Mahler's Tenth Symphony: Artistic Morality and Musical RealityAuthor(s): Deryck CookeSource: The Musical Times, Vol. 102, No. 1420 (Jun., 1961), pp. 351-354Published by: Musical Times Publications Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/950812Accessed: 28/07/2010 14:56

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Deryck Cooke

MAHLER'S TENTH SYMPHONY Artistic Morality and Musical Reality

'There is something to be said for banning the performance of posthumous works which lack the composer's imprimatur; but for his sudden death Puccini would have tightened up and purified his last opera "Turandot". At least we might follow the precedent set by Toscanini when at the premiere in 1925 he performed the work without the last scene which Puccini did not live to complete. Moreover, this would spare us (and Puccini) embarrassing doubts whether by sheer listening we would be able to distinguish between the authentic bulk of the opera and the realization of mere sketches by one Alfano'.- Peter Stadlen, Daily Telegraph, 27 March 1961

As many people know by now, any further per- formance of my 'reconstruction' of Mahler's Tenth Symphony has been banned-by Mrs Mahler, whose decision must command the utmost respect. How- ever, to avoid misunderstanding, I must emphasize that this decision was taken on principle-not after hearing my score, but only after hearing of its existence.

Mahler's admirers will surely regret that his last musical utterance, so deeply moving and so crucial to our understanding of his genius, should be 'der Welt abhanden gekommen'; but others may well be relieved. Everyone is now spared the embarrass- ment of distinguishing between the authentic bulk of the symphony and the realization of mere sketches by one Cooke. Of course, logic demands that we now disown Mozart's Requiem (half composed by one Sissmayr) and Busoni's Doktor Faust (com- pleted by one Jarnach).

What is the true artistic morality of all this? A composer leaves his final masterpiece planned out as a whole, and partly or mainly completed, but not finally ratified in detail. Obviously, the work can never be completed as the composer would have completed it. What can be done? There are four possibilities.

(1) Leave the work entombed in the manuscript as a mere musicological curiosity-the contem- porary purist's solution. The great disadvantage here is that the world is deprived of what the com- poser had to say (and indeed largely said) in his un- finished swansong. But the purist is unconcerned: for him 'content' is nothing, formal perfection everything.

(2) Perform the authentic bulk only-the purist's more lenient solution. But this is unthinkable: either as form or content, a work lacking vital parts is ultimately unintelligible. Only at the premiere of Turandot did Toscanini break off where Puccini stopped composing-as a human gesture; in the performances immediately following he ignored his 'precedent', and used the ending which he himself had asked Alfano to 'realize' to save the work for posterity.

(3) Let another composer, of equal genius, com- plete the score-surely the least satisfactory solution of all: the second composer would inevitably impose his own personality on the first, and produce a

different work altogether. Busoni's great Fantasia Contrappuntistica is not-whatever else it may be-a viable concert-ending to The Art of Fugue; one Tovey, and more recently one Donington, are nearer to Bach's intentions.

(4) Let a pupil or colleague of the master, steeped in his idiom, complete the score-which has invariably happened. The work will doubtless con- tain a proportion of comparative dross, but if the dross is small enough in comparison with the genuine metal the gain is immeasurable: the work can live and be experienced as a whole, whatever reservations may be held as to this or that part of it.

Now, since none of Mahler's pupils or colleagues attempted to bring the Tenth to life, the task of pre- paring a full-length performing version has been left to latter-day Mahler students. I say 'full-length' because, since the broadcast of my near-complete version (BBC Third Programme, 19 December 1960, Philharmonia Orchestra under Berthold Gold- schmidt), I have revised it, and filled in the short gaps I felt constrained to leave at first attempt-to try and save the work for posterity as a meaningful whole. And I say 'students' in the plural, because I have recently learnt of other such attempts-by Joe Wheeler of West Wickham, Kent, and Clinton Carpenter of Evanston, Illinois, USA. This informa- tion comes from Jack Diether, Vice-President of the American Mahler Society, who is preparing an article on the whole problem, and the nature of the various 'realizations'.

*

'Certainly, the score [Turandot] contains some of the com- poser's most striking and memorable ideas, but they never amount to more than best Puccini. Indeed, fading hopes that with this work he might jump over his own shadow and bring off the "Parsifal" of his career may readily account for his fatally slow progress in writing it'.-Peter Stadlen, loc. cit.

That best Mahler (any more than best Puccini) needs the qualifying adverb 'only', I shall not dispute here, since I have done so at length elsewhere; and that Mahler, in his swiftly-sketched Tenth Symphony, was indeed bringing off the Parsifal of his career (that is, a culminating masterpiece technically com- mensurate with his others) I shall also take for granted, since I expatiated on this in my broadcast talk.

But how can such claims be made for 'mere sketches'? Because the so-called sketches are in fact a complete blueprint-a full-length sketch of a five- movement Symphony in F sharp, continuous throughout, even if continuity is occasionally pre- served by a single upper melodic line (but always a line which has already appeared with a full support- ing texture). In this sense, the work is more com- plete than those mentioned above: no formal

351

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element has to be freely composed. The whole argument of the symphony is there--each stage of exposition, development and recapitulation, bar by bar, right to the very last. Only rarely is an entirely conjectural harmonic or contrapuntal filling-in needed for a few bars.

Clear proof of this is that one could write an analysis of the work as it stands, which would reveal a fully-integrated form as rich and complex and clear as any in existence. Mahler's highly original method of motivic reference from movement to movement here attains to a phenomenal degree of unity. Ex 1 shows a few of the many strands which would run through such an analysis: the rhythmic figure X, by itself or fused with the melodic shapes A and B, pervades the whole symphony in the most subtle way. Further adventures of E can be seen in the finale's flute-melody (Ex 4).

Incidentally, in these examples, Mahler's music makes its own crushing reply to John S. Weissman's recent statement that it suffers from the 'absence of a closely-knit and convincing musical argument' (article 'Mahler Today' in Musical Events, April 1961). Indeed, a study of the Tenth Symphony sketch shows a creative struggle with form, and a bold mastery of it, unimagined by Mahler's 'critics', who obviously have no understanding of his music.

Returning to the problem of a performing version of the Tenth, one must admit that, in a different way, the work is less complete than Turandot or Doktor Faust (though still more complete than Mozart's Requiem). The two operas are complete in every part except the last, and thus not complete as a formal whole; the Tenth is complete as a formal whole, but less than fully worked out in certain parts.

The opening Adagio is fully composed and (almost) fully orchestrated; those -who maintain that Mahler would have elaborated the music further should be asked to show where it needs

352

elaborating (they can't, because it doesn't). The third movement-'Purgatorio'-is fully enough composed to make perfect sense as it stands; and the short score so bristles with indications of instru- mentation that it is possible to get very near to Mahler's projected (and partly begun) full score. Some people find it unbelievably 'simple'; they also point to Mahler's indication, between the central portion and the written-out coda, to 'da capo' the opening section, and insist that the restatement would have been much modified. But consider Von der Jugend in Das Lied von der Erde-a movement just as simple, with a restatement very like the opening. Even admitting that Mahler would have slightly modified this restatement, the movement still makes its essential impact without his im- primatur.

The other three movements abide our question. The fourth (Scherzo No 2) and the finale are both pretty fully composed in short score; but here occur those passages where earlier themes are recapitulated as a single melodic line only-so that one is forced into the makeshift of reproducing the original texture, slightly respaced to fit the new situation. Yet in each case this modified repetition, where Mahler might (possibly) have introduced consider- able variation, is already so different from the expository statement (in tonal and emotional con- text, in register, dynamics, and implied new spacing and orchestration) as to provide significant enough variation in itself.

As regards form, the finale is so masterly that it is difficult to see how Mahler could have improved it: the fourth movement would probably have bene- fited from a slight reshuffling of the materials, and certainly from a working over of the central section, but in its existing form it stands up strongly as one of Mahler's most fantastic and thrilling concep- tions. Both movements, of course, need scoring; yet so vividly is the music imagined for orchestra, and so significant are the occasional indications of instrumentation, that one can deduce Mahler's essential orchestration which is what I claim to

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single melodic line with pure harmony (see Ex 3, from Das Lied von der Erde). He had also failed to notice that Mahler here achieved something quite different from the restlessness of Das Lied and the Ninth-something quite new-the utter passionless calm he had sought all his life, and once nearly found in the Poco Adagio of the Fourth. Note the complete absence of 'yearning' appoggiature in the melody; the harp entry in bar 8, indicated by mere vertical strokes, and obviously intended to set off the unearthly stillness; and the gradual stirring of inner parts at the B major violin entry ('V1. ppp' is Mahler's own marking)-how could this make any effect without the preceding lack of contrapuntal movement? It seems obvious that Mahler here simplified his style to the utmost for his expressive purpose; the whole 42-bar passage from the flute's entry to the eventual fortissimo climax is the most superbly long-drawn growth of serene power in all Mahler's music, and could only work by beginning in near immobility.

Likewise, The Times critic, mentioning the growth of this theme right through to the coda of the move- ment, added 'How much more it would have grown if Mahler had tended it to its final blossoming'. With this it is impossible to agree, since Mahler did exactly that in his manuscript. Ex 4 shows the various stages: 4b is the resumption (after the violins' B major passage), which leads to the afore- mentioned climax; 4c and 4d are the striving central entries which struggle to halt the frenzied main allegro; 4e is the trumpet's nobly calm entry follow- ing these, before the allegro returns undaunted; 4f is the first victorious statement for all the violins before the coda, 4g the second and final one. The instrumentation and dynamics in brackets are mine; those without brackets Mahler's. The small notes 354

are also mine, and it will be noticed that I have added nothing of consequence except for weaving into bar 2 of the final statement the melodic figure E (see Ex 1), which is omnipresent in this movement- in order to resolve the suspended G sharp and enable the second violins to leap up again to join the firsts for the climax of the whole symphony.

This great dominating theme is essentially chorale- like melody-and-harmony with moving inner parts, like its less doubt-free brother in the finale of the Ninth. It can be seen that Mahler did tend it to its final blossoming-a rich homophonic one in keeping with his artistic purpose: the expression of that undimmed courage and praise he clearly found on the edge of eternity.

*

Mahler died on 18 May 1911, just over 50 years ago. Most of his music therefore comes out of copyright on 1 January next year: but copyright in posthumous works persists for 50 years after the first publication or performance. The facsimile of the manuscript of Mahler's Tenth Symphony was published by the Gesellschaft fir Graphische Industrie, for Paul Zsolnay, in Vienna, 1924. In the same year the Adagio and Purgatorio movements were performed in Vienna, under Franz Schalk, in an edition generally attributed to Krenek. Krenek, however, has denied responsibility for it, and it has been suggested that Schalk prepared the edition. These movements were published, in a very similar, anonymous edition, by Associated Music Publishers, New York, in 1951 (English agents for this score, Universal Edition). Das Lied von der Erde was first performed in Munich, by Bruno Walter, on 20 November 1911, and pub- lished the following year by Universal Edition. To all these publishers we express our grateful acknow- ledgments.

Article Contentsp.351p.352p.353p.354

Issue Table of ContentsThe Musical Times, Vol. 102, No. 1420 (Jun., 1961), pp. 329-364+1-8+365-400Front Matter [pp.329-347]Editorial [p.348]Offenbach, or a Parisian Life [pp.348-350]Mahler's Tenth Symphony: Artistic Morality and Musical Reality [pp.351-354]A Question of Time [p.355]Some Notes on Haydn's Opera: L'Infedelt Delusa [pp.356-357]Bach versus the Bible [pp.358-360]Music in Mantua [pp.360-361]Book ReviewsHaydn Research [p.362]Conductors' Art [pp.362-363]A Poor Encyclopedia [p.363]A Handel Biography [p.363]

Opera and Concerts in London [pp.364-365]Reports from the Provinces [pp.365-366]Reports from Abroad [pp.366-368]Gramophone Recordsuntitled [p.369]untitled [p.369]untitled [p.369]untitled [pp.369-370]untitled [p.370]untitled [p.370]

Readers' LettersByrd's Accidentals [p.370]Handel's Passion [p.370]Spurious Purcell [p.371]The Clifton Carillon [p.371]Folky Heartiness [p.371]How to Be a Musical Critic [p.371]Monmouth Choral Festival Book [p.371]

New MusicTwo New Volumes in the Purcell Society Edition [p.372]Civil War Songs [pp.372-373]Piano Trio [p.375]Choral [pp.375-376]untitled [p.376]untitled [pp.376-377]Opera [p.377]Piano [p.377]String Quartets [p.377]

Orchestraluntitled [p.373]untitled [p.373]untitled [p.374]

Brassuntitled [p.374]untitled [p.374]untitled [pp.374-375]

Woodwinduntitled [p.375]untitled [p.375]

Church and Organ MusicRoyal College of Organists [pp.378-379]Recital Digest [p.379]Recitals [pp.379-380]Music for Pews and Stalls [p.381]Organ Music of Many Kinds [pp.382-383]

Musical SupplementDick Fisherman [pp.1-8]

Back Matter [pp.384-400]