Deryck Cooke on Mahler 10

In Glasgow (8 Oct) and Perth (9 Oct), the BBC SSO's Chief Conductor Designate Antony Hermus will direct over 90 players in Mahler's extraordinary Tenth Symphony.

Although Mahler's final symphony was never completed, the musicologist Deryck Cooke created his first performing version in the 1960s and explained at the time why he felt the need to do so….

The first full-score realisation of Mahler’s sketches was broadcast on the Third Programme (now BBC Radio 3) four days later.

In 1924, thirteen years after Mahler’s death, the sketches of his unfinished Tenth Symphony were published in facsimile. The first and third movements (Adagio and Purgatorio) were thought sufficiently complete to be performed but the other three movements, rightly regarded as impossible to complete, have been neither published nor performed. And there are valid objections to performing the two published movements, since the whole manuscript presents only a first conception, which might have been recast: moreover, the short score Purgatorio has been almost entirely orchestrated, and the full score Adagio considerably touched up, by the editor. The Tenth Symphony would seem to be a mere tantalizing ‘ might-have-been’.

Only towards the end of this long task did the complete master-plan reveal itself, and take my breath away.

Nevertheless, there are overriding reasons why this work, unfinished though it is, should be heard. The first is purely human: we need to know what was Mahler’s state of soul in the last agonizing year of his life: after the near nihilism of the Ninth, did this courageous spirit, as the end drew nearer, sink deeper into despair, or transcend it? Mahler, the unashamed symphonic autobiographer, would surely have wished us to know this, particularly as the answer is a positive one. By regarding the heart-broken finale of the Ninth as his final comment on life, we have been doing him a grave injustice. The second reason is purely musical: we should know what this prophetic and continually developing composer was exploring in his last days. Did he intensify the tonal disruption and ever-closer thematic unity of the two preceding works, or strike out a new path?

Objections will certainly be raised: the two published movements partly satisfy our curiosity, human and musical; the remainder can be seen in the facsimile; and to perform this remainder, we should have to ‘doctor’ it beyond legitimate bounds. The first two objections are fallacious. Isolated from the whole symphony, the two published movements are misleading, and the three manuscript movements reveal little to the eye: their barely legible notation, crossing-out, writings-over, and rough hints, need the utmost care and application to decipher. So far as I know, no one has given the manuscript more than a cursory examination, with the result that the whole nature of the work has been entirely misunderstood.

When I first examined the facsimile, I too was disheartened; it seemed hopelessly fragmentary. But eager to know all I could of Mahler’s last musical thoughts, I began making a fair copy. After deciphering every sign on the score, I found in front of me something for more meaningful that I had imagined possible. I then corrected this tentative first draft, balancing each dubious note against the general sense of the passage concerned, of other similar passages, of the whole movement concerned, and often of the whole symphony. Only towards the end of this long task did the absolute coherence of the complete master-plan reveal itself, and take my breath away.

Deryck Cooke article written for the Radio Times

What I had deciphered was not a ‘might-have-been’, but an ‘almost-is’: five full-length movements in various stages of textural completion, but all sufficiently coherent to add up to a magnificent Symphony in F sharp; a symphony in two parts.

With regard to the notes: the Adagio and the Purgatorio are pure Mahler. In the other three movements listeners will hear 95 per cent. Mahler (that is, the music as it stands, with – most important – the spacing of the texture unchanged); the remaining five per cent consists merely of conjectural readings of illegible notes and conjectural fillings-in of missing notes and chords – nearly all obvious, and subsidiary. I have ‘composed’ nothing.

Secondly, the orchestration: the Adagio is practically pure Mahler (I have rejected the unstylistic additions of the published score); the Purgatorio is, I think, very near to Mahler. The four extracts from Scherzo I are about 80 per cent Mahler; I have merely added the necessary doublings to the ‘essential’ orchestration of the main scherzo material and closing pages; the two trios and the slow interlude will be played almost exactly as they stand.

Humphrey Lyttelton and Deryck Cooke

I need no telling that to attempt to orchestrate Mahler would be ludicrous impertinence. But ‘orchestrate’ is not quite the right word here; Mahler conceived this music orchestrally , and his short scores are blueprints for instrumentation; if studied and auralized persistently enough, they score themselves – in essentials. The fantastic new world of sound which Mahler was no doubt imagining is of course beyond conjecture, but I believe I have divined his ‘essential’ orchestration to within about 80 percent. I have been greatly helped by Berthold Goldschmidt, who suggested many striking improvements in orchestral detail, but I am entirely responsible for the whole general layout.

I am convinced that my apparently presumptuous undertaking will prove justified; that these last two movements, though slightly touched up and entirely scored by another hand, will reveal themselves as among Mahler’s very finest conceptions; and that it will be realised for the first time that the Tenth Symphony, far from being a pathetic, fragmentary product of failing powers, is the near-realization of a final, spiritually victorious masterpiece.

This article was adapted from Deryck Cooke’s feature Mahler’s Unfinished Symphony, published in The Listener on 15 December 1960. The first full-score realisation of Mahler’s sketches was broadcast on the Third Programme (now BBC Radio 3) four days later.