A Final Musical Testament

...Schoenberg, in his great essay on Mahler (published in his volume of essays, Style and Idea), expressed a strange thought on the matter...

...It begins with a remarkable recitative of the violas which recurs at key points throughout...

...As it is, by accepting the second work of the trilogy, the agonized Ninth Symphony, as Mahler's final symphonic comment on existence, we have entertained a false impression of his ultimate attitude toward life and death, which can be set right only by hearing and understanding what can be salvaged from the manuscript of the transcendent Tenth...

...Further performances in other countries, and of course recording, are already being planned...

...An early hearing of the work in America—of late ever more deeply receptive to Mahler's music—is, of course, ardently to be desired...

...It is this fragment which has (rather misleadingly) gone under the name of "Mahler's Tenth Symphony" in concert performances and recordings until now...

...And we should do all in our power to make this structure capable of being experienced as living sound...

...The work is in five movements...

...and being the composer's final musical testament, it would have been regarded as embodying the eventual resolution of these questionings...

...The answer to this is that we are dealing here with a unique case: Rather than lament the loss of Mahler's own final definitive score of the Tenth Symphony, we should rather rejoice in what fate has so incredibly spared us—the full-length, continuous, entirely intelligible sketch of the whole five-movement structure...

...The third movement, Purgatorio, has, like the first, been made known to us before...

...Until recently, only two movements had received such treatment: the first Adagio and the brief third movement, Purgatorio...

...this, tonally ambiguous itself, resolves into the magnificent F sharp major theme which embodies the basic emotions not just of this movement but of the entire symphony...

...Mahler did not leave us many indications of instrumentation for it, but those he did leave are highly significant...

...A facsimile of the manuscript was published in 1924 by Paul Zsolnay Verlag in Vienna...

...it is probably the best-known to the general public as it has rather often been performed alone...

...At last, though, with a strong reminiscence of the first movement, the valedictory mood—and with it the tonality of F sharp major—recurs...

...Should we not, some will say, respect the composer's memory by not exposing his "incomplete" work to the world, keeping it rather for the study of musicologists...

...As is known, he died with substantial portions of the work's scoring uncompleted...

...The most striking example of this is at the point in the first movement where, after the texture has been reduced to just two voices which strain apart further and further, a tremendous explosion of the full orchestra in A flat minor, with rushing harp arpeggios, brings relief...

...how very poignantly he conveys this knowledge in his music...

...This facsimile is a shattering human document, revealing Mahler's deep despair—at times verging on madness—alternating with moments of transfigured love...

...The fourth movement is again a Scherzo...

...Thus the work's exalted close recaptures in an even more intensified way the spirit of the beginning...

...Naturally, the task of bringing what Mahler had done into performable condition has challenged many...

...Mahler, he believed, was not allowed by a Higher Power to complete the Tenth Symphony, because in it he might have revealed to us something which we should not yet know, for which we are not yet ready...

...Now, if ever, we should be ready for the message Mahler had to give...

...It is Deryck Cooke's, however, which was the first to be heard, and it is of the world premiere of this performing version—given as a Promenade Concert at the Royal Albert Hall by the London Symphony Orchestra, with Berthold Goldschmidt conducting—that I write...

...The beginning of the Finale in which this experience is reflected conveys a sense of impending doom...

...The actual sound-effects employed owe their inspiration to an incident which occurred during one of Mahler's stays in New York...

...In a quarter-century of attending Mahler performances I have never seen and heard a more deeply moved audience than that in London on August 13...

...Ought we to be deprived of the great spiritual experience of hearing Mozart's Requiem just because the later movements are really by his pupil Süssmayr...

...To this I can only add one comment...

...Moments of unbearable tension are generated, followed by an almost physical sense of release...

...Finally, the flute and then the first violins do succeed in attaining a sense of transcendence (rather than resignation...

...Critical reaction in the press, too, was uniformly favorable—though this is less important (albeit pleasing to the participants) than the immediate audience impact, which in this case was overwhelming and unmistakable...

...The heavy muffled drum strokes seem to strike down all human hopes...

...Much has been said and written over the years about Mahler's "Unfinished" Tenth...

...What happens now, as the Finale begins, is one of the most shattering passages not only in Mahler's work but in all symphonic literature...

...On that day, there occurred a revelation which many would not have believed possible: the performance of what is, in effect, a "new" complete symphony of Gustav Mahler...

...Admittedly, there is no satisfactory performing solution to this problem...

...How well Mahler knew that not all of life is made up of supreme moments...

...Questions will assuredly be raised as to the justification of performing a work which could not be completely realized by the composer...

...A number of complete "realizations" of the entire score now exist...

...Not to mention the obvious fact that the presentation of any medieval or baroque work to a modern audience demands an often considerable degree of "realization...

...It was here, in the margin, that Mahler wrote for his wife "Nur du weisst, was es bedeutet"—"Only you know what it means"—referring to this incident...

...In doing what he has done, Cooke has attained to one of the highest boons that can be granted to any of us: magnificently to fulfill a deep artistic and human obligation...

...In the light of all this, I feel that it is vitally important that Mahler's Tenth Symphony, as now revealed to us, be heard by as many people as possible...

...I can state a few observed facts...

...There is a mood of leave-taking, of infinite sadness, combined with celebration of the glories of the life which is being left...

...By far the briefest of the movements, it scurries along as if to emphasize the basic futility and emptiness of much of human life...

...The complex of emotions here is one with which we are familiar from Mahler's Lied von der Erde and Ninth Symphony...

...Mahler left many lacunae here which Cooke filled with imagination and taste, but we simply have to conjecture what Mahler might have done further with the work...

...But all too soon the drumstrokes cruelly interrupt...

...Since Mahler wrote his symphony and Schoenberg wrote these words, the world has been engulfed in cataclysms of which the end is not yet in view...

...He was overwhelmed by the impressive strokes of the military drum...

...This is the human justification for the attempt to make audible Mahler's blueprint for a crowning masterpiece...

...The second movement, a Scherzo, seems the least convincing and integrated part of the symphony...

...Subjective response, rather than cool analysis, must give the answer here...

...The first, Adagio, was substantially completed by Mahler...

...A melody tries to crawl up from the depths (tuba) but is repeatedly frustrated...

...There are, however, many episodes of great beauty in Cooke's version...

...For one thing, this is hardly the first work in music history to have been left in an unfinished state by its composer, later to be completed by someone else and to become an integral part of our cultural heritage...

...Is it in fact so...

...In particular, the final stroke of the muffled drum prepares us for what is to come...

...To let Deryck Cooke speak briefly on behalf of himself and Mahler: "It can be argued that the result [of a realization] would be artistically unacceptable, since it would not be a definitive, perfected, fully achieved work of art...

...The peculiar significance of the Tenth is that it would clearly have complemented The Song of the Earth and the Ninth Symphony as the third work in a last-period symphonic trilogy concerned with the terrible questionings of Mahler's last years...

...I disagree profoundly with this thinking...

...Outside his hotel one day he heard the sounds of a funeral procession for a fireman who had died in line of duty...

...Ought we really never to perform The Art of the Fugue because Bach did not live to complete the great final fugue...