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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
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony
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

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford
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
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford
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
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford
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.

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford
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 .

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford
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

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford
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.
Mahler’s Seventh Symphony
 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

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford
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.
4 : Mahler’s Seventh Symphony

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.

Mahler’s Seventh Symphony. Anna Stoll Knecht, Oxford University Press (2019). © Oxford
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.
8 : Mahler’s Seventh Symphony

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.
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