Symphony No. 10 (Mahler) - Composition

Composition

Mahler started his work on his Tenth Symphony in July 1910 in Toblach, and ended his efforts in September the same year. He never managed to complete the orchestral draft before his premature death at the age of fifty from a streptococcal infection of the blood.

Mahler's drafts and sketches for the Tenth Symphony comprise 72 pages of full score, 50 pages of continuous short score draft (2 pages of which are missing), and a further 44 pages of preliminary drafts, sketches, and inserts. In the form in which Mahler left it, the symphony consists of five movements:

1. Andante – Adagio: 275 bars drafted in orchestral and short score
2. Scherzo: 522 bars drafted in orchestral and short score
3. Purgatorio. Allegro moderato: 170 bars drafted in short score, the first 30 bars of which were also drafted in orchestral score
4. : about 579 bars drafted in short score
5. Finale. Langsam, schwer: 400 bars drafted in short score

The parts in short score were usually in four staves. The designations of some movements were altered as work progressed: for example the second movement was initially envisaged as a finale. The fourth movement was also relocated in multiple instances. Mahler then started on an orchestral draft of the symphony, which begins to bear some signs of haste after the halfway point of the first movement. He had got as far as orchestrating the first two movements and the opening 30 bars of the third movement when he had to put aside work on the Tenth to make final revisions to the Ninth Symphony.

The circumstances surrounding the composition of the Tenth were highly unusual. Mahler was at the height of his compositional powers, but his personal life was in complete disarray, most recently compounded by the revelation that his young wife Alma had had an affair with the architect Walter Gropius. Mahler sought counselling from Sigmund Freud, and on the verge of its successful première in Munich, dedicated the Eighth Symphony to Alma in a desperate attempt to repair the breach. The unsettled frame of Mahler's mind found expression in the despairing comments (many addressed to Alma) written on the manuscript of the Tenth, and must have influenced its composition: on the final page of the short score in the final movement, Mahler wrote, "für dich leben! für dich sterben!" (To live for you! To die for you!) and the exclamation "Almschi!" underneath the last soaring phrase.

The instrumentation of the symphony cannot be defined precisely, owing to the incompleteness of the orchestral draft. However, in the short score there are occasional indications of instrumentation, and some of the orchestration may be surmised from the three movements of the orchestral draft, from which the probable forces include: four flutes, one piccolo, four oboes, four clarinets in B flat and A, with one doubling E flat, three bassoons, two contrabassoons, four horns, four trumpets, four trombones, a tuba, two sets of timpani, tam tam, a large muffled military drum, harp and strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos and double basses). The surviving orchestration does not specify a cor anglais (English horn) or a bass clarinet, bass drum, cymbals, and triangle, although Mahler regularly used these instruments in his other symphonies.