Mahler Symphony No. 1; a nagging thought....

[fergus]

I was listening to a version of the Mahler Symphony No. 1 this evening and I was struck, as I always am when I listen to this work, by how amazingly good a first symphony it is. It seems a remarkably mature work both in terms of content but particularly in structure and orchestration for a relatively young composer’s first attempt at the form. Given that I am quite biased to the fact that Mahler was a genius and that he had of course written high quality material prior to this work I still cannot quite feel that this was an inspired first attempt. My question is, and I would be interested in Seán’s take on this as I know that he has one or two versions of the work, does anyone else believe that Mahler made a few previous practice runs for this symphony and ultimately destroyed or buried his test attempts? If that is the case I wonder if the earlier attempts will ever surface....I am sure that they would be fascinating if they did (both exist and turn up, I mean).

[Jared]

well, I suppose he was 27 when M1 was completed... not particularly young, as we know. I've had a look at the Wiki page which seems to suggest that the Symph incorporates music from previous works, which I suppose isn't unusual for a 1st Symphony, either...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._1_(Mahler)

[fergus]

Cheers for that Jared.

[Seán]

I doubt if Mahler had written large works that were dumped before he wrote, performed and published his First Symphony. The work that we hear today is entirely different from his first draft which had five movements. Mahler used to revisit his Symphonies and rewrite sections so he was always improving them so we are now listening to a finely refined masterpiece. When you consider that it is based, in part, on his earlier song cycle then we must assume that he had firm ideas to build on. His First Symphony is an extraordinary work but he was one of a kind.

[fergus]

No, I agree Seán that Mahler would not have dumped large works prior to his first symphony. I am aware that there were a few versions of the work prior to final publication but it is the measure of maturity in the area of form (call it structure or architecture if you will) that I doubt could just come from nowhere even given the quality of his previous output and I believe that there must have been some drafts for this work before he settled on a first public performance.

[Ciaran]

I used to have an LP (Solti/LSO) of M1 on which the sleeve note writer confidently declared that Mahler had written several symphonies before the first, but that their location was unknown, and that possibly they had been destroyed. He didn't quote any references and I don't remember reading it anywhere else, so I'm not sure whether to believe it. In fact Mahler strikes me as more of recycler than a destroyer, so on the whole I find it hard to believe that there was much other than earlier drafts of M1.

[fergus]

Thank you for that Ciaran. I also agree that Mahler, like JS Bach whom he admired, was a recycler and as had been mentioned above he incorporated some of what he had previously written into his first symphony. I also agree that it is unlikely that he had discarded a number of earlier symphonies. My thoughts are more inclined to believe that he had written a number of drafts of the first symphony before he got it to the state of relative perfection prior to the first performance and then, as we know, once it was performed it was revised prior to publication once he had heard it live, so to speak.