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Mahler's Seventh Symphony (Studies in
Musical Genesis, Structure, and

Interpretation) 1st Edition Anna Stoll
Knecht
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Mahler’s Seventh Symphony
S t u d i e s i n M u s i c a l G e n e s i s, S t ru c t u re , a n d
I n t e r p retat i o n
Terry Riley’s In C
Robert Carl
Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations
William Kinderman
Beethoven’s “Appassionata” Sonata
Martha Frohlich
Richard Strauss’s Elektra
Bryan Gilliam
Wagner’s Das Rheingold
Warren Darcy
Beethoven’s Piano Sonata in E, Op. 109
Nicholas Marston
Mahler’s Fourth Symphony
James L. Zychowicz
Vaughan Williams’s Ninth Symphony
Alain Frogley
Debussy’s Ibéria
Matthew Brown
Bartok’s Viola Concerto
Donald Maurice
Mendelssohn’s “Italian” Symphony
John Michael Cooper
Berg’s Wozzeck
Patricia Hall
Wagner’s Parsifal
William Kinderman
Webern and the Lyric Impulse
Anne C. Shreffler
Anna Stoll Knecht
ANNA STOLL KNECHT
MAHLER’S
SEVENTH
SYMPHONY
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Stoll Knecht, Anna, 1979– author. |
Mahler, Gustav, 1860–1911. Symphonies, no. 7.
Title: Mahler’s Seventh symphony / Anna Stoll Knecht.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, 2019. |
Series: Studies in musical genesis, structure, and interpretation |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018045906 | ISBN 9780190491116 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9780190050573 (epub)
Classification: LCC ML410 .M23 K64 2019 | DDC 784.2/184—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018045906
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
This volume is published with the generous support of the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the
American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and
the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019).
© Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
À mon père
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford
University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
CONTENTS
Series Editor’s Foreword ix

Acknowledgments xi
Note on Sources xiii
About the Companion Website xv
List of Abbreviations xvii
Introduction 1
1. Premiere and Reception 6
Premiere 7
Reception 15
The “Problems” of the Seventh 25
2. Structure, Interpretation, and Genesis 36
Structure 36
Main Interpretive Leads 44
Genesis 56
3. Compositional History 64
Autobiographical and Biographical Evidence 65
Musical Evidence 75
4. Rondo-Finale 89
Form and Content 90
Interpretive Views 113
5. Genesis of the Rondo-Finale 123
The Vienna Sketchbook and the Moldenhauer Sketches 124
The Paris Sketchbook Leaves and the Moldenhauer
Sketches 140
Other Sketches and Drafts for the Finale 153
6. Nachtmusiken 160
The First Nachtmusik 161
The Second Nachtmusik 183
7. Scherzo 209
Dancing Death (“Der Teufel tantz es mit mir”) 209
University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
viii : Contents
Structure 212
Sketches and Drafts 216
Walpurgis Night 229
8. First Movement 232
Beginning of the Seventh 232
Form and Content 241
Sketches and Drafts 252
(Auto)biography, Genesis, and Interpretation 257
9. Die Meistersinger in the Seventh Symphony 266
The Meistersinger References in the Finale 268
Quartal Harmony in the Seventh and Meistersinger 278
Preliminary Sketches in the Vienna Sketchbook 281
E minor to C major: From Night to Day 284
Mahler and Beckmesser 290
Conclusion 294
What the Genesis Tells Us 294
“Problems” of the Seventh 298
From Tragedy to Comedy 301
Beginnings and Ends 304
Appendices 309
A: Manuscripts and Editions of the Seventh Symphony 309
B: Mahler Discography 313
F: Formal Tables 315
M: Motivic Tables 329
CSk: Correspondences between the Sketches 341
MSk: Motivic Table for the Sketches 343
Synopsis of Richard Wagner’s Die Meistersinger
von Nürnberg 345
Bibliography 349
Index 361
SERIES EDITOR’S FOREWORD
The Oxford series Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation

extends back to 1985, when Philip Gossett’s landmark volume on Donizetti’s
Anna Bolena was published. Since then, each volume in the series has sought to
elucidate the detail of musical creation in a single work by a major composer.
Originally, this activity was more concentrated on the relationship between
genesis and the final structure of the work. From around the turn of the
millennium, however, the series expanded its purpose to include issues of
interpretation, with a view to placing individual works within a continuum
not just from sketch to score but also on to premiere and subsequent recep-
tion. Under Lewis Lockwood’s founding editorship, the Genesis series looked
primarily to Romantic-era works, while since then it has embraced many key
compositions of the twentieth century, and looks forward soon to embrace
questions of genesis, structure, and interpretation within the digital world
of the twenty-first century.
In this book Anna Stoll Knecht’s subject is Mahler’s “Cinderella” sym-
phony, his “jubilant” Seventh, often considered a poor cousin to the “tragic”
Sixth. Stoll Knecht provides a powerful addition to all aspects of the Genesis
series’s purposes. To the study of musical genesis she brings a strong focus
on “discarded” materials. While so many sketch studies are mainly con-
cerned with showing how early ideas developed into the content of the
ultimate piece, Stoll Knecht shows how materials that were discarded be-
tween sketch and final score often play a crucial role in explaining Mahler’s
compositional process. In her analyses she draws particular attention to the
relevance of the world of theater and circus to this symphony, and thereby
asserts the “profound nature of theater, using fiction and humor, to expose
truths.” She warns, in her Conclusion, that “a reconstruction of a work’s
genesis . . . [offers] a picture that does not necessarily correspond to an as-
sessment of the finished work.” Her study is, as well, a major contribution to
vexed questions of interpretation: what does the Seventh tell about Mahler’s
reception of Wagner, and not just in the Symphony’s triumphalist Finale?
Is the Seventh Symphony a sequel to, or rather a companion of, the Sixth?
Stoll Knecht’s volume is the first in this series to turn the series tem-
plate so thoroughly on its chronological head. Most Genesis studies begin
with a dutiful chronicling of genetic materials, and over time relate this
genetic account to their analyses of the published work; they then go on to
University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
x : Series Editor’s Foreword
address some aspects of interpretation, whether in performance, publication,

recording, legalities, or audience reception. Stoll Knecht begins her chapter
roll-call, however, with the work’s premiere and reception (Chapter 1), and
the first movement she subjects to detailed investigation is the work’s Rondo-
Finale (Chapters 4 and 5), while the last (and last completed) movement
she accounts for is the first (Chapter 8). Hence, my suggestion that a reader
of this volume might well follow suit, and choose first to read her con-
cise Conclusion, which begins with the enticing quotation: “Mahler is a
Shakespearean clown” (William Ritter). There, in a few pages, she explains
what she sees as this book’s contributions to Mahlerian knowledge, as well
as to the essential purposes of the Genesis series. Then, with this summary
tutorial in beginnings and endings firmly in mind, it is time for your reading
to begin, at the book’s beginning.
No study of musical genesis can exist today without sustained reference
to materials held in archives and libraries across the world. A small portion
of those relevant materials can appear in the volume itself, with appropriate
acknowledgment, but many more materials cannot be made available within
the confines of this single book. They are, however, still very important
in understanding the wider context of its contents, hence, the occasional
footnote references to external repository websites, as well as to the many
materials that are placed upon Oxford University Press’s web pages that ac-
company this book.
Malcolm Gillies
Australian National University
King’s College London
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A great number of individuals and institutions provided sup-

port during the writing process. Postdoctoral fellowships from the Swiss
National Science Foundation (2014–2015) and the British Academy (2015–
2018) allowed me to complete the book. Along with a non-stipendiary Junior
Research Fellowship (2015–2018), Jesus College in Oxford offered the best
working conditions I could ever dream of. My thanks also go to the Claire
and Barry Brook Endowment of the American Musicological Society (partly
funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation) for the AMS Publication Subvention 2016 that cov-
ered the costs of facsimiles reproduction.
I am particularly grateful to Suzanne Ryan at Oxford University Press,
who provided invaluable advice and feedback along the road, to Victoria
Kouznetsov for her editorial work; and to the series editor Malcolm Gillies,
who had the patience to work with me all the way to help me improve
the manuscript, and whose steady support was critical in moments of dis-
couragement. My anonymous reviewers offered insightful comments, which
proved useful at each stage of the “compositional process.”
Special thanks are due to my successive PhD advisors and postdoc-
toral mentors, in New York and Oxford: the late Robert Bailey, Michael
Beckerman, Laurence Dreyfus, and Laura Tunbridge. They all helped more
than they know, by accompanying me through the difficult task of be-
ginning and finishing a book. Stanley Boorman has been another mentor
during my years of apprenticeship at New York University. Other friends
and colleagues generously took time to read and comment on selected chap-
ters: Barry Millington, Peter Davison, Peter Franklin, Stephen Hefling,
Julian Johnson, William Kinderman, Seth Monhanan, Marilyn McCoy,
Vera Micznik, Thomas Peattie, Friedemann Sallis, Lola San Martin, and
Merel van Tilburg. My thanks to Lukas Beck, Katinka Urbanovici, and Yasha
Knecht for their editing work.
Peter Poltun opened the secret door of the music archive in Vienna, al-
ways ready to talk about Mahler, Wagner, and manuscripts, and making me
feel at home at the Staatsoper. Christiane Mühlegger-Henhapel and Lydia
Groebl at the Theatermuseum, Thomas Leibnitz at the Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, Thomas Aigner at the Wienbibliothek im Rathaus,
Renate Stark-Voit and Severin Matiasovits at the Internationale Gustav
University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
xii : Acknowledgments
Mahler Gesellschaft, and Robert Kaldy-Karo at the Circus & Clown Museum
Vienna granted me access to their material and offered advice when needed.
Special thanks to Stefan Buchon and Renate for helping me read Mahler’s
handwriting and sharing Viennese beer.
In Paris, the team of the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler have been wel-
coming and wonderful for many years, and my heartfelt thanks go particu-
larly to Alena Parthonnaud, who encouraged me through each stage of the
writing process. The soul of the place is deeply missed today: Henry-Louis
de La Grange passed away on January 27, 2017, leaving a great void, and I owe
him more than I can say. Other libraries in Munich and in New York granted
me access to their collections and offered ideal working conditions, partic-
ularly Dr. Schaumberg at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Maria Molestina
and Fran Barulich at the Morgan Library & Museum, Barbara Haws at the
New York Philharmonic Archives, and Robert Kosovsky at the New York
Public Library for the Performing Arts.
I feel very privileged to be surrounded by so many colleagues and friends,
Mahlerians and non-Mahlerians. The fellows of Jesus College know when
to ask the right question (at port time)—particularly the principal Sir
Nigel Shadbolt, Ash Asudeh, Philip Burrows, Andrew Dancer, Paulina
Kewes, Tosca Lynch, Jean-Alexandre Perras, and Dominic Wilkinson. The
Faculty of Music at Oxford provided another stimulating environment and
much appreciated conversations, particularly with Roger Allen, Eric Clarke,
Jonathan Cross, Daniel Grimley, Jason Stanyek, and Laura Tunbridge. The
MahlerFest in Boulder, Colorado, gave me the opportunity to talk about
Mahler for days in a stunning landscape with other “fanatics”—particularly
Peter Davison, who was the first to listen and encourage me on the circus
track, David Auerbach, Steven Bruns, and Marilyn McCoy. Other inspiring
scholars whose support has proved indispensable include Jeremy Barham,
Scott Burnham, Warren Darcy, Walter Frisch, Thomas Grey, Kevin Karnes,
Richard Kramer, Karen Painter, and Morten Solvik. I am grateful to the
friends who graciously hosted me during my research trips: Katinka in Paris,
Walter and Marilyn in New York, Didier and Chantal in Vienna, and Pierre,
Françoise, and William Stonborough who became my Viennese family. To
my friends Aloïse Fiala-Murphy, Bobby Grampp, Christophe Imperiali,
Inspector Morse, Ned O’Gorman, Marlyse and Maxime Pietri, Mathilde
Reichler, and Merel Van Tilburg: thank you for being there. Last but not
least, my loving thanks to our families, the Knechts and the Stolls, particu-
larly to our parents, Nina and my late father Pierre, Giovanna and Ueli, and
to my godmother Silvia, who all provided limitless support and comfort over
the years. My husband Luca and our sons Arturo, César, and Teodoro are at
the heart of this book, as in everything else in my life.
Oxford, September 2018
(Liber primus finitus!)
NOTE ON SOURCES
The author thanks the following institutions for permission

to reproduce source materials: the Theatermuseum, Österreichische
Nationalbibliothek, and Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft in
Vienna; the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in Paris; the Morgan Library
& Museum and the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in
New York; and the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich.
Excerpts from Chapters 1, 3, 5, and 6 appeared in Naturlauf: Scholarly
Journeys Toward Gustav Mahler. Essays in Honour of Henry-Louis de La Grange for His
90th Birthday, ed. Paul-André Bempéchat (Peter Lang, 2016); excerpts from
Chapter 8 appeared in Texts and Beyond: The Process of Music Composition from the
19th to the 20th Century, ed. Jonathan Goldman (Ut Orpheus, 2016); and an
earlier version of Chapter 9 appeared in Rethinking Mahler, ed. Jeremy Barham
(Oxford University Press, 2017).
Translations of quotations are mine, unless otherwise indicated. Original
versions are not systematically given in footnotes, only when the original
text is particularly difficult to translate. References to scores are made with
measure numbers, but some rehearsal numbers are provided as additional
clues. I use Roman numerals for Mahler’s symphonies and Arabic numerals
for the movements (VII/1 = first movement of the Seventh Symphony).
I refer to specific passages in Meistersinger Acts I, II, and III with the page
number in the Peters/Dover orchestral score, followed by the measure
number on that page (651/1 = p. 651 Dover score, measure 1).
In musical examples, I refer to specific locations on the sketches by
indicating the staff number followed by the measure number on the staff
(4/3 = staff 4, measure 3). Transposing instruments are all noted in C.
Cells and motives are indicated in small bold letters in the text, to dis-
tinguish them from themes indicated in capital letters. However, selected
motives (like Motive B in VII/4) are also indicated in capital letters because
of their structural importance.
Transcriptions of sketches in musical examples are not always exhaus-
tive, as I only transcribe what I seek to highlight. Readers should consult
facsimiles hosted on the companion website for a complete vision of the
document.
University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
ABOUT THE COMPANION
WEBSITE
www.oup.com/us/mahlersseventhsymphony
Music3
Book3234
Oxford has created a password-protected website to accompany Mahler’s

Seventh Symphony. Material that cannot be made available in a book, namely
a large number of facsimiles and source descriptions, is provided here. The
reader is encouraged to consult this resource in conjunction to the chapters.
Material available online is indicated in the text with Oxford’s symbol .
University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
ABBREVIATIONS
ACA Amsterdam Concertgebouw Archives.

AM Mahler, Alma. Gustav Mahler: Erinnerungen und Briefe.
Amsterdam: Allert De Lange, 1940.
AME Mahler, Alma. Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters. 4th ed.
Eds. Donald Mitchell and Knud Martner, trans. Basil
Creighton. London: Cardinal, 1990.
BSM Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich.
GMB Gustav Mahler Briefe. Rev. ed. Herta Blaukopf.
Vienna: Zsolnay, 1996.
GMF Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde Library, Vienna.
HLG1 La Grange, Henry Louis de. Mahler. Volume One.
New York: Doubleday, 1973.
HLG2 La Grange, Henry Louis de. Gustav Mahler. Vienna: The Years
of Challenge. Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1995.
HLG3 La Grange, Henry Louis de. Gustav Mahler. Vienna: Triumph
and Disillusion. Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999.
HLG4 La Grange, Henry Louis de. Gustav Mahler. A New Life
Cut Short. Oxford and New York: Oxford University
Press, 2008.
IGMG Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft, Vienna.
KGA Symphonie Nr. 7 in fünf Sätzen für grosses Orchester. Partitur.
Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Band VII. Ed. Erwin Ratz for the
Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft. Vienna: Bote
& Bock, 1960.
LPA New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
MMM Médiathèque Musicale Mahler, Paris.
NBL Bauer-Lechner, Natalie. Gustav Mahler, Erinnerungen von
Natalie Bauer-Lechner. Ed. Herbert Killian, annotated and
University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
xviii : Abbreviations
commented by Knud Martner. Hamburg: Karl Dieter

Wagner, 1984.
NBLE Bauer-Lechner, Natalie. Recollections of Gustav Mahler. Ed.
and annotated by Peter Franklin, trans. Dika Newlin.
London, Faber and Faber, 2013 (1980).
NKG Symphonie Nr. 7 in fünf Sätzen für grosses Orchester. Partitur.
Neue Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Ed. Reinhold Kubik for
the Internationalen Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft.
Vienna: Boosey & Hawkes—Bote & Bock, 2012.
ÖNB Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.
ÖTM Österreichisches Theatermuseum, Vienna.
PML Morgan Library & Museum, New York.
SBW Wienbibliothek im Rathaus, Vienna.
Introduction
This book aims at fulfilling the purposes of the series Studies in Musical
Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation: to offer an interpretation of a major work based
on a close reading of the score combined with a reconstruction of its genetic
history, and to show how these perspectives interact with each other. In investi-
gating how the Seventh Symphony was conceived and what kinds of experiences
led Gustav Mahler to make his compositional choices, it offers a reassessment
of one of his most controversial works. Far from being limited to providing
information on the chronology of the compositional process, genetic studies
can generate a new hearing of the work and allow us to raise broader interpre-
tive issues.
In the case of the Seventh Symphony, analyzing the sketches leads us to
ponder the question of Mahler’s reception of Richard Wagner, and therefore
to rethink much-debated questions concerning Mahler’s cultural identity. In
showing how these questions can be addressed through an examination of the
preliminary sketches, my study encourages us to grant more attention to the so-
called discarded material and to consider it as an integral part of the composi-
tional history and identity of an artwork. Mahler’s compositional materials for
the Seventh have been only partially published so far, and existing analyses tend
to focus on the material that has been “used” in the finished version.
This book provides the first thorough analysis of the sketches and drafts
for the Seventh, and sheds new light on its complex compositional history.
While all of the sources are considered, my exploration concentrates on the
early phase of the composition, documented by a large number of prelimi-
nary sketches, thus placing less emphasis on the later evolution of the work.1
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony, completed in 1905, stands out as one of
the most provocative symphonic statements of the early twentieth century.
1
Edward Reilly’s contribution in the Facsimile of the Seventh provides an account
of the main differences between the fair copy, the copyist’s score, and the final ver-
sion. See “The Manuscripts of the Seventh Symphony,” in Gustav Mahler: Facsimile of
University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
2 : Mahler’s Seventh Symphony
Mahler’s musical past is summoned in a particular way in this work, weaving

a complex web of associations that provide multiple hermeneutic leads. At
the time of its first performance in 1908, the reception of the Seventh was
rather positive. But when Mahler’s music began to be performed, recorded,
and discussed more broadly in the 1960s, the Seventh was left behind and
progressively acquired the status of “Cinderella” in the Mahlerian canon.
Even though interest for the Seventh has increased in the last decades, it is
still generally considered as an “enigma” or a “puzzle,” which implies that
there is a key to find that would unravel its mystery.
I isolate two main factors in the reception of the Seventh as “problem-
atic.” First, it has been often perceived as “existing in the shadow” of the
Sixth Symphony. The common assessment of the Seventh as a fragmented,
disengaged, and even bombastic work appears to stem from comparison with
the Sixth, considered to be fundamentally unified, sincere, and tragic. When
Mahler’s music is discussed in close connection with his biography, the Sixth
is used as a crucial point in a linear narrative, seen as foreshadowing sorrowful
events in the composer’s life. In turn, the Seventh has been characterized
merely as what comes after—“music after the catastrophe,” as Hans-Klaus
Jungheinrich put it.2 According to some commentators, not a single trace of
Mahler’s spiritual struggle is to be found in this puzzling work, concluding
as it does with an apparently happy ending in C major, which would inap-
propriately follow the fatal hammer blows of the Sixth. This happy ending
constitutes the second “problem” of the Seventh. It has been heard as too
noisy, too jubilant; and, most of all, “too reminiscent” of Wagner’s opera
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.3 In a way, the first movements of the Sixth and
Seventh would be too similar and their last movements too different.
Close examination of the sketches shows that, in fact, the composition
of the Seventh was deeply entangled with that of the Sixth, even more than
previously thought. It suggests that besides composing the two Nachtmusiken
in the summer of 1904, Mahler was also at work on the Finale of the Seventh
while he was completing the outer movements of the Sixth. This challenges
the usual chronological division between the Nachtmusiken completed first in
1904, and the first, third, and fifth movements that were previously assumed
the Seventh Symphony, eds. Donald Mitchell and Edward Reilly (Amsterdam: Rosbeek
Publishers, 1995), 75–95.
2
Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich, “Nach der Katastrophe: Anmerkungen zu einer
aktuellen Rezeption der Siebten Symphonie,” in Mahler—eine Herausforderung: Ein
Symposion, ed. Peter Ruzicka (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1977), 197.
3
Deryck Cooke, Gustav Mahler: An Introduction to His Music (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 91.
Introduction : 3
to have mostly been composed in 1905. Thus, large parts of the Sixth and
Seventh were composed around the same period of time and were drawn
from a common reservoir of compositional materials. This brings them even
closer to each other, like twins. But it necessarily challenges the view of the
Seventh as a consequence of the Sixth and pleads for a hearing of the work
in its own terms, as revealing another aspect of Mahler’s world, complemen-
tary to the one presented in the Sixth.
The sketches for the Seventh also provide insight into the Meistersinger
question. Mahler’s open allusions to Wagner’s Meistersinger in the Finale are,
I argue, merely the audible remainder of a deeper compositional inter-
pretation of Wagner’s music. Indeed, Meistersinger references can be traced
throughout the whole symphony and concentrate on the character of
Beckmesser.4 Mahler’s treatment of Wagner parallels Beckmesser’s onstage
performance, in that both “borrow” musical material from another composer
and radically transform its original meaning. Mahler’s musical allusions have
been often cited by his detractors to demonstrate a supposed lack of orig-
inality; and this critique, implicitly addressed to Beckmesser in Meistersinger,
relates to anti-Semitic stereotypes such as those conveyed in Wagner’s Das
Judentum in der Musik. By using Beckmesser’s own music as a structural element
in his symphony, Mahler casts new light on that character’s artistic poten-
tial and presents him as an unsuspected kind of innovator, whose art con-
tains the germs of future developments in twentieth-century music. The fact
that Beckmesserian references are more explicit in the preliminary sketches
than in the final version suggests that Mahler, while openly alluding to the
Mastersingers Guild theme in the Finale, sought to obscure his interest in
Beckmesser’s music. Therefore, what has been considered as “problematic”
about the Seventh—its relationship to the Sixth Symphony and to Wagner’s
Meistersinger—lies at the core of Mahler’s compositional project and can be
taken as a key to interpreting the work.
My analysis of the finished work adds another dimension to this reading
that does not emerge from my study of the compositional materials: the
relevance of the world of theater and circus for the Seventh. If the Sixth
Symphony ends with destruction, the Seventh concludes on a nose-thumbing
gesture defying death. Mahler’s “happy endings” raise unique interpretive
problems. Theodor Adorno condemned Mahler’s affirmative movements
as too “theatrical.” He acknowledged Mahler’s close affinities with opera
but reserved his praise for tragic endings, criticizing the composer’s “vainly
4
For references to Wagner’s Meistersinger, see the synopsis of the opera in the
Appendix.
jubilant” finales as insincere and triumphalist.5 The circus offers a powerful

metaphor to rethink Mahler’s theatricality, particularly in terms of humor.
This form of “slapstick” comedy, based on gesture and sound, throws new
light on Mahler’s affirmative music: excessive and noisy joy does not neces-
sarily imply artificiality and irony. Rather, we might see it as expressing the
profound nature of theater, using fiction and humor to expose truths.
I stumbled across Mahler’s Seventh Symphony by chance in 2007.
Wandering about the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts,
I was looking for a topic for my “Introduction to Musicology” archival
report. The Bruno Walter papers caught my attention, and I picked the
“Sketches for the Scherzo of the Seventh Symphony by Gustav Mahler.”
I pondered how to persuade the curator of the music manuscripts to let a
first-year graduate student look at a Mahler autograph, thinking that if my
plan did not work out, I could try with Ernest Chausson (sketches for the
Symphony in B♭ Major in the Rose Bampton collection). Miraculously, my
plan succeeded. This was my first close contact with a music sketch and my
first serious encounter with Mahler. I thus entered into the Seventh through
Mahler’s handwriting, studying a written trace of his compositional process
for a work I knew very little about.
Ten years ago, I was far from imagining that the sketches for the Scherzo
of the Seventh would lead me to discuss Mahler’s relationship to Wagner’s
anti-Semitism, or the arrival of the “Greatest Show on Earth” in Vienna in
1900. In fact, the origins of the circus topic seem as coincidental as my first
encounter with the Seventh in New York. It is to the late Henry-Louis de La
Grange that I owe this recent development in my approach to the Seventh.
(One could say that the circus is a late thought, added in my own “orchestral
draft.”) The last time we met, in June 2015, La Grange caught me by surprise,
asking me abruptly about the Finale of the Seventh: “I don’t understand
this movement. Can you give me one word, just one word to describe it?”
Without thinking, I answered, “The circus.” He seemed happy with my an-
swer, even if it came out of nowhere. A year later, having forgotten all about
this conversation, I began exploring the circus lead in the Finale, and since
then the topic began to expand in unexpected ways.
In this book, each movement of the Seventh Symphony is considered
through a double perspective, genetic and analytic, with the intent to show
how sketch studies and analytical approaches complement each other. To
avoid disruption in my argument, a description of each manuscript source,
with an analysis of its contents, is found in the Appendix. Some Appendices
5
Theodor Adorno, Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy, trans. Edmund Jephcott
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 137.
Introduction : 5
are located in the book, others on the companion website. The book includes
the following: Manuscripts and Editions of the Seventh Symphony (A),
Mahler Discography (B), Formal Tables for each movement (F), Motivic
Tables for each movement (M), Correspondences between the Sketches
(CSk), Motivic Table for the Sketches (MSk), and a synopsis of Wagner’s
Meistersinger. On the companion website, the reader will find descriptions and
selected facsimiles of the manuscripts for the Seventh (MS), as well as Alban
Berg’s comments on selected sketches (BC). Some facsimiles and transcrip-
tions are included in the book when necessary to follow my arguments.
The first three chapters provide a background for the analyses unfolding
in Chapters 4 to 9. Chapter 1 begins with the premiere of the Seventh and
retraces the history of its reception. Chapter 2 examines the overall structure
of the work, outlines my main interpretive leads, and raises questions on
the relationships between genesis, structure, and interpretation. In Chapter 3
I present biographical and musical evidence used to reconstruct the gen-
esis of the Seventh. Chapters 4 to 8 discuss each movement of the work
separately, beginning with the finished version before turning to the com-
positional materials (though, at times, consideration of a specific sketch
is inserted in my analysis of the movement). Two factors led me to begin
with the end: first, the Finale plays a crucial role in the perception of the
Seventh as a “problematic” work; second, most of the extant composi-
tional materials relate to the Finale. Due to the high volume of preliminary
sketches connected to the Finale, I discuss the movement in its final version
and its genesis in two separate chapters (Chapters 4 and 5). The following
chapters examine the other movements in their order of composition: the
Nachtmusiken (Chapter 6), the Scherzo (Chapter 7), and the first movement,
which was completed last (Chapter 8). The last chapter offers a reading of
the Seventh from the perspective of its association with Wagner’s Meistersinger,
which sounds loud and clear in the Finale, and in a more subtle way in
other movements. Replacing the movements in the right order, the conclu-
sion offers a broader picture of the Seventh, presenting it as moving away
from the tragedy of the Sixth toward comedy. This symphony shows, in a
unique way within Mahler’s output, that humor can be taken as a form of
sublimation. The relevance of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony for our polarized
times is clear: it reminds us that we need to cultivate and transmit a comical
spirit, for it feeds on contradictions and allows them to coexist, in ourselves
and in the world.
Chapter 1
Premiere and Reception

One should go at once to listen to this Seventh, his masterpiece, and
maybe the masterpiece of the masterpieces in the world of pure sym-
phony after Beethoven.
Yes, the tear, the fracture, the collapse is not the law but the mode of
the work, and most of all, its great unity.
—William Ritter1
William Ritter’s exuberant enthusiasm for Mahler’s Seventh

Symphony has not been shared by the majority of critics throughout its re-
ception history. “Unquestionably,” wrote Henry-Louis de La Grange thirty
years ago, “the Seventh is the most enigmatic and also the most unpopular
work. It puzzles, it worries, it disconcerts, it shocks, it disturbs.”2 These
words reflect well the discomfort often felt with this piece. Indeed, it has
become a tradition to begin discussing Mahler’s Seventh with an acknowl-
edgment that it is enigmatic, unpopular, and controversial.3
1
William Ritter, “La Septième Symphonie de Gustave Mahler,” Revue Musicale de la
Société Internationale de Musique, Paris, November 15, 1908; and “Septième Symphonie,” un-
published book chapter, August 1912. See William Ritter chevalier de Gustav Mahler: Ecrits,
correspondance, documents, ed. Claude Meylan (Bern: Peter Lang, 2000), 122 and 144.
2
Henry-Louis de La Grange, “L’Énigme de la Septième,” in The Seventh Symphony
of Gustav Mahler: A Symposium, ed. James Zychowicz (Cincinnati: University of
Cincinnati, 1990), 13.
3
See, for example: James Zychowicz, “Ein schlechter Jasager: Considerations on
the Finale to Mahler’s Seventh Symphony,” in The Seventh Symphony of Gustav Mahler: A
Symposium, 99; Peter Revers, “The Seventh Symphony,” in The Mahler Companion, eds.
Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999),
376; or Jens Malte Fischer, Gustav Mahler (Yale: Yale University Press, 2011), 458.
University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190491116.001.0001
Premiere and Reception : 7
Despite a rather positive response at the time of its first performance in 1908,
the Seventh has progressively acquired the status of “problem child” in the
Mahlerian canon.4 Most critiques meet on the following point: the work is puz-
zling and needs to be decoded. Some have also described it as the least unified
and most disparate of Mahler’s symphonies, questioning the coherence of the
work.5 Even if the Seventh is more often performed, researched, and discussed
today than it was in the last decades of the twentieth century, it is still generally
perceived as a puzzling work that “refuses to behave like a Mahler Symphony,”
as Stephen Hefling once put it.6
First, I examine the Seventh’s reception from its premiere in 1908 in order to
determine when the work began to be considered as “problematic,” since early
accounts report that the Seventh had been initially rather well received. I then
focus on two aspects that are central in the negative perception of the work: the
Seventh’s close relationship to the Sixth Symphony; and the noisy Finale, clearly
alluding to Wagner’s opera Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.
Premiere
Mahler attempted to have his Seventh published and premiered soon after
the completion of the copyist’s score in 1906. Just before leaving Vienna
for New York in December 1907, the composer wrote to Peters in Leipzig
to inquire if they would publish his Seventh, “predominantly of cheerful,
humorous nature,” and to ask permission for organizing the premiere in
America.7 Peters was not interested and after other unsuccessful attempts in
1908, Mahler approached Lauterbach & Kuhn in Leipzig, a small publishing
house which eventually was bought out by Bote & Bock at the end of that
4
This is Donald Mitchell’s expression. See “Mahler on the Move: His Seventh
Symphony,” in Discovering Mahler: Writings on Mahler, 1955–2005, ed. Gastón Fournier-
Facio (Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 2007), 394.
5
See, for example, Hans Redlich, Bruckner and Mahler (London: J. M. Dent, 1955),
204–205, who refers to the “heterogeneous assortment of movements he chose
to call his Seventh Symphony”; or Henry-Louis de La Grange, “L’Énigme de la
Septième,” 13.
6
Stephen Hefling, “Techniques of Irony in Mahler’s Œuvre,” in Gustav Mahler et
l’ironie dans la culture viennoise au tournant du siècle. Actes du colloque de Montpellier, 16–18 juillet
1996, eds. André Castagné, Michel Chalon, and Patrick Forençon (Castelnau-le-
Lez: Editions Climats, 2001), 125.
7
See NKG, xx.
Fig. 1.1 Concert Pavilion, Prague. Fonds de La Grange, collection Mahler,

Fondation de France. Deposited at the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler, Paris
year.8 This development caused a delay in the publication of the Seventh,

which appeared only in 1909. Thus, at the time of the work’s premiere in
1908, Mahler still had no publisher.
The Seventh Symphony was premiered on September 19, 1908, in Prague,
under Mahler’s baton, with the “Exhibition Orchestra,” formed of members
of the Czech Philharmonic joined by musicians from the Neues Deutsches
Theater.9 The concert took place in a Concert Pavilion now demolished,
8
According to La Grange, German publishers did not want to take the risk to
publish a Mahler symphony after the relative lack of success of the Fifth and Sixth.
See HLG4, 184; and Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife, eds. Henry-Louis de La Grange
and Günther Weiss in collaboration with Knud Martner, rev. and trans. Anthony
Beaumont (London: Faber and Faber, 2005), 307.
9
See HLG4, 177 and 227; and Knud Martner, Mahler’s Concerts (New York: Kaplan
Foundation, 2010), 231. This Exhibition Orchestra (Ausstellungsorchester) was made of
about a hundred musicians, while for Mahler’s concert in May it only included sixty-
six musicians. See Jitka Ludvová, “Gustav Mahler in Prag im Mai 1908,” Hudební
Věda, 23 (1986): 255–62.
built especially for the Exhibition marking the Jubilee of the Emperor Franz
Joseph I (Fig. 1.1).10
Twenty-five years ago, the facsimile edition of the Seventh described this
picture as the interior of the concert hall of the Municipal House in Prague,
“Obecní dum,” explaining that it was taken when Mahler was rehearsing his
Seventh in September 1908.11 However, Donald Mitchell later corrected this
double mistake: the picture was taken in the Concert Pavilion, not in the
Municipal House; and most probably in May 1908, when Mahler was rehearsing
the first of the two Philharmonic concerts he conducted in Prague that year.12
Mahler conducted the first and the last of the Exhibition concert series,
beginning on May 23 and ending on September 19 with the premiere of
the Seventh. The May program initially consisted of Beethoven’s Seventh
Symphony, the Coriolan Overture, and Wagner’s Tristan and Meistersinger
Preludes. However, at the request of the Exhibition Committee to include
a Czech composition in the program, in order to balance the predominance
of German music, Smetana’s Bartered Bride Overture was added at the last
minute.13 Both concerts conducted by Mahler during the Exhibition in
1908 took place in a context of great tension between Czech-and German-
speaking populations in Bohemia. The emergence of Czech nationalism in
the second half of the nineteenth century contributed to fuel the rise of
German nationalism, and the conflict became critical particularly after 1879,
10
It was the sixtieth anniversary of Franz Joseph’s accession to the throne
(1848). For more details about the Exhibition, see Donald Mitchell, “Mahler in
Prague,” in The Mahler Companion, eds. Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (Oxford and
New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 400–406. All of the exhibition buildings,
except for the Concert Pavilion where the Seventh was performed, are still standing.
11
Donald Mitchell, “Reception,” in Gustav Mahler: Facsimile of the Seventh Symphony,
eds. Donald Mitchell and Edward Reilly (Amsterdam: Rosbeek Publishers, 1995),
35 and 41.
12
Mitchell, “Mahler in Prague.” See also NKG, xxi, note 18. In the French edi-
tion of his Mahler biography, La Grange had correctly identified the location of the
Seventh’s premiere as the demolished Concert Pavilion (Gustav Mahler: chronique d’une
vie, vol. iii [Paris: Fayard, 1979–1984], 341 and 353). As Mitchell notes, the number of
musicians on that picture is closer to sixty than to a hundred, which suggests that the
picture was taken in May and not in September (“Mahler in Prague,” 401, note 3).
For a picture of the Concert Pavilion’s exterior, see “Mahler in Prague,” 402.
13
HLG4, 177. On Mahler’s stay in Prague in May 1908, see HLG4, 176–82; and
Ludvová, “Gustav Mahler in Prag im Mai 1908.”
when Eduard von Taaffe formed a new governing coalition favoring Czech
interests.14
Rehearsals
Mahler came back to Prague in September 1908 to rehearse the Seventh two
weeks in advance (on September 5).15 Several young musicians were present
for the occasion, including Otto Klemperer, who provides an account of
these days with Mahler:
He had about two dozen rehearsals. His technique was remarkable. Each day
after rehearsal he used to take the entire orchestral score home with him for revi-
sion, polishing, and retouching. We younger musicians, Bruno Walter, Bodanzky,
Keussler, and I, would gladly have helped him, but he would not hear of it and did
it all on his own. We usually spent the evenings with him at his hotel. He was re-
laxed and extremely amusing. . . .16
Bruno Walter’s testimony runs along similar lines, mentioning expeditions
into the countryside, conversations with friends, in sum, “cordial harmony.”17
These accounts differ from Alma Mahler’s recollections of the same period.
14
About the Czech-German tension within the Austrian Empire, see David
Brodbeck, Defining Deutschtum: Political Ideology, German Identity, and Music-Critical Discourse
in Liberal Vienna, The New Cultural History of Music (Oxford and New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014), especially 10–11, and chapters 5 and 7.
15
According to La Grange, the rehearsal period was unusually long for Mahler,
because he knew that he would be working with a “relatively inexperienced orchestra”
and still needed to make changes in the score. Mahler made many corrections in the
handwritten orchestral parts in Prague, and later in Munich. See HLG4, 221 and
225. These handwritten parts are unfortunately lost ([St-UA] in NKG, 313 and 319).
A letter from Mahler to Mengelberg indicates that these parts were also used in
Holland in 1909 (see NKG, 320).
16
Otto Klemperer, Minor Recollections, trans. J. Maxwell Brownjohn
(London: Dobson, 1964), 18. This account contradicts Alma Mahler’s claim that
many of Mahler’s friends helped him correct the orchestral parts (AME, 142).
Arthur Bodanzky was a conductor who worked with Mahler in Vienna, as Korrepetitor
(1902–1906). Gerhard von Keussler was a conductor and composer, much appre-
ciated by Mahler. Richard Specht reports half of the rehearsal number stated by
Klemperer. According to Kubik, twelve is more plausible than twenty-four (NKG
xxi, note 19).
17
Bruno Walter, Mahler (Vienna: Reichner, 1936), 44; quoted in HLG4, 226, and
in NKG, xxi.
She recounts finding Mahler in bed at her arrival in Prague, “nervous and
unwell,” his room
littered with orchestral parts, for his alterations were incessant in those days, not
of course in the composition, but in the instrumentation. From the Fifth onwards
he found it impossible to satisfy himself; . . . the Sixth and Seventh were contin-
ually in process of revision. It was a phase. His self-assurance returned with the
Eighth. . . . But now he was torn by doubts. He avoided the society of his fellow-
musicians, which as a rule he eagerly sought, and went to bed immediately after
dinner so as to save his energy for the rehearsals.18
The depiction of an anxious Mahler going straight to bed after dinner
is at odds with Klemperer’s and Walter’s accounts. William Ritter throws
some light on this discrepancy, reporting the tensions between Mahler
and his wife during the rehearsals in Prague, even suggesting that Mahler’s
“worried and grave” mood had “nothing to do with his symphony,” but
everything with his wife.19 This could explain Mahler’s change of attitude
after her arrival.20
Mahler’s constant work on the instrumentation of the Seventh during
rehearsals, however, is common to all testimonies. “Even at the final re-
hearsal he was aware of a lack of balance,” writes Alma Mahler, “and never
ceased making alterations in the proofs as long as any possibility of doing
so remained.”21 While Klemperer considers Mahler’s retouching of the score
as a mark of perfectionism, Alma Mahler presents these revisions in a neg-
ative light, implying that the composer did not fully resolve this “lack of
balance.” The image of Mahler’s own dissatisfaction conveyed by his spouse
may have contributed to the negative aura surrounding the work, at least
from the 1960s.
18
AME, 143. Alma Mahler arrived in Prague on September 15.
19
Ritter, “Quelques souvenirs sur Gustave Mahler,” Vie Art Cité, Lausanne, 1946.
See William Ritter chevalier, 34. La Grange and Weiss note that “Ritter was practically
the only commentator who at this early stage observed the growing rift between
Mahler and his wife, which eventually was to lead to the marital crisis of 1910.”
Mahler: Letters to his Wife, 308.
20
Mahler was apparently looking forward to his wife’s arrival, as is shown by
a telegram sent to her on September 14: “spent all day correcting parts /no time
to write /greatly looking forward to your arrival Tuesday afternoon at the hotel
/room ready for you next to mine /very cold here /dress warmly & bring my
winter coat /fond greetings gustav /berliner has just arrived.” See Mahler: Letters to
His Wife, 307.
21
AME, 142. Bruno Walter, however, reports that Mahler was pleased with his
orchestration. Gustav Mahler, 44.
Ritter depicts the atmosphere of the rehearsals as follows:

In Prague, the rehearsals were very bumpy, in this hall that was also a banqueting
hall. Here, while the Master and the orchestra made every effort [to rehearse] on
a very steep stage, the waiters were laying the tables. Some of them were no more
than very young rascals, insensitive to any music or discipline, and for whom music
was just another form of excitement. The restaurant manager, meanwhile, a very
coarse type of Czech industrialist, very rich, evidently regarded himself more the
master of the house than the wretched conductor.22
The Exhibition Concert Pavilion fulfilled the double function of concert
and banqueting hall, which rendered the rehearsal process chaotic. “I have
orchestral materials to correct, and meanwhile I’m wondering how I can
transform sausage cauldrons into timpani, rusty watering-cans into trum-
pets, and a public bar into a concert-hall,” wrote Mahler to his wife shortly
before her arrival in Prague.23
Ritter’s comment about the restaurant manager brings us back to the
issue of the Czech-German conflict. The Czech Philharmonic was “not ex-
actly unanimously well-disposed towards the [ex] Director of the Vienna
Opera,” continues the writer, “and however authoritarian Mahler may have
been with an orchestra that whole-heartedly supported him, he was also—
especially in such a place—enough of a diplomat to be well aware of the
difficulty of the situation.”24 The Seventh is the only Mahler symphony to
have been premiered in his birth region, thus making an association between
the composer’s Czech background and his attachment to German culture.
Mahler was clearly aware of this context of political tensions, writing to
22
Ritter, “Quelques souvenirs sur Gustave Mahler,” in William Ritter chevalier, 32: “A
Prague, les répétitions étaient très cahoteuses, dans cette salle des fêtes qui était aussi
salle de banquet et où, tandis que le Maître et l’orchestre s’évertuaient sur l’estrade
très verticale, les serveurs—dont quelques uns n’étaient que de très jeunes polissons,
bien insensibles à toute musique comme à toute discipline, et ici la musique n’était
pour eux qu’un excitant de plus à batifoler—, les serveurs donc mettaient les ta-
bles, et où l’entrepreneur du restaurant, un très grossier type d’industriel tchèque,
très enrichi, se croyait évidemment plus maître de céans, lui, qu’un misérable chef
d’orchestre.” Translation emended from Mitchell, “Reception,” 34. For pictures of
the hall laid out for dining, see Mitchell, “Mahler in Prague,” 405.
23
Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife, 254; Ein Glück ohne Ruh’: Die Briefe Gustav Mahlers an
Alma, ed. Henry-Louis de La Grange and Günther Weiss (Münich: btb Verlag, 1997),
363. Ritter also reports that rehearsals sometimes had to be displaced to another hall
in town, because of a banquet. See William Ritter chevalier, 33.
24
Ritter, “Quelques souvenirs sur Gustave Mahler,” in William Ritter chevalier, 33.
Translation from HLG4, 228.
Bruno Walter in July 1908: “My symphony is now to be introduced on 19

September in Prague—provided that the Czechs and the Germans haven’t
started a quarrel by then.”25
A “Bilingual” Concert
Thus Gustav Mahler, a “Germanized Jew from the Czech crown lands,” as
David Brodbeck describes him,26 premiered his Seventh Symphony in Prague
with an orchestra constituted of Czech and German musicians. The Czech
press claimed this event as a their own:
On Saturday Prague witnessed an artistic occasion whose significance goes far be-
yond the topical. This was a historic event. Gustav Mahler, a master of modern
music who is as fervently admired as he is hated and derided, came to us to conduct
the first performance of the Seventh. . . . It is a long time since Prague has boasted
a premiere of such importance. . . . Saturday’s concert would then be a historic date
for us, too. To be fair, Mahler’s concert at the Exhibition was “bilingual,” and the
Germans were perhaps also in the majority in the audience; but as things stand in
Prague we are justified in speaking of this as a Czech concert. The musicians were
almost all Czechs, and in the audience every important figure of our musical life
was present. And it was just this that constituted the importance of Mahler’s con-
cert, that he gave his work its world premiere here, with us, and for us. . . .27
A predominantly Czech orchestra, conducted by a “Germanized” Czech
playing for a mostly German audience—the “bilingual” quality of the perfor-
mance seems to have created a bridge between both sides. In fact, Mahler was
considered to be the perfect candidate to foster Czech music in Vienna, heart
of German music-making:
It was a really festive day for the Prague musical world. . . . This master of the
modern German symphony after all belongs a little to Czech music. Mahler has
always been an enthusiastic admirer of Smetana’s music and performed a great ser-
vice in Vienna by contributing to its understanding. In view of these connections
with our musical development the first conductor of the Exhibition Concerts
deserves a special welcome.28
25
GMB, 368.
26
Brodbeck, Defining Deutschtum, 313.
27
Zdeněk Nejedly, review of the premiere published in Den, November 22, 1908.
See Mahler: A Documentary Study, ed. Kurt Blaukopf (New York and Toronto: Oxford
28
Právo lidu, May 26, 1908, quoted in Arnošt Mahler, “Gustav Mahler und seine
Heimat,” Musikforschung, 25 (1972), 437. See also Mahler: A Documentary Study, 256. After
For Ritter, the performance of the Seventh was the occasion for a reconcil-
iation between the two sides of the conflict: “This time, however inflexibly
Czech the orchestra was towards the German director, they were conquered!
Thrilled!”29 “I have never seen an orchestra adore its tormenter and sover-
eign like the augmented Czech Philharmonic during the eight days I spent in
Prague,” wrote Ritter elsewhere. “By the end of it there were neither Czechs
nor Germans, neither Jews nor Christians. We were all brothers in music and
in Mahler’s art.”30
Richard Batka attributed a similar function to Mahler’s performance of
the Seventh:
In this exhibition concert, as well, Mahler was perceived and accepted as a repre-
sentative of modern German art. As the best German musician from Bohemia and
as someone whose expert judgment has long since led to be appointed the general
music director of Austria, he makes a political statement without even wanting to
do so. And yet the force of his personality is so compelling that it breaks down
the great barriers between nations and finds followers in the Czech musical world.31
The event of a new Mahler symphony thus brought together Czechs and
Germans. Ritter reports that on the day before the concert, “the world
of Czech music was there . . ., and everyone who counted for anything in
German music had arrived from the neighboring capitals.”32 Friends and
musicians came en masse to Prague for the concert: besides Bruno Walter and
Otto Klemperer, Alban Berg, Oskar Fried, Guido Adler, and Oscar Straus
were present, as well as the writers Paul Stefan and Richard Specht.33
the Smetana Overture, Mahler received a palm branch decorated with the colors of
Bohemia (HLG4, 181).
29
The complete passage is discussed in Chapter 4, “Interpretive Views.”
30
Ritter, “La Septième Symphonie de Gustave Mahler,” Lugdunum, Lyon, November
1908, in William Ritter chevalier, 130. Translated by La Grange in HLG4, 231 (slightly
emended).
31
Richard Batka, Prager Tagblatt, September 20, 1908. Quoted in “Mahler’s
German-Language Critics: The Seventh Symphony,” eds. and trans. Karen Painter
and Bettina Varwig, in Mahler and His World, ed. Karen Painter (Princeton: Princeton
32
33
Arnold Schoenberg had been unable to attend the Seventh’s premiere. The
Mahlers, Alban Berg, and others sent him a postcard on September 20. Schoenberg
heard the work in November 1909, when it was first performed in Vienna under
Ferdinand Löwe.
Reception
According to Alma Mahler, the Seventh was “scarcely understood by the
public. It had a succès d’estime.”34 Klemperer went further, arguing that the work
was “not a success.”35 The critic Felix Adler, however, begins his review with
the following observation:
A surprise: yesterday, after the final notes of the Seventh had faded, Gustav Mahler
was celebrated with all imaginable signs of sincere, honest, and unfeigned admira-
tion. Frankly, not even his greatest supporters and friends expected this.36
Indeed, the performance was applauded for more than fifteen minutes,
“whether the audience’s enthusiasm was meant for the work, or whether it
was simply Prague’s homage to an artist born on Bohemian soil and now in-
ternationally famous,” notes La Grange.37
Early Reception
The mass of critical accounts shows that the Seventh was well received at
the time of its premiere, better than the Sixth had been.38 William Ritter was
one of Mahler’s most passionate advocates, and the only French-speaking
critic in Mahler’s entourage at the time of the Seventh’s premiere. He did not
speak German very well, and his conversations with Mahler often resulted in
misunderstandings that forced him, as it were, to listen more carefully to the
music he wanted to describe. Ritter’s writings on Mahler constitute a major
source for the study of his contemporary reception, and his stunning and
difficult prose in French reveals an acute ear, as well as an original perspective
on this music. Indeed, the Seventh was Ritter’s favorite Mahler symphony
(“his masterpiece”), which already shows something of an original taste.
34
AME, 143.
35
Klemperer, Minor Recollections, 19.
36
Felix Adler, “Mahler’s Seventh Symphony,” Bohemia, September 20, 1908. Quoted
in Painter and Varwig, “Mahler’s German-Language Critics,” 318. Adler was one of
Mahler’s supporters in Prague.
37
HLG4, 238. See also Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife, 308; and NKG, xxii.
38
See HLG4, 239. According to Painter and Varwig, the Seventh had a “re-
sounding endorsement in Prague from local critics as well as those traveling from
Vienna” and brought “immediate and complete success at a critical point in Mahler’s
career.” “Mahler’s German-Language Critics,” 269 and 328. Donald Mitchell is less
enthusiastic in his assessment of the Seventh’s reception, referring to a “relative
warmth” of contemporary accounts (Mitchell, “Reception,” 72).
His most substantial essay on the Seventh, which was probably intended as
a chapter for his projected monograph on the composer,39 begins with an
exalted description of his first impressions of the work:
A little frightened by the really frenzied intrusion in some places—in this heart-
breaking orchestration—of an oriental hyperbolic ornamentation, of contorted
nightmarish figures, of tenebrous arches swarming with Rembrandtesque drills, of
humid crudeness where indistinct larvae are crawling, sensitive to a sudden viscous
clarity of their invertebrate spine, I thought about something that I have not com-
pletely rejected yet: a vermicular state in this prodigious mind, of germs settled
during the year and through his conducting activity, by this heterogeneous music
that Mahler was forced to conduct.40
Driven by his troubled feelings about this music, but hampered by his
limited knowledge of the German language, Ritter asked Mahler the fol-
lowing question during the rehearsals for the Seventh’s first performance
in Munich in October 1908: “Do you ever find yourself composing while
you are conducting?” “You have to be completely insane to ask such a ques-
tion,” exploded Mahler, “and not have the faintest idea what it is like to
conduct.”41 Ritter later reformulated this “wrongly asked” question, as he
qualified it, asking Mahler more directly on what basis he would usually
start composing (a “general thought,” a plan, or a “novel-like” conception).42
39
See Meylan’s comments in William Ritter chevalier, 134. Ritter began writing this
essay after a performance of the Seventh in Munich in 1912.
40
Ritter, “Septième Symphonie,” unpublished book chapter, August 1912, in William
Ritter chevalier, 135. “Un peu effarouché de l’intrusion vraiment forcenée à certaines
minutes dans cette orchestration déchirante, d’une ornementation hyperbolique
orientale, de figures grimaçantes de cauchemar, d’arches de ténèbres grouillantes de
drilles rembranesques, de crudité humide où traînent incertaines des larves sensi-
bles à une subite clarté visqueuse de leur échine invertébrée, j’avais pensé à ceci que
je n’ai pas encore complètement rejeté: un état de vermiculation dans ce cerveau
prodigieux, de germes déposés au cours de l’année et de l’activité directoriale,
par toutes ces musiques hétéroclites que Mahler était obligé de diriger.” Meylan
comments that this manuscript is difficult to decipher, but does not indicate in the
text where his readings are uncertain. Copies of Ritter’s manuscript are available at
the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler in Paris (MAH-CR-53/4).
41
Ritter, “Septième Symphonie,” in William Ritter chevalier, 135. The Seventh was
performed in Munich on October 27, 1908, under Mahler.
42
Ritter, “Septième Symphonie,” in William Ritter chevalier, 139 (“cette question mal
posée”). “Genius does not proceed like that, methodically,” answered Mahler. “The
plan establishes itself as creation moves forward. . . . Therefore, the symphony
I started goes as it wants.”
While this questioning provoked strong reactions on the composer’s side,

it recalls Natalie Bauer-Lechner’s incessant demands to Mahler and has the
merit of raising a fascinating issue, that of the relationship between Mahler’s
conducting practice and his compositional activity. Later in his essay, Ritter
acknowledges that this idea was “not entirely wrong”:
Mahler did not take anything from to anyone, Mahler used everything that fell into
his hands. We have the most obvious example in the Finale of this symphony: what
became, in his hands, two or three measures of the Meistersinger overture.43
Musical allusions in Mahler, according to Ritter, are connected to his
conducting practice, and Theodor Adorno reached the same conclusion
when he boldly stated that Mahler’s music, “after that of Wagner’s, is
conductor’s music of the highest rank, one that performs itself.”44 Ritter’s
assessment of the Seventh was highly positive: “nothing shows better than
this Seventh the audacity with which Mahler reconciles the most unexpected
innovations and strict classical forms.”45 To someone who was commenting,
after a performance of the work under Ferdinand Löwe in Munich (August
1912), that the Seventh was “poorly squared off [mal équarrie], with an axe,”
Ritter responded, foreshadowing Adorno’s later reading of Mahler:
Yes, the tear, the fracture, the collapse is not the law but the mode of the work, and
most of all, its great unity. A unity made of constant vertical escarpment. A sym-
phony in luminous crests and shadowy depths.46
Arnold Schoenberg shared Ritter’s enthusiasm for the Seventh. “I am now
really wholly yours,” he wrote to Mahler in December 1909 after having
heard the Viennese premiere of the work:
This is a certainty. . . . What I felt this time was a perfect repose based on artistic
harmony. Something that moves me without just ruthlessly shifting my center of
gravity; something that draws me tranquilly and pleasantly to itself—an attraction
43
Ritter, “Septième Symphonie,” in William Ritter chevalier, 136.
44
Theodor Adorno, Mahler: A Musical Physiognomy, trans. Edmund Jephcott
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 30.
45
Ritter, “La Septième Symphonie de Gustave Mahler,” Lugdunum, Lyon, November
1908, in William Ritter chevalier, 128.
46
Ritter, “Septième Symphonie,” in William Ritter chevalier, 144. “Oui, la déchirure,
la fracture, l’écroulement en est, non pas la loi mais le mode, et surtout la grande
unité. Une unité faite de continuels escarpements verticaux. Une symphonie toute
en crêtes lumineuses et ombreuses profondeurs.” See Adorno, Mahler, 33: “Mahler’s
music knows, and expresses the knowledge, that unity is attained not in spite of dis-
junction, but only through it.”
such as guides the planets, letting them travel along their own courses, influencing
these, yes, but so evenly, so entirely according to plan, that there is no longer any
jarring, any violence. Perhaps this may sound rather like a purple patch. However,
it seems to me to express very clearly one thing that I principally felt: I reacted to
you as a classic. But one who is still a model to me. I mean—and this is surely a
difference—: Without any outward excitement at all! In tranquility and calm, as
one does, after all, enjoy a thing of beauty! . . .So this time it was quite without
preparation, almost at the very first hearing, that I had this great, entirely clear im-
pression. . . . From minute to minute I felt happier and warmer. And it did not let
go of me for a single moment. In the mood right to the end. And everything struck
me as pellucid. Finally, at the first hearing I perceived so many formal subtleties,
while always able to follow a main line.47
Schoenberg’s wording is striking here: he felt “perfect repose,” “artistic
harmony,” and balance, or cosmic order (“an attraction such as guides the
planets”). He felt peace, beauty, transparence, clarity, and happiness. But
most of all, this work inspired in him the comment that Mahler was a
“classic,” on some level. Schoenberg perceived the Seventh in a radically dif-
ferent way from Ritter, who heard the “frenzied intrusion of a hyperbolic
ornamentation,” “contorted nightmarish figures,” even mentioning “humid
crudeness” where “larvae” are crawling.48 Ritter and Schoenberg both greatly
admired the Seventh, but for diametrically opposed reasons; and this reveals
something of the complexity of the work.49 Much later in New York,
Schoenberg had the opportunity to reaffirm his allegiance to Mahler when
the American critic Olin Downes, reviewing Dimitri Mitropoulos’s perfor-
mance of the Seventh with the New York Philharmonic (November 1948),
quickly dismissed the work as “bad art, bad esthetic; bad, presumptuous,
and blatantly vulgar music.”50 Schoenberg responded with a letter that was
printed in the New York Times a month later:
If you would study the orchestral score you could not overlook the beauty of this
writing. . . . If you only had noticed a few of these wonderful melodies. I do not
47
Letter dated December 29, 1909, Vienna. See Arnold Schoenberg: Letters, selected
and edited by Erwin Stein, trans. Eithne Wilkins and Ernst Kaiser (New York: St.
Martin’s Press, 1965), 293–95.
48
Ritter, “Septième Symphonie,” in William Ritter chevalier, 135.
49
Thomas Peattie also remarks that “in part because of its remarkable di-
versity of expression, the Seventh Symphony has long provoked an unusu-
ally wide range of conflicting interpretations.” Gustav Mahler’s Symphonic Landscapes
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 149.
50
Quoted in Glenda Dawn Goss, Jean Sibelius and Olin Downes: Music, Friendship,
Criticism (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995), 133.
know whether your enthusiasm would have matched Webern’s (my dear old friend),
who could play and sing it many times and would never stop admiring it.
[There follows quotations of themes from the second Nachtmusik, and the second
theme from the Finale.]
In these melodies the creative power cannot be ignored. A master of this degree
need not borrow from other people—he splendidly spends from his own riches.51
In another letter to Downes, Schoenberg admitted that his “fury” against the
critic was partly due to the fact that “between 1898 and 1908 I had spoken
about Mahler in the same manner as you do today. For that I made good
subsequently by adoration.”52
Julius Korngold, writing for the Neue Freie Presse, was an early supporter of
Mahler but did not write particularly warmly about the Seventh. Comparing
it with the composer’s previous symphonies, Korngold concludes that
in this new work we encounter the same brutal accumulation of devices, immod-
eration in expression, boundless individualization, and democratization of voices
that are starkly juxtaposed and superimposed, lavish motivic and melodic play of
transformation, insatiable developments, and sharp contrasts that grate on nerves.53
This assessment corresponds closely to what would be said about the Finale
in later critical writings. What is striking here is that, as opposed to later
critics, Korngold does not use such a description to isolate the Seventh from
Mahler’s others symphonies. For him, all of the composer’s works show
a similar fragmented aspect that “grates on nerves.” Writing specifically
about the Finale, Korngold found that it “roars too much, and runs the
risk of fading out.”54 Also writing after the Viennese premiere in 1909, Elsa
Bienenfeld perceived a similar disproportion in the work:
[The first movement] is still too broad and not tightly enough constructed to make
every sound seem necessary, every connection organic, and every climax gripping—
the way Beethoven and Brahms knew to hammer the content into the form. The
Mahlerian form can hardly contain its content. The piece therefore stretches out to
51
December 1948. See Arnold Schoenberg: Letters, 261–62.
52
Letter dated December 21, 1948, Los Angeles; answering Downes’s response to
his previous letter. See Arnold Schoenberg: Letters, 264.
53
Julius Korngold, “Feuilleton: Mahler’s Seventh Symphony,” Neue Freie Presse,
November 6, 1909. Quoted in Painter and Varwig, “Mahler’s German-Language
Critics,” 329. Julius was the father of the composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold.
Korngold later revised his assessment of the Seventh (1930). See Karen Painter,
Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics 1900–1945 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2007), 1–2.
54
Painter and Varwig, “Mahler’s German-Language Critics,” 331–32.
lengths and sounds that are oversized, as if a sublime work were overemphasized or
recited with too grand a gesture. I sense the same disproportion in the last move-
ment. . . . In this movement Mahler submits to a stricter form than before. But it is
as though he cannot do enough to depict joy: as he places climax after climax the
piece founders in its sheer breadth.55
Several elements in Bienenfeld’s critique need to be highlighted here. In her
view, Mahlerian form “can hardly contain its content,” as if the material
was overflowing its container. This idea resonates with Ritter’s comments
on the work’s excesses (the “hyperbolic” ornamentation is associated with
an incessant brain activity, crawling like a cohort of insects). This quality of
“excess” is not only visible in the uncontainable nature of the material, but
also in its expression: “as if a sublime work were overemphasized or recited
with too grand a gesture.” As will be discussed in the following chapters, the-
atrical gestures of announcement are prominent in the Seventh as a whole.
The Finale, in particular, is theatrical in an excessively joyous way, as though
Mahler could not “do enough to depict joy,” in Bienenfeld’s words. As she
reminds us, this accumulation of climactic moments often leads to collapse.
These significant features of Bienenfeld’s review prefigure, in a striking way,
Adorno’s seminal critique of Mahler’s Seventh.
Cinderella
Besides an overview of the tonal trajectory of the Seventh and some remarks
on the first and third movements, the core of Adorno’s critique concerns the
Finale.56 In a section debating “weak pieces by Mahler,” the author begins
with a definitive evaluation of the last movement:
The Finale of the Seventh embarrasses even those who concede everything to
Mahler. . . . Even on the most strenuous immersion in the work, one will scarcely
be able to deny an impotent disproportion between the splendid exterior and the
meager content of the whole. . . . The movement is theatrical: only the stage sky
over the too-adjacent fairground meadow is as blue as this. The positivity of the per
aspera ad astra movement of the Fifth, which surpasses even this Finale, can manifest
55
Elsa Bienenfeld, “Mahler’s Seventh Symphony,” Neues Wiener Journal, November
10, 1909. Quoted in Painter and Varwig, “Mahler’s German-Language Critics,” 325–
26. The authors recall that Bienenfeld was the only female music critic at a major
newspaper in Vienna before World War I. Beginning with the Seventh, she covered
all first Viennese performances of Mahler’s works.
56
For the tonal trajectory of the Seventh, see Adorno, Mahler, 27–28; on the first
movement, 100–101 and 110; on the Scherzo, 9, 22, and 104.
itself only as a tableau. . . .The claim that the goal has been reached, the fear of
aberrations après fortune faite, are answered depressingly by endless repetitions, par-
ticularly of the minuet-like theme. The tone of strained gaiety no more actualizes
joy than the word gaudeamus; the thematic fulfillments announced too eagerly by the
gestures of fulfilling do not materialize. Mahler was a poor yea-sayer. His voice
cracks, like Nietzsche’s, when he proclaims values, speaks from mere conviction,
when he himself puts into practice the abhorrent notion of overcoming on which
the thematic analyses capitalize, and makes music as if joy were already in the
world. His vainly jubilant movements unmask jubilation, his subjective incapacity
for the happy end denounces itself.57
The “disproportion” between form and content recalls Bienenfeld’s com-
ment on Mahlerian form, but with one important difference: while Adorno’s
content is “meager” compared to the “splendid exterior,” for Bienenfeld the
content is greater than the form that can no more contain it.58 Adorno also
develops the idea of the Finale as theatrical, only evoked in Bienenfeld’s
review, as well as the movement’s “strained gaiety”—in other words, a pre-
tended play that would not convey true feelings. This pessimistic reading
(“his voice cracks when he makes music as if joy were already in the world”)
partly originates in his intimate conviction that Mahler could not write a
convincingly positive ending, as will be discussed later. If Adorno was not
the first to criticize the Finale of the Seventh, his condemnation of the
movement as a resolutely “weak” piece had, and still has, to some extent, a
lasting influence on later scholarship.59
Deryck Cooke’s critique of the Seventh became equally paradigmatic in
Mahler studies:
The Seventh is undoubtedly the Cinderella among Mahler’s symphonies. It is prob-
ably the least well known, and of those who know it well, hardly anyone is prepared
to praise it wholeheartedly—though there is general agreement as to the unique
fascination of the three central movements. The truth is that No. 7, coming be-
tween two shattering masterpieces—the descent-into-hell of No. 6 and the heaven-
storming No. 8—presents an enigmatic, inscrutable face to the world: a most
unusual attitude for a Mahler symphony and one which arouses suspicions as to
its quality. . . . There is something irreducibly problematic about this symphony.60
57
Adorno, Mahler, 137.
58
Further discussion on form and content will be found in Chapter 9.
59
Peattie also notes that “in the wake of Adorno’s harsh critique, enthusiasm for
the symphony as a whole was severely tempered.” Mahler’s Symphonic Landscapes, 149.
60
Deryck Cooke, Gustav Mahler: An Introduction to His Music (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 88–89.
Indeed, the Seventh suffered from the comparison with the Sixth (and
Eighth here): its meaning would be as obscure as that of its predecessor and
successor seemed clearly defined. In the late 1990s, Peter Franklin made a
similar assessment of the work, acknowledging that while it “makes use of
as wide a range of allusive musical imagery as any of his works,” the Seventh
remained “mysteriously canny about its cumulative meaning.”61
As James Zychowicz has noted, “the Seventh stands out [among Mahler’s
works] for the various ways in which it has been received within the century
since its premiere.”62 In other words, the work has been isolated by a conflic-
tual reception history, as the odd member that does not “behave” like the
others in the group. One of the reasons explaining this persistent lack of
popularity lies, for Mitchell, in the programmatic issue:
There is no doubt that the absence of a “programme” or beginning-to-end narra-
tive contributed to the slow progresses made by the Seventh in winning over audi-
ences and critics, all of whom posed the same insistent, nagging question: What
was this music about?63
Paradoxically, Mitchell suggests that early critics who praised the work were
precisely seduced by what he believes to be the Seventh’s program—the path
from night to day, to which I return later. In brief, the work was either praised
for its programmatic progression from darkness to light, or dismissed for its
lack of a clear program. This shows that the programmatic issue is crucial
for the reception of the Seventh and, as we shall see, it may have something
to do with the frequent association of the Seventh with the Sixth Symphony.
This issue of program is raised in several early reviews of the Seventh.
For Korngold, the fact that Mahler did not include an explanatory pro-
gram “proves unmistakably that no program guided him as he composed,”
implying that we should not, therefore, search for a programmatic ex-
planation.64 “Even less does Mahler depict objects,” he adds, “rather, he
always only expresses himself and his emotional life.” He continues, dismis-
sively: “His strong and, unfortunately, also violent self barks at us in every
measure.” Adler reached a similar conclusion, pointing out that “the value
and significance of this symphony lies in the purely musical”:
61
Peter Franklin, The Life of Mahler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1997), 158–59.
62
James Zychowicz, “Mahler’s Seventh Symphony Revisited,” in Naturlaut 2/3
(2004): 2–6.
63
Mitchell, “Reception,” 73.
64
Korngold, “Feuilleton,” in Painter and Varwig, “Mahler’s German-Language
Critics,” 329.
The work does not describe, narrate, or illustrate. . . . Rather, it harkens back to
the original purpose of music—to express moods, feelings, and emotions for which
there are no words.65
Adler and Korngold both heard the Seventh as a non-narrative work, where
Mahler “only expresses himself ”; and since he expresses emotions “for
which they are no words,” searching for a verbal program would be useless.
Bienenfeld, however, chose to answer the programmatic question from an-
other perspective:
It is not the task of criticism to explain whether the composer each time had a pro-
gram in mind or to uncover what this program may have been. One could hardly
state precisely what is meant in Beethoven’s symphonies. Life and death, life on
earth and life in heaven, mankind and nature, power and light—these are empty
words for one person but the heart of the matter for another. It is Mahler’s style
to seek to express emotions in great expansion and serious pathos yet at the same
time—in their opposites, in the bizarre play of satyrs, in tender and quiet moods.66
For Bienenfeld, critics should not attempt to uncover the program of the
Seventh because it is not relevant.
Post-Adornian Reception
The Seventh’s negative reputation began to be questioned in the late 1970s,
when the work was presented as resolutely modern—and even post-modern,
according to some.67 More nuanced assessment of the work and new herme-
neutic leads did not, however, fully erase the general feeling that the Seventh
stands apart in the Mahlerian canon: “If no longer the Cinderella among
65
Adler, “Mahler’s Seventh Symphony,” in Painter and Varwig, “Mahler’s German-
Language Critics,” 318.
66
Bienenfeld, “Mahler’s Seventh Symphony,” in Painter and Varwig, “Mahler’s
German-Language Critics,” 325.
67
See, for example, Mahler—eine Herausforderung: Ein Symposion, ed. Peter Ruzicka
(Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1977); John Williamson, “Deceptive Cadences in the
Last Movement of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony,” Soundings: A Music Journal 9 (1982): 87–
96; Peter Davison, “The Nachtmusiken from Mahler’s Seventh Symphony: Analysis and
Re-appraisal” (MPhil thesis, Cambridge University, 1985); The Seventh Symphony of Gustav
Mahler: A Symposium, ed. James Zychowicz (Cincinnati: University of Cincinnati, 1990);
Jonathan Kramer, “Postmodern Concepts of Musical Time,” Indiana Theory Review 17, no.
2 (1996): 21–62; and Martin Scherzinger, “The Finale of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony: A
Deconstructive Reading,” Music Analysis 14, no. 1 (1995): 69–88.
Mahler’s symphonies,” concluded Stephen Hefling ten years ago, “it remains
his most perplexing work.”68
The performance and recording history confirm that the Seventh is less
popular than the other symphonies.69 It was performed only a few times
during Mahler’s lifetime after its premiere in Prague: in Munich (October
1908), The Hague and Amsterdam (October 1909) under Mahler; then
in Vienna with Ferdinand Löwe (November 1909), on tour with Willem
Mengelberg in 1910 and, finally, in Berlin with Oskar Fried (January 1911).70
A year after his death, Mahler concerts were flourishing in Europe to honor
his memory, but Löwe was the only one to pick the Seventh for that pur-
pose.71 After a diminution of the number of performances during World
War I, Mengelberg organized the first Mahler Festival in Amsterdam in May
1920, conducting a complete cycle of his works for the first time. Vienna
also offered a Mahler cycle that same year, later in the Fall, conducted by
Oskar Fried.
Even if Mahler’s music was still received with reservations, it became part
of the symphonic repertoire of several European countries by the 1920s, as
well as in the United States. The first Mahler Festival in America, which took
place during World War II in New York (1942), featured performances of
all symphonies except the Sixth and Seventh. As it is well known, Mahler’s
works began to be more frequently performed in the 1950s and especially
1960s, on the occasion of commemorative concerts and cycles to celebrate
the centenary of his birth in 1960, and with the publication of the first
volume of the critical edition of the Seventh Symphony.72 It seems fair to say
68
Stephen Hefling, “From Wunderhorn to Rückert and the Middle- Period
Symphonies,” in The Cambridge Companion to Mahler, ed. Jeremy Barham (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2007), 124–27.
69
See Sybille Werner, “The Performance History of Mahler’s Orchestra Works
between His Death in 1911 and the Anniversary Years of 1960/61,” in After Mahler’s
Death, eds. Gerold Gruber, Morten Solvik, and Jan Vičar (Vienna: Belmont Music
Publishers, 2013), 117–31. Werner notes that it is particularly difficult to establish
the performance history of the Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh symphonies because they
were not published by Universal Edition, who keeps track of the rental of their
orchestral scores. See also La Grange’s Appendix 3Ad, “A Performance History of
Mahler’s Works,” mostly written by Sybille Werner (HLG4, 1657–69); and Lewis
Smoley, “Mahler Conducted and Recorded: From the Concert Hall to DVD,” in The
Cambridge Companion to Mahler, 243–61. Smoley also included a selected discography in
the appendix (275–93).
70
For a total of twelve performances. See NKG, xxxiv.
71
Munich, January 1912. See HLG4, 1658.
72
On the publication of the Seventh, see also Chapter 3, “Musical Evidence.”
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
la poursuite devenait impossible: Constantin,
fuyant à toute bride, avait eu la précaution de faire Lact. de mort.
couper les jarrets à tous les chevaux de poste qu'il pers. c. 24.
laissait sur son passage; et la rage impuissante du
tyran ne lui laissa que le regret de n'avoir pas osé Praxag. ap.
faire le dernier crime. Photium, cod.
62.
Constantin traverse comme un éclair l'Illyrie et les
Alpes, avant que Sévère puisse en avoir des
nouvelles, et arrive au port de Boulogne (Bononia) AN 306.
lorsque la flotte mettait à la voile. A cette vue
inespérée on ne peut exprimer la joie de xii. Constantin
Constance: il reçoit entre ses bras ce fils que tant s'échappe des
de périls lui rendaient encore plus cher; et mêlant mains de
ensemble leurs larmes et toutes les marques de Galérius.
leur tendresse, ils arrivent dans la Grande-
Bretagne, où Constance, après avoir vaincu les Lact. de mort.
Pictes, mourut de maladie le 25 juillet de l'an 306. pers. c. 24.
Il avait eu de son mariage avec Théodora, trois fils:
Delmatius, Jule-Constance, Hanniballianus, et trois Anony. Vales.
filles, Constantia, qui fut femme de Licinius,
Anastasia qui épousa Bassianus, et Eutropia mère
de Népotianus, dont je parlerai ailleurs. Mais il Zos. l. 2, c. 8.
respectait trop la puissance souveraine, pour
l'abandonner comme une proie à disputer entre xiii. Il joint son
ses enfants; et il était trop prudent pour affaiblir ses père.
états par un partage. Le droit d'aînesse, soutenu
d'une capacité supérieure, appelait à l'empire Eumen. paneg.
Constantin, qui était déja dans sa trente-troisième c. 7 et 8.
année. Le père mourant couvert de gloire, au
milieu de ses enfants qui fondaient en larmes et
Anony. Vales.
qui révéraient ses volontés comme des oracles,
embrassa tendrement Constantin et le nomma son
successeur; il le recommanda aux troupes, et Till. note 5, sur
ordonna à ses autres fils de lui obéir. Constantin.
Toute l'armée s'empressa d'exécuter ces dernières dispositions de

Constance: à peine eut-il les yeux fermés, que les officiers et les
soldats, excités encore par Éroc, roi des Allemans
auxiliaires, proclamèrent Constantin Auguste. Ce xiv. Il lui
prince s'efforça d'abord d'arrêter l'ardeur des succède.
troupes; il craignait une guerre civile; et pour ne
pas irriter Galérius, il voulait obtenir son agrément Liban. in
avant que de prendre le titre d'empereur. Basilico.
L'impatience des soldats se refusa à ces
ménagements politiques: au premier moment que
Euseb. vit.
Constantin, encore tout en larmes, sortit de la Const. l. 1, c.
tente de son père, tous l'environnèrent avec de 21.
grands cris: en vain voulut-il leur échapper à
course de cheval; on l'atteignit, on le revêtit de la
pourpre malgré sa résistance; tout le camp xv.
Proclamation de
retentissait d'acclamations et d'éloges; Constance Constantin.
revivait dans son fils, et l'armée n'y voyait de
différence que l'avantage de la jeunesse.
Eumenius,
Le premier soin du nouvel empereur fut de rendre Paneg. c. 8.
à son père les derniers devoirs: il lui fit faire de
magnifiques funérailles, et marcha lui-même à la
tête avec un grand cortège. On décerna à Euseb. Vit.
Const. l. 1, c.
Constance, selon la coutume, les honneurs
22.
divins[5]. M. de Tillemont rapporte, sur le
témoignage d'Alford et d'Ussérius, qu'on montre
son tombeau en divers endroits de l'Angleterre, et Vict. epit.
particulièrement en un lieu appelé Caïr-Segeint ou
Sejont, quelquefois Caïr-Custeint, c'est-à-dire, Ville Zos. l. 2, c. 9.
de Constance ou de Constantin; et que, en 1283,
comme on prétendit avoir trouvé son corps dans Hist. misc. l. 11.
un autre lieu qui n'est pas loin de là, Edouard I, qui apud Muratori,
régnait alors, le fit transporter dans une église, T. I, p. 71.
sans se mettre beaucoup en peine si les canons
permettaient d'y placer un prince païen. Il ajoute
xvi. Sépulture
que Cambden raconte que peu de temps avant lui,
de Constance.
c'est-à-dire au commencement du seizième siècle,
en fouillant à York dans une grotte où l'on tenait
qu'était le tombeau de Constance, on y avait Euseb. Hist.
ecc. l. 8, c. 13 et
trouvé une lampe qui brûlait encore; et Alford juge Vit. Const. l. 1,
que selon les preuves les plus solides, c'était, en c. 22.
effet, le lieu de la sépulture de ce prince.
[5] Beaucoup de médailles frappées après la mort de ce Numism.
prince, portent les légendes: DIVO. CONSTANTIO. AVG. ou Mezzab.
DIVO. CONSTANTIO. PIO. PRINCIPI ou bien DIVVS.
CONSTANTIVS. Quelques-unes, frappées par les ordres de
Maxence, portent IMP. MAXENTIVS. DIVO. CONSTΑΝΤIΟ. Till., art. 7.
AD-FINI vel COGN.—S.-M.
Sa mort semblait favoriser les desseins de Alford, Ann.
Galérius: elle entrait dans le plan qu'il avait dressé Brit., an 306 §
6.
pour se rendre le seul monarque; mais elle était
arrivée trop tôt, et ce contre-temps rompait toutes
ses mesures. Son projet avait été de substituer à Usserius, Brit.
Constance, Licinius son ancien ami: il s'aidait de Eccl. Antiq. p.
ses conseils, et comptait sur une obéissance 60.
aveugle de sa part. Il lui destinait le titre d'Auguste,
et c'était dans cette vue qu'il ne lui avait pas fait [Eckhel, doct.
donner celui de César. Alors maître de tout, et ne num. vet. t. viii,
laissant à Licinius qu'une ombre d'autorité, il aurait p. 28-32.]
disposé à son gré de toutes les richesses de
l'empire; et après avoir accumulé d'immenses xvii. Projets de
trésors, il aurait quitté, comme Dioclétien, au bout Galérius.
de vingt ans la puissance souveraine, et se serait
ménagé une retraite assurée et tranquille pour une Lact. de mort.
vieillesse voluptueuse; en laissant pour empereurs pers. c. 20 et
Sévère avec Licinius, et pour Césars Maximin et seq.
Candidianus son fils naturel, qui n'avait encore que
neuf ans, et qu'il avait fait adopter par sa femme Valéria, quoique cet
enfant ne fût né que depuis le mariage de cette princesse.
Pour réussir dans ces projets il fallait exclure
Constantin: mais Galérius s'était rendu trop odieux xviii. Ses
par sa cruauté et par son avarice. Depuis sa cruautés.
victoire sur les Perses, il avait adopté le
gouvernement despotique établi de tout temps dans ce riche et
malheureux pays; et sans pudeur, sans égard pour les sentiments
d'une honnête soumission, à laquelle une longue habitude avait plié
les Romains, il disait hautement que le meilleur usage auquel on
pouvait employer des sujets, c'était d'en faire des esclaves. Ce fut
sur ces principes qu'il régla sa conduite. Nulle dignité, nul privilége
n'exemptait ni des coups de fouet, ni des plus horribles tortures les
magistrats des villes: des croix toujours dressées attendaient ceux
qu'il condamnait à mort; les autres étaient chargés de chaînes et
resserrés dans des entraves. Il faisait traîner dans des maisons de
force des dames illustres par leur naissance. Il avait fait chercher par
tout l'empire des ours d'une énorme grosseur, et leur avait donné
des noms: quand il était en belle humeur, il en faisait appeler
quelqu'un, et se divertissait à les voir non pas dévorer sur-le-champ
des hommes, mais sucer tout leur sang et déchirer ensuite leurs
membres: il ne fallait rien moins pour faire rire ce tyran sombre et
farouche. Il ne prenait guère de repas sans voir répandre du sang
humain. Les supplices des gens du peuple n'étaient pas si
recherchés: il les faisait brûler vifs.
Galérius avait d'abord fait sur les chrétiens l'essai
de toutes ces horreurs, ordonnant par édit, xix. Contre les
qu'après la torture ils seraient brûlés à petit feu. Chrétiens.
Ces ordres inhumains ne manquaient pas
d'exécuteurs fidèles, qui se faisaient un mérite d'enchérir encore sur
la barbarie du prince. On attachait les chrétiens à un poteau; on leur
grillait la plante des pieds, jusqu'à ce que la peau se détachât des
os; on appliquait ensuite sur toutes les parties de leur corps des
flambeaux qu'on venait d'éteindre; et pour prolonger leurs
souffrances avec leur vie, on leur rafraîchissait de temps en temps
d'eau froide la bouche et le visage: ce n'était qu'après de longues
douleurs que, toute leur chair étant rôtie, le feu pénétrait jusqu'aux
entrailles, et jusqu'aux sources de la vie. Alors on achevait de brûler
ces corps déja presque consumés, et on en jetait les cendres dans
un fleuve ou dans la mer.
Le sang des chrétiens ne fit qu'irriter la soif de
Galérius. Bientôt il n'épargna pas les païens xx. Contre les
mêmes. Il ne connaissait point de degré dans les païens mêmes.
punitions: reléguer, mettre en prison, condamner
aux mines, étaient des peines hors d'usage; il ne parlait que de feux,
de croix, de bêtes féroces: c'était à coups de lance qu'il châtiait ceux
qui formaient sa maison; il fallait aux sénateurs d'anciens services et
des titres bien favorables, pour obtenir la grace d'avoir la tête
tranchée. Alors tous les talents qui, déja fort affaiblis, respiraient
encore, furent entièrement étouffés: on bannit, on fit mourir les
avocats et les jurisconsultes; les lettres passèrent pour des secrets
dangereux, et les savants pour des ennemis de l'état. Le tyran,
faisant taire toutes les lois, se permit de tout faire, et donna la même
licence aux juges qu'il envoyait dans les provinces: c'étaient des
gens qui ne connaissaient que la guerre, sans étude et sans
principes, adorateurs aveugles du despotisme, dont ils étaient les
instruments.
Mais ce qui porta dans les provinces une
désolation universelle, ce fut le dénombrement xxi. Rigueur des
qu'il fit faire de tous les habitants de ses états, et impositions.
l'estimation de toutes les fortunes. Les
commissaires répandaient partout la même inquiétude et le même
effroi que des ennemis auraient pu causer; et l'empire de Galérius
d'une extrémité à l'autre ne semblait plus être peuplé que de captifs.
On mesurait les campagnes, on comptait les ceps de vignes, les
arbres, et, pour ainsi dire, les mottes de terre; on faisait registre des
hommes et des animaux: la nécessité des déclarations remplissait
les villes d'une multitude de paysans et d'esclaves; les pères y
traînaient leurs enfants. La justice d'une imposition proportionnelle
aurait rendu ces contraintes excusables, si l'humanité les eût
adoucies, et si les impositions en elles-mêmes eussent été
tolérables; mais tout retentissait de coups de fouets et de
gémissements; on mettait les enfants, les esclaves, les femmes à la
torture, pour vérifier les déclarations des pères, des maîtres, des
maris; on tourmentait les possesseurs eux-mêmes, et on les forçait,
par la douleur, de déclarer plus qu'ils ne possédaient: la vieillesse ni
la maladie ne dispensaient personne de se rendre au lieu ordonné;
on fixait arbitrairement l'âge de chacun; et comme, selon les lois,
l'obligation de payer la capitation devait commencer et finir à un
certain âge, on ajoutait des années aux enfants et on en ôtait aux
vieillards. Les premiers commissaires avaient travaillé à satisfaire
l'avidité du prince par les rigueurs les plus outrées: cependant
Galérius, pour presser encore davantage ses malheureux sujets, en
envoya d'autres, à plusieurs reprises, faire de nouvelles recherches;
et les derniers venus, pour enchérir sur leurs prédécesseurs,
surchargeaient à leur fantaisie, et ajoutaient à leur rôle beaucoup
plus qu'ils ne trouvaient ni dans les biens ni dans le nombre des
habitants. Cependant les animaux périssaient, les hommes
mouraient; et après la mort on les faisait vivre sur les rôles, on
exigeait encore la taxe des uns et des autres. Il ne restait d'exempts
que les mendiants: leur indigence les sauvait de l'imposition, mais
non pas de la barbarie de Galérius; on les rassembla par son ordre
au bord de la mer, et on les jeta dans des barques qu'on fit couler à
fond.
Telle est l'idée qu'un auteur contemporain, très-
instruit et très-digne de foi, nous a laissée du xxii. Les crimes
gouvernement de Galérius. Quelque méchant que de ses officiers
fût ce prince, une partie de ces vexations doit sans doivent lui être
doute être imputée à ses officiers. Mais telle est la imputés.
condition de ceux qui gouvernent; ils prennent sur leur compte les
injustices de ceux qu'ils emploient: ce sont les crimes de leurs
mains. Les noms de ces hommes obscurs périssent avec eux; mais
leurs iniquités survivent et restent attachées au supérieur, dont le
portrait se compose en grande partie des vertus et des vices de
ceux qui ont agi sous ses ordres.
Galérius était occupé de ces rapines et de ces
violences, quand il apprit la mort de Constance: xxiii. Il refuse à
bientôt après on lui présenta l'image de Constantin Constantin le
couronnée de laurier. Le nouvel empereur la lui titre d'Auguste,
envoyait, selon la coutume, pour lui notifier son et le donne à
Sévère.
avénement à l'empire. Il balança long-temps s'il la
recevrait: son premier mouvement fut de la jeter au
feu avec celui qui l'avait apportée; mais on lui Lact., de mort.
représenta ce qu'il avait à craindre de ses propres pers. c. 25.
soldats, déja mécontents du choix des deux
Césars, et tout disposés à se déclarer pour Till. art. 5.
Constantin, qui viendrait sans doute lui arracher
son consentement à main armée. Plus susceptible de crainte que de
sentiment de justice, il reçut à regret cette image; et pour paraître
donner ce qu'il ne pouvait ôter, il envoya la pourpre à Constantin.
Ses vues sur Licinius se trouvaient trompées; mais afin d'abaisser
du moins le nouveau prince, autant qu'il pourrait le faire, il s'avisa de
donner le titre d'Auguste à Sévère, qui était le plus âgé, et de ne
laisser à Constantin que le rang de César après Maximin, le faisant
ainsi descendre du second degré au quatrième. Le jeune prince,
dont l'ame était élevée et l'esprit solide, parut se contenter de ce
qu'on lui accordait, et ne jugea pas à propos de troubler la paix de
l'empire, pour conserver le titre d'un pouvoir dont il possédait toute la
réalité. En effet, c'est de cette année qu'on commença à compter
celles de sa puissance tribunitienne.
Sévère, qui commandait en Italie, fort satisfait de
cette nouvelle disposition, ne différa pas d'envoyer xxiv. Maxence
à Rome l'image de Constantin, pour l'y faire élevé à l'empire.
reconnaître en qualité de César. Mais le dépit d'un
rival méprisé jusques alors, et qui prétendait avoir Incert. Paneg. c.
plus de droit à l'empire que tous ces nouveaux 4.
souverains, renversa l'ordre établi par Galérius.
Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius était fils de
Lact. de mort.
Maximien. Ses mauvaises qualités, et peut-être pers. c. 18 et
ses malheurs, ont fait dire qu'il était supposé; on 26.
prétend même que sa mère Eutropia avoua qu'elle
l'avait eu d'un Syrien. C'était un prince mal fait de
corps et d'esprit, d'une ame basse, et plein Anony. Vales.
d'arrogance, débauché et superstitieux, brutal
jusqu'à refuser le respect à son père. Galérius lui Eutrop. l. 10.
avait donné en mariage une fille qu'il avait eue de
sa première femme; mais ne voyant en lui que des
Till. note 12 et
vices dont il ne pouvait faire usage, il avait 13.
empêché Dioclétien de le nommer César. Ainsi
Maxence, oublié de son père, haï de son beau-père, avait, jusqu'à
ce temps, mené une vie obscure, enveloppé dans les ténèbres de la
débauche, tantôt à Rome, tantôt en Lucanie. Le bruit de l'élévation
de Constantin le réveilla: il crut devoir sauver une partie de son
héritage, qu'il se voyait enlever par tant de mains étrangères. La
disposition des esprits lui donnait de grandes facilités: l'insatiable
avidité de Galérius alarmait la ville de Rome; on y attendait des
commissaires chargés d'exercer les mêmes vexations qui faisaient
déja gémir les provinces; et comme Galérius craignait la milice
prétorienne, il en avait cassé une partie: c'était donner à Maxence
ceux qui restaient. Aussi les gagna-t-il aisément par le moyen de
deux tribuns nommés Marcellianus et Marcellus; et les intrigues de
Lucien, préposé à la distribution des viandes, qui se faisait aux
dépens du fisc, firent déclarer le peuple en sa faveur. La révolution
fut prompte; elle ne coûta la vie qu'à un petit nombre de magistrats
instruits de leur devoir, même à l'égard d'un prince odieux; entre
lesquels l'histoire ne nomme qu'Abellius, dont la qualité n'est pas
bien connue. Maxence, qui s'était arrêté à deux ou trois lieues de
Rome sur le chemin de Lavicum, fut proclamé Auguste le 28
octobre.
Galérius qui était en Illyrie, ne fut pas fort alarmé
de cette nouvelle. Il faisait trop peu de cas de xxv. Maximien
Maxence pour le regarder comme un rival reprend le titre
redoutable. Il écrit à Sévère, qui résidait à Milan, et d'Auguste.
l'exhorte à se mettre lui-même à la tête de ses
troupes et à marcher contre l'usurpateur. Maxence, Lact., de mort.
aussi timide que Sévère, n'osait s'exposer seul à pers. c. 26.
l'orage dont il était menacé. Il eut recours à son
père Maximien, qui peut-être était d'intelligence Baluzius in Lact.
avec lui, et qui se trouvait alors en Campanie. p. 315.
Celui-ci, qui ne pouvait s'accoutumer à la vie
privée, accourt à Rome, rassure les esprits, écrit à
Dioclétien pour l'engager à reprendre avec lui le Eutrop. l. 10.
gouvernement de l'empire; et sur le refus de ce
prince, il se fait prier par son fils, par le sénat et Incert. Pan.
par le peuple, d'accepter de nouveau le titre Maxim. et
d'Auguste. Const. c. 10.
Maximin ne prit point de part à ces premières

agitations. Tranquille en Orient, et livré à ses xxvi. Maximin
plaisirs, il goûtait un repos dont il ne laissait pas ne prend point
jouir les chrétiens. Étant à Césarée de Palestine le de part à ces
mouvements.
20 novembre, jour de sa naissance, qu'il célébrait
avec grand appareil, après les divertissements
ordinaires, il voulut embellir la fête par un Eus. de Mart.
spectacle dont les païens étaient toujours fort Palæst. c. 6.
avides. Le chrétien Agapius était depuis deux ans
condamné aux bêtes. La compassion du magistrat, ou l'espérance
de vaincre sa fermeté, avait fait différer son supplice. Maximin le fait
traîner sur l'arène avec un esclave qu'on disait avoir assassiné son
maître. Le César fait grace au meurtrier, et tout l'amphithéâtre
retentit d'acclamations sur la clémence du prince. Ayant fait ensuite
amener le chrétien devant lui, il lui promet la vie et la liberté, s'il
renonce à sa religion. Mais celui-ci protestant à haute voix qu'il est
prêt à tout souffrir avec joie pour une si belle cause, court lui-même
au-devant d'une ourse qu'on avait lâchée sur lui, et s'abandonne à la
férocité de cet animal, qui le déchire. On le reporte à demi mort dans
la prison, et le lendemain comme il respirait encore, on le jette dans
la mer avec de grosses pierres attachées à ses pieds. Tels étaient
les amusements de Maximin.
Constantin signalait les commencements de son
empire par des actions plus dignes d'un souverain. xxvii.
Quoiqu'il fût encore dans les ténèbres du Occupations de
paganisme, il ne se contenta pas, comme son Constantin.
père, de laisser aux chrétiens, par une permission
tacite, le libre exercice de leur religion, il l'autorisa Lact., de mort.
par un édit. Comme il avait souvent dans la pers. c. 24.
bouche cette belle maxime: que c'est la fortune qui
fait les empereurs, mais que c'est aux empereurs à Lamprid. in
justifier le choix de la fortune, il s'occupait du soin Helag. c. 34.
de rendre ses sujets heureux. Il s'appliqua d'abord
à régler l'intérieur de ses états, et songea ensuite à en assurer les
frontières.
Après avoir visité les provinces de son obéissance,
en rétablissant partout le bon ordre, il marcha xxviii. Sa
contre les Francs. Ces peuples, les plus belliqueux victoire sur les
des barbares, profitant de l'absence de Constance Francs.
pour violer les traités de paix, avaient passé le
Rhin et faisaient de grands ravages. Constantin les vainquit, fit
prisonniers deux de leurs rois, Ascaric et Régaïse;
et pour punir ces princes de leur perfidie, il les fit Eus. vit. Const.
dévorer par les bêtes dans l'amphithéâtre: action l. 1, c. 25.
barbare qui déshonorait sa victoire, et à laquelle la
postérité doit d'autant plus d'horreur, que la basse Eumen. Paneg.
flatterie des orateurs du temps s'est efforcée d'en c. 10 et 11.
faire plus d'éloge.
Ayant forcé les Francs à repasser le fleuve, il le Nazar. Pan. c.
passa lui-même sans être attendu, fondit sur leur 16 et 17.
pays[6], et les surprit avant qu'ils eussent eu le
temps de se sauver, comme c'était leur coutume, Incert. Pan. c. 4
dans leurs bois et leurs marais. On en massacra, et 23.
on en prit un nombre prodigieux. Tous les
troupeaux furent égorgés ou enlevés; tous les
xxix. Il acheva
villages brûlés. Les prisonniers qui avaient l'âge de de les dompter.
puberté, trop suspects pour être enrôlés dans les
troupes, trop féroces pour souffrir l'esclavage,
furent tous livrés aux bêtes à Trèves, dans les jeux Eumen. Pan. c.
qui furent célébrés après la victoire. Le courage de 12 et 13.
ces braves gens effraya leurs vainqueurs, qui
s'amusaient de leur supplice: on les vit courir au- Vorburg, Hist.
devant de la mort, et conserver encore un air Rom. Germ., l.
intrépide entre les dents et sous les ongles des 2, p. 112.
bêtes farouches, qui les déchiraient sans leur
arracher un soupir. Quoi qu'on puisse dire pour Incert. Pan. c.
excuser Constantin, il faut avouer qu'on retrouve 23 et 24.
dans son caractère des traits de cette férocité
commune aux princes de son siècle, et qui s'échappa encore en
plusieurs rencontres, lors même que le christianisme eut adouci ses
mœurs.
[6] Constantin ravagea le pays des Bructères, tribu de la nation des Francs.—S.-
M.
Pour ôter aux barbares l'envie de passer le Rhin,
et pour se procurer à lui-même une libre entrée sur xxx. Il met à
leurs terres, il entretint, le long du fleuve, les forts couvert les
déja bâtis et garnis de troupes, et sur le fleuve
même une flotte bien armée. Il commença à terres de la
Cologne un pont de pierre qui ne fut achevé qu'au Gaule.
bout de dix ans, et qui, selon quelques-uns,
subsista jusqu'en 955. On dit aussi que ce fut pour Eumenius, Pan.
défendre ce pont qu'il bâtit ou répara le château de c. 13.
Duitz vis-à-vis de Cologne[7]. Ces grands ouvrages
achevèrent d'intimider les Francs; ils demandèrent Vorb. Hist. Rom.
la paix, et donnèrent pour ôtages les plus nobles Germ. t. 2, p.
de leur nation. Le vainqueur, pour couronner ces 170.
glorieux succès, institua les jeux franciques, qui
continuèrent long-temps de se célébrer tous les Till., art. 10.
ans depuis le 14 de juillet jusqu'au 20.
[7] C'est une conjecture de Bucher (Hist. Belg., l. 8, c. 2, § 5). Les anciens ne
disent rien de pareil.—S.-M.
Tout était en mouvement en Italie. Sévère, parti de
Milan au milieu de l'hiver de l'an 307, marcha vers An 307.
Rome avec une grande armée, composée de
Romains et de soldats Maures, qui tous avaient xxxi. Sévère
servi sous Maximien, et lui étaient encore trahi.
affectionnés. Ces troupes, accoutumées aux
délices de Rome, avaient plus d'envie de vivre
Incert. Pan. c. 3.
dans cette ville que de la ruiner. Maxence ayant
d'abord gagné Anullinus, préfet du prétoire, n'eut
pas de peine à les corrompre. Dès qu'elles furent à Lact., de mort.
la vue de Rome, elles quittèrent leur empereur et pers. c. 26.
se donnèrent à son ennemi. Sévère abandonné
prend la fuite, et rencontrant Maximien à la tête Anony. Vales.
d'un corps qu'il venait de rassembler, il se sauve à
Ravenne, où il se renferme avec le petit nombre
de ceux qui lui étaient demeurés fidèles. Cette ville Zos. l. 2, c. 10.
était forte, peuplée, et assez bien pourvue de
vivres pour donner à Galérius le temps de venir au Vict. epit. p.
secours. Mais Sévère manquait de la principale 221.
ressource: il n'avait ni bon sens, ni courage.
Maximien pressé par la crainte qu'il avait de Eutrop. l. 10.
Galérius, prodiguait les promesses et les serments
pour engager Sévère à se rendre: celui-ci plus pressé encore par sa
propre timidité, et menacé d'une nouvelle désertion, ne songeait qu'à
sauver sa vie; il consentit à tout, se remit entre les mains de son
ennemi, et rendit la pourpre à celui qui la lui avait donnée deux ans
auparavant.
Réduit à la condition privée, il revenait à Rome, où
Maximien lui avait juré qu'il serait traité avec xxxii. Sa mort.
honneur. Mais Maxence, pour dégager son père
de sa parole, fit dresser à Sévère une embuscade Anony. Vales.
sur le chemin. Il le prit, l'amena à Rome comme un
captif, et l'envoya à trente milles sur la voie
Appienne, dans un lieu nommé les Trois- Zos. l. 2, c. 10.
Hôtelleries (Tres tabernæ), où ce prince infortuné,
ayant été retenu prisonnier pendant quelques [Victor, epit. p.
jours, fut forcé de se faire ouvrir les veines. On 221].
porta son corps dans le tombeau de Gallien, à huit
ou neuf milles de Rome. Il laissa un fils nommé Sévérianus qui ne
fut héritier que de ses malheurs.
Maximien s'attendait bien que Galérius ne tarderait
pas de venir en Italie pour venger la mort de xxxiii. Mariage
Sévère. Il craignait même que cet ennemi violent de Constantin.
et irrité n'amenât avec lui Maximin; et quelles
forces pourraient résister aux armées réunies de Lact., de mort.
ces deux princes? Il songea donc de son côté à se pers. c. 27.
procurer une alliance capable de le soutenir au
milieu d'une si violente tempête. Il met Rome en
Du Cange, in
état de défense, et court en Gaule pour s'attacher numm. Byz. p.
Constantin en lui faisant épouser sa fille Flavia- 45.
Maximiana-Fausta, qu'il avait eue d'Eutropia, et
qui, du côté de sa mère, était sœur cadette de
Theodora, belle-mère de Constantin. Elle était née Till. art. 11.
et avait été élevée à Rome. Son père l'avait
destinée au fils de Constance dès l'enfance de l'un Incert. Paneg.,
et de l'autre: on voyait dans son palais d'Aquilée Max. et Cons. c.
un tableau, où la jeune princesse présentait à 6.
Constantin un casque d'or. Le mariage de
Minervina rompit ce projet: mais sa mort arrivée
avant celle de Constance donna lieu de le Baluzius, in
reprendre, et il semble que ce prince avait consenti Lact., c. 27.
à cette alliance. L'état où se trouvait alors
Maximien la fit promptement conclure: le mariage fut fait à Trèves, le
31 mars. Nous avons encore un panégyrique qui fut alors prononcé
en présence des deux princes[8]. Pour la dot de sa fille, Maximien
donna à son gendre le titre d'Auguste, sans s'embarrasser de
l'approbation de Galérius.
[8] Cet ouvrage, dont on ignore l'auteur, se retrouve dans le Recueil des anciens
panégyristes (Panegyrici veteres).—S.-M.
Ce prince était bien éloigné de l'accorder. Plein de
courroux et ne respirant que vengeance, il était xxxiv. Galérius
déja entré en Italie avec une armée plus forte que vient assiéger
celle de Sévère, et ne menaçait de rien moins que Rome.
d'égorger le sénat, d'exterminer le peuple, et de
ruiner la ville. Il n'avait jamais vu Rome, et n'en Incert. Pan. c. 3.
connaissait ni la grandeur ni la force: il la trouva
hors d'insulte: l'attaque et la circonvallation lui
Lact., de mort.
paraissant également impraticables, il fut contraint pers. c. 27.
d'avoir recours aux voies de négociation. Il alla
camper à Terni en Ombrie, d'où il députa à
Maxence deux de ses principaux officiers, Licinius Anony. Vales.
et Probus, pour lui proposer de mettre bas les
armes, et de s'en rapporter à la bienveillance d'un beau-père, prêt à
lui accorder tout ce qu'il ne prétendrait pas emporter par violence.
Maxence n'avait garde de donner dans ce piége. Il
attaqua Galérius avec les mêmes armes qui lui xxxv. Il est
avaient si bien réussi contre Sévère; et profita de contraint de se
ces entrevues pour lui débaucher par argent une retirer.
grande partie de ses troupes, déja mécontentes
d'être employées contre Rome, et par un beau-père contre son
gendre. Des corps entiers quittèrent Galérius et s'allèrent jeter dans
Rome. Cet exemple ébranlait déja le reste de l'armée, et Galérius
était à la veille d'éprouver le même sort que celui qu'il venait venger,
lorsque ce prince superbe, humilié par la nécessité, se prosternant
aux pieds des soldats et les suppliant avec larmes de ne pas le livrer
à son ennemi, vint à bout, à force de prières et de promesses, d'en
retenir une partie. Il décampa aussitôt et s'enfuit en diligence.
Il ne fallait qu'un chef avec une poignée de bonnes
troupes, pour l'accabler dans cette fuite précipitée. xxxvi. Il ruine
Il le sentit; et pour ôter à l'ennemi le moyen de le tout sur son
poursuivre, et payer en même temps ses soldats passage.
de leur fidélité, il leur ordonna de ruiner toutes les
campagnes et de détruire toutes les subsistances. Jamais il ne fut
mieux obéi. La plus belle contrée de l'Italie éprouva tous les excès
de l'avarice, de la licence et de la rage la plus effrénée. Ce fut au
travers de ces horribles ravages que l'empereur, ou plutôt le fléau de
l'empire, regagna la Pannonie; et la malheureuse Italie eut lieu de se
ressouvenir alors que Galérius, recevant deux ans auparavant le
titre d'empereur, s'était déclaré l'ennemi du nom romain, et qu'il avait
projeté de changer la dénomination de l'empire, en l'appelant
l'empire des Daces, parce que presque tous ceux qui gouvernaient
alors tiraient, comme lui, leur origine de ces barbares.
Maximien était encore en Gaule. Indigné contre
son fils, dont la lâcheté avait laissé échapper xxxvii.
Galérius, il résolut de lui ôter la puissance Maximien
souveraine. Il sollicita son gendre de poursuivre revient à Rome
d'où il est
Galérius, et de se joindre à lui pour dépouiller
chassé.
Maxence. Constantin s'y trouvait assez disposé,
mais il ne put se résoudre à quitter la Gaule, où sa
présence était nécessaire pour contenir les Lact. de mort.
barbares. Rien n'est plus équivoque que la pers. c. 28.
conduite de Maximien. Cependant, quand on suit
avec attention toutes ses démarches, il paraît qu'il Incert. Paneg. c.
n'avait rien d'arrêté que le désir de se rendre le 3.
maître. Sans affection comme sans scrupule,
également ennemi de son fils et de son gendre, il
Zos. l. 2, c. 10.
cherchait à les détruire l'un par l'autre, pour les
faire périr tous deux. Il retourne à Rome: le dépit
d'y voir Maxence plus honoré et plus obéi, et de Eutrop. l. 10.
n'être lui-même regardé que comme la créature de
son fils, joignit à son ambition une amère jalousie.
Il pratiqua sous main les soldats de Sévère, qui Zonar., l. 12, t. i,
avaient été les siens: avant même que d'en être p. 644.
bien assuré, il assemble le peuple et les gens de
guerre, monte avec Maxence sur le tribunal; et après avoir gémi sur
les maux de l'état, tout-à-coup il se tourne d'un air menaçant vers
son fils, l'accuse d'être la cause de ces malheurs, et, comme
emporté par sa véhémence, il lui arrache le manteau de pourpre.
Maxence effrayé se jette entre les bras des soldats qui, touchés de
ses larmes et plus encore de ses promesses, accablent Maximien
d'injures et de menaces. En vain celui-ci veut leur persuader que
cette violence de sa part n'est qu'une feinte, pour éprouver leur zèle
à l'égard de son fils; il est obligé de sortir de Rome.
Galérius avait donné le consulat de cette année à
Sévère et à Maximin: le premier n'avait pas été xxxviii.
reconnu dans les états de Maxence, qui avait Maxence lui ôte
nommé son père consul pour la neuvième fois: et le consulat.
Maximien, en donnant à Constantin la qualité
d'Auguste, l'avait fait consul avec lui, sans Buch. de cycl.
s'embarrasser du titre de Maximin. Maxence ayant p. 238.
chassé son père, lui abrogea le consulat, sans lui
substituer personne. Il cessa même alors de Till. note 15 sur
reconnaître Constantin pour consul, et fit dater les Constantin.
actes par les consulats de l'année précédente en
ces termes: Après le sixième consulat; c'était celui
de Constance Chlore et de Galérius, qui tous deux Idat. chron.
avaient été consuls pour la sixième fois en 306.
Maximien se retira en Gaule, soit pour armer
Constantin contre Maxence, soit pour le perdre lui- xxxix. Maximien
même. N'ayant pu réussir dans l'un ni dans l'autre va trouver
projet, il se hasarda d'aller trouver Galérius, Constantin et
ensuite
l'ennemi mortel de son fils, sous prétexte de se
Galérius.
réconcilier avec lui, et de prendre de concert les
moyens de rétablir les affaires de l'empire: mais en
effet pour chercher l'occasion de lui ôter la vie, et Lact., de mort.
pers. c. 29.
de régner en sa place, croyant ne pouvoir trouver du repos que sur
le trône.
Galérius était à Carnunte en Pannonie. Désespéré
du peu de succès qu'il avait eu contre Maxence, et xl. Portrait de
craignant d'être attaqué à son tour, il songea à se Licinius.
donner un appui dans Licinius, en le mettant à la
place de Sévère. C'était un Dace, d'une famille Lact., de mort.
aussi obscure que celle de Galérius; il se vantait pers. c. 29.
pourtant de descendre de l'empereur Philippe. On
ne sait pas précisément son âge, mais il était plus
Zos. l. 2, c. 11.
âgé que Galérius, et c'était une des raisons qui
avaient empêché celui-ci de le créer César, selon
la coutume, avant que de l'élever à la dignité Eutrop. l. 10.
d'Auguste. Ils avaient formé ensemble une liaison
intime, dès le temps qu'ils servaient dans les Aurel. Vict. de
armées. Licinius s'était ensuite attaché à la fortune Cæs., p. 174 et
de son ami, et avait beaucoup contribué, par sa 176.
valeur, à la célèbre victoire remportée sur [le roi de
Perse] Narsès. Il avait la réputation d'un grand
Vict. epit. p. 221
homme de guerre, et il se piqua toujours d'une et 222.
sévère exactitude dans la discipline. Ses vices,
plus grands que ses vertus, n'avaient rien de rebutant pour un
homme tel que Galérius: il était dur, colère, cruel, dissolu, d'une
avarice sordide, ignorant, ennemi des lettres, des lois et de la
morale; il appelait les lettres le poison de l'état; il détestait la science
du barreau, et il prit plaisir, étant empereur, à persécuter les
philosophes les plus renommés, et à leur faire souffrir, par haine et
par caprice, les supplices réservés aux esclaves. Il y eut pourtant
deux sortes de personnes qu'il sut traiter avec assez d'équité: il se
montra favorable aux laboureurs et aux gens de la campagne; et
retint dans une étroite contrainte les eunuques et les officiers du
palais, qu'il aimait à comparer à ces insectes qui rongent sans cesse
les choses auxquelles ils s'attachent.
Pour rendre l'élection de Licinius plus éclatante,
Galérius invita Dioclétien à s'y trouver. Le vieillard xli. Dioclétien
y consentit: il partit de sa paisible retraite de refuse l'empire.
Salone, et reparut à la cour avec une douce
majesté, qui attirait les regards sans les éblouir, et Vict. epit. p.
les respects sans mélange de crainte. Maximien, 221.
toujours agité du désir de régner, comme d'une
fièvre ardente, voulut encore exciter en secret son ancien collègue,
devenu philosophe, à reprendre la pourpre et à rendre le calme à
l'empire, qui, dans les mains de tant de jeunes souverains, n'était
que le jouet de leurs passions. Ce fut alors que Dioclétien lui fit cette
belle réponse: Ah! si vous pouviez voir à Salone ces fruits et ces
légumes que je cultive de mes propres mains, jamais vous ne me
parleriez de l'empire! Quelques auteurs ont dit que Galérius se
joignit à Maximien pour faire à Dioclétien cette proposition: si le fait
est vrai, ce ne pouvait être qu'une feinte et un pur compliment de la
part de ce prince, qui n'était pas d'humeur à reculer d'un degré; mais
l'ambition de Maximien nous répond ici de sa sincérité.
Ce fut donc en présence et du consentement des
deux anciens empereurs, que Galérius honora xlii. Licinius
Licinius du titre d'Auguste, le 11 novembre 307, lui Auguste.
donnant, à ce qu'on croit, pour département la
Pannonie et la Rhétie, en attendant qu'il pût lui Chron. Alex. vel
donner, comme il espérait le faire bientôt, toute la Paschal, p. 278.
dépouille de Maxence. Licinius prit les noms de C.
Flavius Valerius Licinianus Licinius: il y joignit le
Noris, de num.
surnom de Jovius, que Galérius avait emprunté de Licinii.
Dioclétien.
Constantin, qui n'avait pas été consulté, garda sur Till. n. 19 sur
cette élection un profond silence. Maxence, de son Constantin.
côté, créa César son fils M. Aurélius Romulus.
Mais le dépit de Maximin ne tarda pas à éclater.
Pour faire sa cour à Galérius, et pour gagner dans [Eckhel, doct.
num. vet. t. viii,
son esprit l'avantage sur Licinius, qui commençait p. 61-68.]
à lui donner de la jalousie, il avait redoublé de
fureur et de cruauté contre les chrétiens. Mennas,
préfet d'Égypte, était chrétien: Maximin, l'ayant xliii. Maximin
appris, envoie Hermogènes pour prendre sa place continue à
persécuter les
et pour le punir. Le nouveau préfet exécute ses chrétiens.
ordres, et fait cruellement tourmenter son
prédécesseur; mais ébranlé d'abord par sa Baronius, ann.
constance, éclairé ensuite par plusieurs miracles 307.
dont il est témoin, il se convertit et embrasse le
christianisme. Maximin outré de colère vient à Alexandrie: il leur fait
à tous deux trancher la tête; et pour tremper lui-même ses mains
dans le sang des martyrs, il tue d'un coup d'épée Eugraphus,
domestique de Mennas, et qui osait devant l'empereur professer la
religion proscrite. Mon dessein n'est pas de mettre sous les yeux de
mes lecteurs tous les triomphes des martyrs: ce détail appartient à
l'histoire de l'Église, dont ils furent l'honneur et la défense. Je me
propose seulement de rendre compte des principaux faits de ce
genre, auxquels les empereurs ont eu part immédiatement et par
eux-mêmes.
Les édits de Maximin remplissaient tout l'Orient de
gibets, de feux et de carnage. Les gouverneurs xliv. Punition
s'empressaient à l'envi à servir l'inhumanité du d'Urbanus et de
prince. Urbanus, préfet de la Palestine, se signalait Firmilianus.
entre les autres, et la ville de Césarée était teinte
de sang. Aussi possédait-il toute la faveur du Eus. Hist. Mart.
tyran: sa complaisance barbare couvrait tous ses Pal. c. 7. et 11.
autres crimes, dont il espérait acheter l'impunité
aux dépens des chrétiens. Mais le Dieu qu'il attaquait dans ses
serviteurs, ouvrit les yeux du prince sur les rapines et les injustices
du préfet. Urbanus fut convaincu devant Maximin, qui devint pour lui
à son tour un juge inexorable, et qui, l'ayant condamné à la mort,
vengea, sans le vouloir, les martyrs sur celui qui avait prononcé tant
de condamnations injustes. Firmilianus, qui succéda à Urbanus,
ayant été comme lui le fidèle ministre des ordres sanguinaires du
tyran, fut comme lui la victime de la vengeance divine, et eut
quelques années après la tête tranchée.
Quoique les rigueurs que Maximin exerçait contre
les chrétiens ne coûtassent rien à sa cruauté, An 308.
cependant plus il s'était étudié à se conformer aux
volontés de Galérius, plus il se sentit piqué de la xlv. Maximin
préférence que ce prince donnait à Licinius. Après prend le titre
s'être regardé comme tenant la seconde place d'Auguste.
dans l'empire, il ne voulait pas reculer à la
troisième. Il en fit des plaintes mêlées de Lact., de mort.
menaces. Pour l'adoucir, Galérius lui envoie pers. c. 20.
plusieurs fois des députés; il lui rappelle ses
bienfaits passés; il le prie même d'entrer dans ses
vues, et de déférer aux cheveux blancs de Eus. Hist. eccl.
l. 8, c. 14.
Licinius. Maximin, que ces ménagements
rendaient plus fier et plus hardi, proteste qu'étant
depuis trois ans revêtu de la pourpre des Césars, il Numism.
ne consentira jamais à laisser à un autre le rang Mezzab. et
qui lui est dû à lui-même. Galérius, qui se croyait Banduri.
en droit d'en exiger une soumission entière, lui
reproche en vain son ingratitude: il lui fallut céder à Toinard et
l'opiniâtreté de son neveu. D'abord pour essayer Cuper. in Lact.
de le satisfaire il abolit le nom de César; il déclare
que lui-même et Licinius seront appelés Augustes, [Eckhel, doct.
et que Maximin et Constantin auront le titre non num. vet. t. viii,
plus de Césars, mais de fils des Augustes. Il paraît p. 71-95].
par les médailles de ces deux princes, qu'ils
adoptèrent d'abord cette nouvelle dénomination. Mais Maximin ne la
garda pas long-temps; il se fit proclamer Auguste par son armée, et
manda ensuite à son oncle la prétendue violence que ses soldats lui
avaient faite. Galérius, forcé avec chagrin d'y consentir, abandonna
le plan qu'il avait formé, et ordonna que les quatre princes seraient
tous reconnus pour Augustes. Galérius tenait sans contredit le
premier rang; l'ordre des trois autres était contesté: Licinius était le
second selon Galérius, qui ne donnait que le dernier rang à
Constantin; mais Maximin se nommait lui-même avant Licinius; et
selon toute apparence, Constantin dans ses états était nommé avant
les deux autres. D'un autre côté, Maxence ne reconnaissait d'abord
que lui seul pour Auguste; il voulut bien ensuite faire part de ce titre
à Maximin. Mais enfin toutes ces disputes de prééminence se
terminèrent par la mort funeste de chacun de ces princes, qui
cédèrent l'un après l'autre au bonheur et au mérite de Constantin.
Maximien, empereur honoraire, puisqu'il n'avait ni sujets, ni
fonctions, que celles que lui imposait son humeur turbulente, avait
été compté pour rien dans ces nouvelles
dispositions. Il était dès lors brouillé avec Galérius: xlvi. Maximien
il paraît qu'au commencement de cette année ils consul.
avaient vécu en bonne intelligence, puisqu'on voit
dans les fastes le dixième consulat de Maximien, Till. note 21 sur
joint au septième de Galérius. Maxence, qui ne Constantin.
reconnaissait ni l'un ni l'autre, après avoir passé
près de quatre mois sans nommer de consuls, se nomma lui-même
le 20 avril avec son fils Romulus, et se continua avec lui l'année
suivante.
Comme il se voyait tranquille en Italie, il envoya
ses images en Afrique pour s'y faire reconnaître. Il xlvii. Alexandre
s'attribuait cette province: c'était une partie de la est nommé
dépouille de Sévère. Les troupes de Carthage, empereur à
regardant Maxence comme un usurpateur, Carthage.
refusèrent de lui obéir; et craignant que le tyran ne
vînt les y contraindre à main armée, elles prirent le Zos. l. 2, c. 12.
long du rivage la route d'Alexandrie, pour se retirer
dans les états de Maximin. Mais ayant rencontré Aurel. Vict., de
en chemin des troupes supérieures, elles se Cæs., p. 174 et
jetèrent dans des vaisseaux et retournèrent à 175.
Carthage. Maxence, irrité de cette résistance,
résolut d'abord de passer en Afrique, et d'aller en
personne punir les chefs de ces rebelles; mais il Vict. 221.
epit. p.
fut retenu à Rome par les aruspices, qui
l'assurèrent que les entrailles des victimes ne lui promettaient rien
de favorable. Une autre raison plus solide, c'est qu'il craignait
l'opposition du vicaire d'Afrique, nommé Alexandre, qui avait un
grand crédit dans le pays. Il voulut donc s'assurer de sa fidélité, et lui
demanda son fils pour ôtage: c'était un jeune homme fort beau; et le
père, informé des infâmes débauches de Maxence, refusa de le
hasarder entre ses mains. Bientôt des assassins, envoyés pour tuer
Alexandre, ayant été découverts, les soldats plus indignés encore
proclamèrent Alexandre empereur. Il était Phrygien selon les uns,
Pannonien selon les autres; peut-être était-il né dans une de ces
provinces, et originaire de l'autre: tous conviennent qu'il était fils d'un
paysan; ce qui ne le rendait pas moins digne de l'empire que

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Mahler's Seventh Symphony (Studies in

Musical Genesis, Structure, and

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2019

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Series Editor’s Foreword ix

The Oxford series Studies in Musical Genesis, Structure, and Interpretation

address some aspects of interpretation, whether in performance, publication,

A great number of individuals and institutions provided sup-

The author thanks the following institutions for permission

Oxford has created a password-​protected website to accompany Mahler’s

ACA Amsterdam Concertgebouw Archives.

commented by Knud Martner. Hamburg: Karl Dieter

Mahler’s musical past is summoned in a particular way in this work, weaving

jubilant” finales as insincere and triumphalist.5 The circus offers a powerful

Premiere and Reception

William Ritter’s exuberant enthusiasm for Mahler’s Seventh

Fig. 1.1 Concert Pavilion, Prague. Fonds de La Grange, collection Mahler,

year.8 This development caused a delay in the publication of the Seventh,

Ritter depicts the atmosphere of the rehearsals as follows:

Bruno Walter in July 1908: “My symphony is now to be introduced on 19

While this questioning provoked strong reactions on the composer’s side,

Toute l'armée s'empressa d'exécuter ces dernières dispositions de

Maximin ne prit point de part à ces premières

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Oxford has created a password-protected website to accompany Mahler’s