The Chicago Mahlerites

Our Journal: Naturlaut

This journal is published on a quarterly basis, released in the months of March, June, September and December. 

Naturlaut is an important platform geared toward the better understanding of Mahler's music. Every issue of Naturlaut contains a "Featured Essay" which is a critical essay on the studies of Mahler or thoughts on performing a Mahlerian symphony written by a conductor. We invite the distinguished panel on our advisory board to contribute such articles on a regular basis. Our sister organizations such as the Colorado MahlerFest also generously share with us rare interviews or articles previously published so that we can bring these gems to our members, and publish them on The Mahler Archives for the general public. Naturlaut also plays very important educational role in augmenting our members' knowledge about Mahler and his contemporaries, as well as bringing interesting facts from the Chicago Symphony Archives to its readers. We also use the journal to inform members of the latest CD/book release, and upcoming concerts and activities.

What is Naturlaut?

Mahler wrote a rather simple phrase over the first bars of his First Symphony, “Wie ein Naturlaut”, which can be loosely translated into “as if spoken by nature”. The composer claimed it to be the soul of all his symphonic works, as elucidated in Gabriel Engel’s biography titled Gustav Mahler – Song Symphonist.  

 

 

"That Nature embraces everything that is at once awesome, magnificent, and lovable, nobody seems to grasp. It seems so strange to me that most people, when they mention the word Nature in connection with art, imply only flowers, birds, the fragrance of the woods, etc. No one seems to think of the mighty underlying mystery, the god Dionysus, the great Pan; and just that mystery is the burden of my phrase, Wie Ein Naturlaut. That, if anything, is my program, or the secret of my composition.” (Mahler was writing this to a prominent critic.) "My music is always the voice of Nature sounding in tone, an idea in reality synonymous with the concept so aptly described by von Bülow as 'the symphonic problem.' The validity of any other sort of 'program' I do not recognize, at any rate, not for my work. If I have now and then affixed titles to some movements of my symphonies I intended them only to assist the listener along some general path of fruitful reaction. But if the clarity of the impression I desire to create seems impossible of attainment without the aid of an actual text, I do not hesitate to use the human voice in my symphonies; for music and poetry together are a combination capable of realizing the most mystic conception. Through them the world, Nature as a whole, is released from its profound silence and opens its lips in song."

We think this phrase appropriately sums up the allure and the essence of Mahler’s works, hence the name for the journal.

To submit an article, please refer to our editorial guidelines.

Tables of contents for our journal are listed below.

Vol 1. No. 1
Avik Gilboa Interviewing Jack Diether
  by Avik Gilboa
A Member Remembers...
  by Nathan Mead
China Chronicle
  by Susan Filler

Vol 1. No. 2
Mahler and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra: A Century in Performance
  by Jan Hoeper and Teng-Leong Chew
In Praise of High Intellect (Chicagoan Press Reaction to the First Mahler Performance in 1907)
  by Jan Hoeper
Conversation with Deryck Cooke about Mahler's Tenth Symphony
  by Avik Gilboa
Performing Versions of the Tenth Symphony
  by Teng-Leong Chew
Mahler Around the Globe
  by Teng-Leong Chew
Sandwiched and Rattled by Mahler
  by Bill Drewett

Vol. 1 No. 3
Takashi Asahina: A Life with Bruckner for 30 Years
  translated by Daisuke Tsuruta
With Hammer and Cowbells: Mahler's Sixth Comes to America (1948)
  by Gabriel Engel
Mahler's Sixth: Rare Symphonic Work Impresses Critics in First American Performance (1947)
  by Warren Storey Smith
Mahler's Symphony is Cheered At Last (1954)
  by Louis Biancolli
Finding Gustav Mahler
  by Borna Bonakdarpour

Vol. 1 No. 4
For a PDF sample issue of Vol.1 No.4, click here.
Die drei Pintos Reconsidered: Some Thoughts on Mahler's Opera
  by James L. Zychowicz
Book Review: "Lost to the World" by Tom Adler
  reviewed by Teng-Leong Chew
MahlerFest XVI: A Pilgrim's Journal
  by Teng-Leong Chew
A Literary Link Between Mahler's Early Poetry and Symphony No. 2
  by Jan Hoeper
The Newly Discovered Source for Mahler’s First Symphony: Issues of Context
  by James L. Zychowicz and Susan M . Filler

Vol. 2 No. 1
Gustav Mahler's Unknown Scherzo in C Minor and Presto in F Major
  by Susan M. Filler
Mahler - Last of the Romantics (1940)
  by Winthrop Sargeant
My Recollections of Gustav Mahler (1958)
  by Klaus Pringsheim
Mahlerian Camaraderie in Elgin, Illinois
  by Teng-Leong Chew
How to be an Angel in Mahler's Eighth Symphony
  by Susan M. Filler

Vol. 2 No. 2
In Retrospect: World Premiere of Clinton Carpenter's Completion of Mahler's Tenth Symphony
  by Teng-Leong Chew
Object Lesson in Music History: Mahler's Baton
  by John Milsom
Mahler and Freud
  by Donald Mitchell
The Rise and Fall of the Indiana University Mahler Group
  by Jan Hoeper
The Beautiful Resurrection of an Old Tale
  by Petra Fey
Book Review: "The Second Golden Age of the Viennese Symphony: Brahms, Bruckner, Dvorak, Mahler, and Selected Contemporaries."
The Symphony Repertoire, volume IV by Peter A. Brown
  reviewed by Susan M. Filler

Vol. 2 No. 3
Mahler in Art: "What the Night Tells Me..."
  by Teng-leong Chew
Mahler's Second Symphony
  by Winthrop Sargeant
Once Upon a Time: My Florida-Chicago Connection and First Mahler Encounter
  by Mike Smith
Mahler, Coryphaeus of Modernism
  by Matthew E. Ferris
Special Report: U.S. Premiere of Rudolf Barshai's Completion of Mahler's Tenth Symphony
  by Teng-Leong Chew
Booke Review: Gustav Mahler Zehnte Symphonie: Entstehung, Analyse, Rezeption by Jorg Rothkamm
  reviewed by Mike Smith
Mahler (and Brahms) at the Edinbrugh Festival
  by David Ellis
The Tenth Symphony - A Continuing Study (Part I)
  by Clinton A. Carpenter

Vol. 2 No. 4
For a PDF sample issue of Vol.2 No.4, click here.
Mahler's Third Symphony
  by Susan M. Filler
"Pan Awakes": Parody, Parables, and Paradox
  by Jan Hoeper
MahlerFest XVII: An Intense Mahlerian Feast
  by Igor Grobman
The Tenth Symphony - A Continuing Study (Part II)
  by Clinton A. Carpenter
New Recordings Cast Light on Bruckner's Ninth Symphony
  by James Cyphers
A Member Remembers...
  by Hilliard Levinson
To The Age Its Arts, To Arts Its Freedom
  by Lynne Chang

Vol. 3 No. 1
Mahler in Art: "Emil Orlik and Gustav Mahler - A Meeting of Minds"
  by Jan Hoeper
Veni Creator Spiritus and Gustav Mahler's Eighth Symphony
  by Salvatore Calomino
Book Review: "The Correct Movement Order in Mahler's Sixth Symphony"
  by Susan M. Filler
Book Review: "Gustav Mahler: Briefe und musikautographen aus den Moldenhauer-Archiven in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek
  reviewed by Steven Coburn
Arnold Schoenberg's Debt to Mahler
  by Dika Newlin
Special Report: Recital of Songs by Alma and Gustav Mahler
  by Teng-Leong Chew
Booke Review: "In Mahler's Footsteps in Bohemia and Moravia"
  reviewed by Susan M. Filler

Vol. 3 No. 2
Mahler in Art: "Mahler/Mahlered/Mahlered - Images of Mahler in Popular Culture"
  by James L. Zychowicz
The Conductor Gustav Mahler: A Psychological Study
  by Ernst J. M. Lert
The Identity of the Chinese Poem Mahler Adapted for Von der Jugend
  by Teng-Leong Chew