Paul Serotsky: Gustav Mahler's unfinished Tenth Symphony extraordinary

The Austrian composer Gustav Mahler and one of his daughters in Vienna circa 1907. Photo / Getty Images

CLASSIC NOTES

When we kick the bucket, few of us leave our affairs in perfect order. Almost inevitably, composers leave masses of manuscripts: ideas, sketches, jottings and partly – or even fully – completed works.

The fates of these are legion, depending on what they are and who wrote them. Some are published; some grace museum displays, or languish in archives; some become heirlooms, or fetch fortunes at auctions; and yes, some end up at the dump.

A singularly intriguing example is Gustav Mahler's five-movement Tenth Symphony (1911), whose convoluted history spans much of the 20th century. Mahler left fully scored first drafts of a huge first movement and an almost complete but tiny third movement. So far, so good – but the other movements existed only as a chaotic stack of sketches.

Crucially though, there was also a four-stave "short score". This provided 96 per cent of the narrative line of the whole work and was littered with notations and "memos" relating to harmony, counterpoint, dynamics and instrumentation. Nevertheless, these treasures added up to a LOT less than a complete symphony.

Mahler's widow, Alma, published it all in facsimile, and for years tried to persuade numerous significant figures (including Schoenberg and Shostakovich) to "work it up" into a performable symphony.

As part of the BBC's celebration of Mahler's centenary (1960), the English Mahler specialist Deryck Cooke did just what she'd been hoping for. Astonishingly, instead of being thrilled, Alma now declared the sketches "private love-letters", and flatly forbade any performance of Cooke's "performing version"!

Fortunately, the planned BBC lecture and partial play-through had already been broadcast. Alma's friend, the conductor and orchestrator Harold Byrns, persuaded her to look at Cooke's score. Impressed, she asked to hear the BBC tape – and auditioned it not once, but twice. Completely won over, she wrote to Cooke revoking her ban.

The premiere of Cooke's version at the 1964 Proms received an unprecedentedly impassioned (not to mention exceedingly long) reception. End of story? Not quite. Cooke's score was twice revised (partly in the light of further, unpublished sketches), and other versions have appeared, including Clinton Carpenter's, Joseph Wheeler's, Remo Mazzetti's and Rudolf Barshai's.

None of these have gained universal acceptance. Many of the foremost Mahler conductors – including Bernstein, Kubelik, Boulez, Solti and Abbado – wouldn't touch the Tenth with a bargepole, because it isn't "pure" Mahler. And they're quite right: it isn't, it cannot be so – if Mahler had lived to finish it, he would have spent months, even years revising it, licking it into its final shape. But, regardless of that, they missed the real point.

Anyone who'd studied the facsimile saw that here was music of extraordinary beauty, whose true place was before the public. Granted, any performing version by definition will not be "pure" Mahler – but it will still be music of extraordinary beauty.

As the Bard so penetratingly put it, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet."

And therein lies the crux: it matters not one jot who wrote it; any musical work stands or falls on its own merits.