Word: mahlers
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...protest against the destruction of life" moved on contrasting levels, with the mourning liturgical passages accompanied by full chorus and orchestra, and the Owen poetry (sung by tenor and baritone) accompanied by only a small chamber group. The general effect, as one critic noted, was "as though sections of [Mahler's] Das Lied von der Erde had been interpolated into the Verdi Requiem." The bells tolling for the dead in one segment of the Mass were echoed by Owen's line, "What passing-bells for these who die like cattle," while the distant menace of battle was evoked...
Master Plan. The argument revolves partly around the "finality" of Mahler's last draft. Composer Arnold Schoenberg, who was asked by Mahler's widow to complete the symphony shortly after a facsimile edition of the manuscript was published in 1924, decided not to undertake the job. "What his Tenth was to say," wrote Schoenberg, "we shall never know. It seems that the Ninth is the limit." Bruno Walter and other Mahler experts agreed...
After studying the facsimile intensively and "thinking myself into Mahler's mind." Musicologist Cooke decided that he could see "the absolute coherence of the complete master plan. What I had deciphered was not a 'might-have-been' but an 'almost-is': five full-length movements in various states of textural completion, but all sufficiently coherent to add up to a magnificent Symphony in F Sharp; a symphony in two parts." Cooke's BBC version runs 65 minutes and according to his own complex figuring, the various edited parts of it are anywhere from...
Final Version. Dr. Erwin Ratz, president of the International Gustav Mahler Society, demurs. The trouble with Cooke, says Ratz, was that he misunderstood how Mahler worked. The composer normally went from sketches to "raw scoring" to a final version, and, according to Ratz, he was at least two years away from a final version of the Tenth. "Even with his finished works, Mahler did retouching in the instrumentation after a few performances; you cannot say that Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth have the same character they might have had if Mahler himself had lived to perform them...
Cooke's Tenth may not be Mahler's, but in time it could conceivably become the accepted version. When the copyright on the manuscript runs out, and after that, notes one Mahler enthusiast, anyone could do anything with the Tenth-"even turn it into a musical comedy. God forbid...