Symphony No. 9 (Mahler) - Views On and Quotes About The Symphony

Views On and Quotes About The Symphony

The enjoyment of Mahler's Ninth Symphony prompted the essayist Lewis Thomas to write the title essay in his Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler's Ninth Symphony.

Many Mahler interpreters have been moved to speak with similar profundity about the work:

• It expresses an extraordinary love of the earth, for Nature. – Alban Berg

• It is music coming from another world, it is coming from eternity. – Herbert von Karajan

• It is terrifying, and paralyzing, as the strands of sound disintegrate ... in ceasing, we lose it all. But in letting go, we have gained everything. – Leonard Bernstein

• I believe it to be not only his last but also his greatest achievement. – Otto Klemperer

• Ninth is most strange. In it, the author hardly speaks as an individual any longer. It almost seems as though this work must have a concealed author who used Mahler merely as his spokesman, as his mouthpiece. This symphony is no longer couched in the personal tone. It consists, so to speak, of objective, almost passionless statements of a beauty which becomes perceptible only to one who can dispense with animal warmth and feels at home in spiritual coolness . – Arnold Schoenberg

Less favourable views include:

• Someday, some real friends of Mahler's will ... take a pruning knife and reduce his works to the length that they would have been if the composer had not stretched them out of shape; and then the great Mahler war will be over ... The Ninth Symphony would last about twenty minutes. – Deems Taylor