yes, that's very good. Thank you, Dr. Mahler.

It was certainly kind of you to talk to me. Greatly honoured I'm sure.

All Austria is proud to welcome you home again.

Don't say it, I know.

I might as well be your shadow for all the notice anyone takes of me.

I was waiting for that.

It's about time you change your tune.

I had plenty of tunes until you killed them all.

Right over the wheels...

And next to the lavatory.

You've managed to reserve the noisiest compartment on the train.

Right. Now you can exert your own personality up to the hilt.

Charm the attendant.

Seduce him into getting us another one.

It was the last one. We were very lucky

- to get it. - I've got a migraine coming on.

Privacy,

punctuality,

and silence.

And the greatest of these is silence.

But Gusto, it's as silent as the grave.

No, dearest, it's as noisy as a nursery. Listen.

But Putzi is asleep, it can't be your children.

Listen!

But dearest, they are everyday country sounds. You are teasing.

If they really troubled you, you wouldn't write pieces, called.

"What the animals in the forest tell me"

or "What the flowers in the meadow tell me".

Even your titles give you away.

All your music is a hymn to nature.

Not quite all.

You've forgotten the most important title.

What love tells me.

Now give me a hand.

Anyway, I don't want to imitate nature,

I want to capture its very essence.

So, if all the birds and the beasts died tomorrow,

and the world became a desert,

when people heard my music they would still know,

feel what nature was.

Now, if you really want to help me in my work,

run along and see if you can stop that racket.

When are you going to look at my songs, Gusto?

You promised to ever since we got married.

I know but I want to study them properly and that takes time.

When I can give up conducting altogether and compose all the time

instead of just during the holidays it'll be different.

The crows are the worst offenders.

If you can dispose of any unhatched generations while you are at it.

You'll save yourself a lot of future work.

Close the door quietly as you go.

You still haven't scared the crows away.

And there's a pile of music for you to copy out after lunch.

Ah!

You need a bath.

The attendant's seeing what he can do.

There is no other compartment free. But

he's hoping someone will exchange.

Just coming into another station. Won't be long.

Why don't you lie down?

Christ,

Why do they always honour me with the sound that irritates most?

Brass bloody band!

You shouldn't have written so many into your symphonies.

Oh, there's a reception committee, too!

And they're bound to want a speech.

You make it.

- Where are you going? - To the lavatory.

You can't! What shall I tell them?

Tell them their music gives me the shits.

Gustav!

Something to tell me, my son?

Ten.

Ten...

Ah, good, good.

Minus.

- What? - Minus.

I'll tell you what five. I'm giving you every scrap of my knowledge.

Pick up those bottles.

I can try again next year.

For nine whole months I paid to your tutor to give you extra coaching.

To guarantee you'd pass the entrance examination.

I bought you expensive books.

Schmidt's German grammar, Hindemann's syntax,

collected works of... What was his name? Goethe.

And this is how you re-pay me by not winning the scholarship.

I mean 50 whole crowns down the drain.

It wasn't enough.

- What? - It wasn't enough.

Not enough? Did my ears deceive me?

With the sacrifices your mother and

me have made for you. Such gratitude.

You know, I have a good mind to get hold of you...!

Karl Ritter's father bribed someone with 500 crowns

to change my mark from 10 to 10 minus.

They didn't want a Jew to win the second year running, anyway.

- So he goes to the Polytechnic? - Yes.

The son of a Goy Shulmanzah!

Disgrace he's brought upon me and my house.

I'll kill him with my own bare hands.

I'll kill him.

Eat your soup before it gets cold and dies,

Gustav. It's in a very weak condition.

So, what use is a diploma from the Iglau Polytechnic

when the concert platforms of the world

are crying out for great pianists?

Who do you have? You have Ignaz Moscheles,

you have Franz Liszt, you have Rubenstein.

If you've lessons from my old friend, Maestro Sladky

a scholarship to the Prague Conservatoire,

and the whole world at your feet.

"The whole world at your feet."

- You'd like that, wouldn't you, Gustal precious? - Yes, Aunt Rose.

Alfred Grunfeld himself was a infant prodigy at the Sladky Academy.

Sounds like a factory of prodigies.

A factory of Jewish dwarves with lace

colours and shiny patent leather shoes.

- What's the good of having a piano if no one

uses it? - I do use it, I make up tunes.

Bernhard,

Gustav is going to be a child prodigy.

Isn't it wonderful?

Grandad's arranging some lessons for him with Sladky.

Not for three crowns a lesson, he's not.

One crown.

Crowns, crowns, crowns...

Crowns for books, crowns for food, crowns for relatives.

And now crowns for music.

Slad...

Sladky has always charged three crowns a lesson.

For me an old friend, he will charge one.

He owes me a favour.

Look, grandad says, young Grunfeld has just

bought his parents two houses in France.

And Sigismond Thalberg has been presented to the King of England.

Bernhard, our own boy playing at Buckingham Palace.

- Imagine! - And only one crown.

One crown...

Get the schnapps, Berta.

We drink to my son's future fame and fortune.

And what do you call that, may I ask?

It's called the 'Kitten Serenade'.

More like the tune the cat died of.

Eine kleine Katmusik.

- Where did that come from? - Out of my own head.

And that's where it should have stayed.

Even a monkey is more clever. He can pick out a tune with one finger

pick out his nose with another and eat a banana all at the same time.

But to play the piano calls for genius.

And genius calls for scales, scales, scales.

Even more scales.

Scale of C major. Begin!

Elbows in, wrists down, elbows, wrists...