Anna Stoll Knecht

Currently a British Academy postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford (Jesus College), Anna Stoll Knecht conducts research on Mahler’s interpretation of Wagner, both as a conductor and as a composer. Her publications include a monograph on Mahler’s Seventh Symphony (Oxford University Press, Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure & Interpretation, forthcoming); book chapters in Rethinking Mahler (ed. Jeremy Barham, Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and in Naturlauf: Scholarly Journeys Toward Gustav Mahler, Essays in Honour of Henry-Louis de La Grange at His Ninetieth Birthday (ed. Paul-André Bempéchat, Peter Lang, forthcoming); and a study of Henri Dutilleux’s Métaboles (Annales Suisses de Musicologie, 2006).

MahlerFest XXIX Abstract :

The Finale of the Seventh has been often perceived as the most “problematic” of its movements. Anna Stoll Knecht offers a reinterpretation of the Finale based on a close reading of the score combined with an analysis of the sketches. In attempting to come to terms with its complex structure – a diabolic rondo constantly interrupted by heavily rhetorical moments that seem to announce the entrance of a new character – Stoll Knecht examines the interactions of numerous musical allusions to opera (Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail) and operetta (Offenbach’s Orphée aux Enfers, Lehar’s Die Lustige Witwe), asking what these allusions can tell us about the Seventh as a whole, as well as about Mahler’s relationship to the operatic world.