Symphony No. 10 (Mahler)

The Symphony No. 10 by Gustav Mahler was written in 1910 and 1911, and was his final composition. At the time of Mahler's death the composition was substantially complete as a draft, but was unperformable in that state.

Musical form

Mahler occasionally used a five movement structure for his symphonies rather than the more traditional four movement structure, and for the Tenth he devised a convincing symmetrical structure with two large slow movements enclosing a core of faster inner movements, at the very centre of which is the deceptive Purgatorio movement.

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The very opening of the symphony maintains a connection with the final movement of the Ninth. A long bleak Andante melody played by violas alone is answered by the fuller, warm string tone of the Adagio, which has as much of a valedictory character as the earlier work. As the movement unfolds the viola melody periodically returns, punctuating the structure. After a climax both violins attempt a desolate counterpoint of this melody, which only brings a violent upheaval from the full orchestra. The passage ends in extraordinary dissonance, a horror which Mahler seems to be indicating must be overcome, but the movement dies away without finding any resolution to the conflict.

Related Topics:
Andante - Adagio

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The second movement, the first of two brilliant Scherzo movements, consists of two main ideas, the first of which is notated in consistently changing metres, which would have proved a challenge to Mahler's conducting technique had he lived to perform the symphony. This alternates with a joyful and typically Mahlerian Ländler. It is almost certainly this movement Paul Stefan had in mind when he described the symphony as containing "gaiety, even exuberance" (Cooke's translation).

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The Purgatorio movement (originally entitled Purgatorio oder Inferno - Purgatory or Hell - but the word "Inferno" was struck out) is a brief vignette presenting a struggle between alternately bleak and carefree melodies with a perpetuum mobile accompaniment, that are soon subverted by a diabolical undercurrent of more cynical music. The short movement fails to end in limbo though, as after a brief recapitulation a sudden harp arpeggio and gong stroke pull the rug out from under it; it is consigned to perdition by a final grim utterance from the double basses.

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The scene is now set for the second scherzo, which has a somewhat driven and harried character, and this also has significant connections to Mahler's recent work: the sorrowful first movement of Das Lied von der Erde, Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde. There is an annotation on the cover of the draft to the effect that in this movement "The Devil dances with me", and at the very end Mahler wrote "Ah! God! Farewell my lyre!". Cooke's version finishes with a percussion coda employing both timpanists, bass drum, and a large military drum which is to be muffled, that leads directly into the final slow movement.

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The use of the military drum stems from a funeral procession that Mahler once observed: one day in the winter of 1907 when the Mahlers were staying in New York, the cortége of a deceased fire chief passed way below their hotel window, and from high up the only sound that could be heard was the muffled stroke of a large bass drum. The introduction to the fifth movement re-enacts this scene as a rising line on tubas supported by two double bassoons slowly tries to make headway and is repeatedly negated by the loud (but muffled) drum strokes.

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The emotional weight of the symphony is resolved by the long final movement, which incorporates and ties together music from the earlier movements, whereby the opening passage of the symphony, now transferred to the horns, is found to be the answer to tame the savage dissonance that had racked the end of the first movement. The music of the flute solo that was heard after the introductory funeral scene can now return to close the symphony peacefully, and unexpectedly, in the principal major key. The draft for this movement reveals that Mahler had originally written the ending in B flat major, but in the process of revision worked the same music into F sharp major.

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