In one of his more famous pronouncements, Mahler claimed that the symphony was "a world" which must "contain everything." As such, in a context, the symphony, that had traditionally and increasingly been virtually predicated on self-containment and architectural order—and lauded for it—Mahler's output is perhaps unprecedented in its use of pre-existent material and the through-line one finds in the works, taken together. While others had based works in one area on other, earlier works, usually from another genre (Beethoven's "Eroica" Variations, Schubert's "Die Forelle" and B-flat Major Impromptu, and much of Messiah spring to mind), Mahler's adoption of the strategy, if one can call it that, is ubiquitous. Some are well-known, such as the use of Ging heut' morgens übers Feld as fodder for the thematic material for the first movement of the First Symphony. What is far more interesting and intriguing is the aforementioned through-line. The seventh, and last, movement of the Third Symphony did not maintain its "proper" place concluding that work, but became the last movement of the Fourth Symphony, and no doubt the fodder for much, if not all, of the rest of that work, notably the first movement, whose sleighbells and ornaments adorn this last movement. The Fourth's D-flat trumpet call, rising from the ruins of one of the rare cataclysmic moments in the piece, became Mahler's most famous trumpet call of all, the opening of the Fifth Symphony, now moved to C-sharp. That work's play of major sonorities "collapsing" directly into parallel minor becomes one of the hallmark sounds of the Sixth Symphony, and then, in turn, the Seventh. And so it goes. It is as if Mahler has taken the Wagnerian ideal of leitmotiv and manipulated it on a seemingly-impossible grander scale. And while Wagner's symphonies are wonderful, they remain virtually unknown and smack more of Beethoven, and all that implies, than of Wagner.

I mention all this because of the issues that arise when approaching Mahler's Symphony #10, starting with the number itself, his famous stratagem for avoiding Beethoven's "curse of the ninth" by not giving Das Lied von der Erde a number. Thus, sure in his belief of having "survived" the curse, Mahler wrote the numbered Tenth Symphony—and died in the process, leaving it to history to decide, if one is interested in quaint, but unimportant, minutia of this sort, whether he really did survive "the curse" or not. What is more important is that he only 100% completed a single movement of the work, the huge Adagio. As the foregoing commentary might hint, this movement was definitely from/for the Tenth Symphony, and represents its opening salvo, but as the liner notes for this month's recording indicate, "Although the sketches present a continuous musical argument, without missing a bar, the Tenth Symphony would clearly have been substantially reworked and revised. . . .From the evidence of the sketches, it is clear that it was not until Mahler had composed all five movements of the Symphony that he made a definitive decision about their order." Perhaps only Mahler could so frequently conceive of works whose major structural divisions—movements—can be rearranged or reordered convincingly without marring the structure of the work as a whole. Though this practice is not unprecedented, we are so accustomed to conceptualizing the architectural superstructure—the movements of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony have to be in that order, being a macrocosm of the last movement's structure—that Mahler's initial fluidity in this regard is still remarkable and noteworthy. And initial it indeed is, for once settled in running order it is difficult, if not impossible, for a listener to convincingly imagine most of his works with any other running order than the one he finally settled upon. And this is just scratching the surface of the issues in Mahler's working methodologies. From sketch to short-score to full orchestration he often made quite dramatic changes, in addition to the hundreds of minor details he often edited. So tackling what became known as a "performing version" of the Tenth Symphony is a daunting task, indeed. But ultimately, I, like most, I think, think the undertaking is worth it, and the world is definitely richer for the work of the brave souls who have attempted it.

Of the versions I know, I think the first is still the best. I first got to know the piece (somewhat) through Wyn Morris's classic recording of Deryck Cooke's rendering (though, if I recall, it was actually Cooke's second attempt), and this month's clip is of Cooke's version (with the help of brothers Colin and David Matthews, and Berthold Goldschmidt). The Berlin Philharmonic, under the careful direction of Simon Rattle, delights in this live recording from 1999. Cooke created a highly-convincing facsimile of Mahler's mature orchestration style and, perhaps more importantly, did not betray the sketches in any way, thus rendering more Mahler and less Cooke (cf. my comments in re Bernstein's Mahler in the Das Lied von der Erde link, above). The clip is from the second movement, the first of the two scherzi in the work.