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Symphony No. 9 In Full Score
"Mahler inherited the romantic conception of music as an expression of a quest for spiritual reality … he expressed a four-sided conflict between a devouring love of life, a spiritual need, a skeptical intellect, and an existential dread of ultimate meaninglessness." — Encyclopaedia Britannica.
In this great work, Mahler experimented with the four-movement symphonic form, producing a masterpiece of musical innovation, satiric writing, and poetic drama expressed in purely instrumental terms. Alban Berg referred to the first movement of the Ninth Symphony as "the most glorious [Mahler] ever wrote," and further observed, "the whole movement is based on a premonition of death which constantly recurs … that is why the tenderest passages are followed by tremendous climaxes like new eruptions of a volcano."
Now the full orchestral score of the Ninth Symphony is available in the inexpensive, high-quality edition, reprinted from an authoritative Viennese score. Music lovers and admirers of Mahler's work will find in these pages abundant evidence of the fresh and formidable thinking the composer brought to this monumental composition.
In this great work, Mahler experimented with the four-movement symphonic form, producing a masterpiece of musical innovation, satiric writing, and poetic drama expressed in purely instrumental terms. Alban Berg referred to the first movement of the Ninth Symphony as "the most glorious [Mahler] ever wrote," and further observed, "the whole movement is based on a premonition of death which constantly recurs … that is why the tenderest passages are followed by tremendous climaxes like new eruptions of a volcano."
Now the full orchestral score of the Ninth Symphony is available in the inexpensive, high-quality edition, reprinted from an authoritative Viennese score. Music lovers and admirers of Mahler's work will find in these pages abundant evidence of the fresh and formidable thinking the composer brought to this monumental composition.
- GenresMusic
192 pages, Paperback
First published March 18, 1993
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About the author
Gustav Mahler
535 books30 followersGustav Mahler was a late-Romantic composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born to a Jewish family in the village of Kalischt in Bohemia, in what was then the Austrian Empire, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic. His family later moved to nearby Iglau (now Jihlava), where Mahler grew up.
As a composer, Mahler acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became a frequently performed and recorded composer, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera. During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
Mahler's oeuvre is relatively small; for much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists. Most of his twelve symphonic scores are very large-scale works, often employing vocal soloists and choruses in addition to augmented orchestral forces. These works were often controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and popular approval; exceptions included his Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 3, and the triumphant premier of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Some of Mahler's immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composer's life and work.
As a composer, Mahler acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 the music was discovered and championed by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became a frequently performed and recorded composer, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.
Born in humble circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera. During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner and Mozart. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic.
Mahler's oeuvre is relatively small; for much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists. Most of his twelve symphonic scores are very large-scale works, often employing vocal soloists and choruses in addition to augmented orchestral forces. These works were often controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and popular approval; exceptions included his Symphony No. 2, Symphony No. 3, and the triumphant premier of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Some of Mahler's immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour the composer's life and work.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 11, 2024
Picking up from the end of Das Lied von der Erde, the first movement of the ninth is a half-hour journey through a stormy autumnal forest of naturalistic sound. You emerge exhilarated (and slightly relieved) as the music finally slows, opening out onto a broad and radiant plane — a lost-to-the-world twilight wilderness that (with violin solo lilting high above) finally gives you space enough to take a breath. The second movement is a 16-minute pain in the arse. The third movement? Also too long (even if it does contain some of Mahler’s most exciting music). Then comes the finale: one of a kind. An outpouring of passion and emotion. The most beautiful music in the world. After all of the ninth’s sound and fury, listening to the elegiac dying away of its prostrate and longingly protracted closing moments is like being dissolved into thin air. A surrender. A supplication addressed to the cosmic silence. There is nothing else in art that affects me in quite the same way.
Is this the music of grief and despair or hope and gratitude? I can never tell. Is it majestic or downright ugly? It is what it is. It expresses a yearning to see that which lies beyond and aches for those strange, unknowable worlds forever lost to the ghosts of the deep.
“They have just gone out ahead of us,
And they will not be coming home again.
We'll go meet them on those heights,
In the sunlight, the day is beautiful
On those heights.”
— Friedrich Rückert, Kindertotenlieder
Is this the music of grief and despair or hope and gratitude? I can never tell. Is it majestic or downright ugly? It is what it is. It expresses a yearning to see that which lies beyond and aches for those strange, unknowable worlds forever lost to the ghosts of the deep.
“They have just gone out ahead of us,
And they will not be coming home again.
We'll go meet them on those heights,
In the sunlight, the day is beautiful
On those heights.”
— Friedrich Rückert, Kindertotenlieder
May 5, 2010
"I regret the delay in my book quest, but for the past 4 weeks I have been driving to Fort Wayne IN rather than flying, so my reading time is crimped. To make lemonade from lemons, I pulled two Benjamin Zander CD sets from my shelf to listen to while driving. Background: Mr. Zander lead an excellent presentation at the IBM PTLE (professional technical leadership exchange) in 2007, and since then I have wanted to listen to these discs. (I also read his excellent book 'The Art of Possibility,' which I also highly recommend.) Having finished the Beethoven 5th and 7th discs, and starting now on Mahler's 9th, I have to say, Mr. Zander's audio explanation of the music, insight into Beethoven's tempi, Mahler's life and how this is poured into his music, etc. is just fabulous. For those wondering what classical music is about, and why one would listen to it, I highly recommend these discs (Beethoven first please), for an understanding of what to listen for in a classical recording."
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews