Mahler: Symphony No.10 - IMSLP Forums (2024)

Necromancing this old thread, as we now have a work page with downloadables: Symphony No.10 Huzzah!

Thanks very much to cypressdome for obtaining these from the BSB and ÖNB. I was a little worried the page would disappear without anything there! I’m a little bit upset about the ‘(unfinished)’ in the title however — we don’t normally include sobriquets or other incidental remarks about symphonies, even for other unfinished symphonies, like the various Schubert unfinisheds (when will someone manage to obtain a copy of the Weingartner 7th?!) or Bruckner 9. (And this page is PMLP495655 rather than the previous page that once existed for the work, PMLP242955, but meh.)

The Paul Zsolnay Verlag set is almost certainly PD in those places that have particular terms for posthumously published works with expiry set a finite time after first publication, as the set of manuscript facsimiles, including 116 pages of Mahler’s composing, was published 89 years ago. The exception, as usual, is the US with its infernal 95 year term, though it’s doubtful the compulsory renewal occurred in or around 1952. It likewise seems rather doubtful to me that the additional 40 or so pages published in 1967 by the Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft (IGMG) under the auspices of Erwin Ratz could possibly attract a full term as they are part of the same work which has a first publication date of 1924, but that’s very much vexed territory, so I’ll only reiterate that the Zsolnay set is a plum ripe for picking, and the only substantial omission from it was the short score draft of movement II. (Scherzo — Finale)

Of the manuscripts from the Bayerische Staatsbibliotek uploaded today, IMSLP #306984, the first large set of 21 pages consisting of the short score of movement I. (Adagio) was already included in the Zsolnay facsimiles, photographed at a prior stage to the pencilled annotations that apparently have been subsequently added by the librarians of the BSB.

The second and third uploads, IMSLP #306985 and #306986, effectively single pages, are two of the eighteen folios of older sketches and einlagen for the same movement; they were probably first published in the IGMG set in the late 60s.

The fourth upload IMSLP #306987 is a single unnumbered folio, which is the second page of the initial short score draft for movement III. (Purgatorio), showing the ‘Da capo’ and the orchestration indication ‘Tamtam’ on the final bar.

The fifth upload IMSLP #306988 is a first draft folio for movement IV. (Der Teufel tanzt es mit mir), but only six of the thirteen pages in the first draft were printed in the Zsolnay set I can’t confirm whether this was included or not without going and inspecting it.

I’ll update this comment once I’ve had time to look over the ten uploads from the ÖNB more thoroughly, but at a first glance:
IMSLP #307127, Mus.Hs.41000/1 — I / Adagio / Partitur — full score draft of first movement, 275 bars complete.
IMSLP #307128, Mus.Hs.41000/2 — II / 2. Scherzo - Finale / Partitur — full score draft of second movement, 521 bars complete, much patchier orchestration. (The number of bars cited in Wikipedia is wrong — the anacrucis bar is mistakenly counted as a ‘full’ bar.)
IMSLP #307129, Mus.Hs.41000/3 — III / Nro. 3 / Purgatorio oder [Inferno] — full and short score drafts of third movement (incomplete), with ?one folio of sketches
IMSLP #307130, Mus.Hs.41000/4 — IV / [lots of erased headings] / Der Teufel tanzt es mit mir / [etc.] — short score draft of fourth movement, complete
IMSLP #307131, Mus.Hs.41000/5 — V / Finale — short score draft of fifth movement, complete but omitting the first ending in B flat major (see below)
IMSLP #307132, Mus.Hs.41000/6 — 11 folios of sketches for first movement
IMSLP #307133, Mus.Hs.41000/7 — ?11 of the 12 folios of the short score draft of the second movement, along with 9 folios of earlier attempts at drafts/sketches.
IMSLP #307134, Mus.Hs.41000/8 — 10 folios of sketches for fourth movement
IMSLP #307134, Mus.Hs.41000/9 — 5 rejected folios of short score draft of fifth movement, incorporating all of the pages for the first ending in B flat major.
IMSLP #307136, Mus.Hs.37817 — 3 additional folios of sketches for first movement

When I researched this back in 2005/06 I had unfettered access to the Zsolnay set and borrowing abilities for the Cooke III score published by Faber, which notably included several facsimiles not included in either Zsolnay’s or IGMG’s sets. There are apparently about 165 pages of manuscript for the symphony total, so these 15 files look at a glance like they cover almost everything, but individual folios are certainly missing — the most important of which are folio 1 of the final short score draft for the Purgatorio, and possibly one folio from the final short score draft of the second movement.

Matching up what’s in the manuscripts

There were about five stages in Mahler’s composing and process prior to publication, which could be briefly described as:
1) first short score sketches;
2) einlagen (inserts) to provide ‘connective tissue’ or to work out details of texture and structure, if the first short score sketches did not provide a continuous draft of music;
3) a final short score draft (omitted only if the first stage involved no problems, which was not usually the case);
4) first full score draft (partitur); and
5) final full score draft/fair copy, suitable for the printer to copy and engrave.
Once published, Mahler would normally work from his conducting scores and make further refinements directly in the printed score as a result of rehearsal and performance.

None of the five movements reached stage 5 as I’ve summarised it above (albeit slightly inaccurately for the sake of simplicity and brevity). Movement I was the closest to being at the final stage of preparation, while movement IV probably the furthest from that point.

I. Adagio
Stage 1: 11 folios exist, all but one with roman numbering, usually the paper was only written on the recto side. 2 of them have been uploaded as IMSLP #306985 and #306986. None were published in the Zsolnay set.
Stage 2: 7 folios exist, unnumbered. None published in Zsolnay set.
Stage 3: 10 folios exist, arabic numbering, one folio (8) has several bars of sketch on the verso, the rest do not; folio 8 [bis] is an earlier draft of the folios now positioned on either side in the MS, 8 and 9. Published complete in Zsolnay set. All but three blank pages are in IMSLP #306984.
Stage 4: 8 bifolios exist, written on all sides except the last side of bifolio [8a], thus 31 pages of music and 1 page blank. Published complete in Zsolnay set, more or less identical with IMSLP #307127. This is very close to complete and was virtually on the point of readiness where Mahler could have proceeded to a stage 5 final full score draft had he lived. (This differs from the subsequent movement:)

II. Scherzo — Finale
Stages 1 and 2: 11 folios exist, some with roman numerals and one with both roman and arabic numbering, only one of which (numbered III) was published by Zsolnay. Some of the folios are inserts, whereas some are pages that were rejected for or refined in the second short score draft.
Stage 3: 12 folios exist, all numbered with (occasional variations on) roman numerals, all included in IMSLP #307133. None published in Zsolnay set.
Stage 4: 10 bifolios exist, written on all sides except the last side of bifolio 10, thus 39 pages of music and 1 page blank. Published complete in Zsolnay set, more or less identical with IMSLP #307128. This draft is much more patchily and incompletely scored than the first movement, which would make it impossible to attempt a faithful completion without the second short score draft, at the very least.

III. Nro 3. Purgatorio oder [Inferno]
Stage 1: 2 unnumbered folios exist, the first comprising the first 81 bars of the movement, the second the remainder. The first was published by Zsolnay; the second was not, and corresponds to the manuscript page in IMSLP #306987.
Stage 2: no inserts; Mahler apparently proceeded straight to complete short score draft:
Stage 3: 3 folios exist, all but the last with roman numerals. Published by Zsolnay.
Stage 4: 1 bifolio exists, of which Mahler wrote on the first two sides as far as bar 30. Published by Zsolnay.
IMSLP #307129 includes the first folio of the first short score draft, the three folios of the final short score draft, and the single bifolio of the partitur.

IV. Der Teufel tanzt es mit mir
Stages 1 and 2: 13 folios exist, of which only six were published in the Zsolnay set. I would need to consult Cooke III to check the status of these folios.
Stage 3: 12 folios exist, roman numbering from I to XI (with two folios, Xa and Xb). Published complete by Zsolnay, more or less identical with IMSLP #307130.

V. Finale
Stage 2: only 3 folios of inserts are known, one of which was published in the Zsolnay set. Mahler’s revision process was different in the case of this movement, in that he appears to have revised his existing draft rather than generating a new set of pages.
Stages 1 and 3: 6 bifolios and 1 folio, arabic numbering, 12 sides composed upon, 14 sides blank. Published complete by Zsolnay, more or less identical with IMSLP #307131 (stage 3) and IMSLP #307135 (stage 1). The order of pages is complicated: each of the bifolios have music written on the recto side only, except for bifolio 1 where only the outer leaf is used. The single folio is written on the recto side only, following the fourth bifolio. However, these pages essentially include two revisions of the Finale, ending in two different keys. The initial version would have used 1 to 5 from #307131 before concluding with the pages from IMSLP #307135, finishing in B flat major. The second version uses only the pages in
#307131, finishing in F sharp major.

If anyone wants a more detailed breakdown than that, including bar numberings, and orchestration of the partiturs of movements I and II — albeit sadly incomplete as I didn’t spend enough time to research all of the MS pages — then feel free to send me an e-mail. I’ll probably spend the next couple of days extensively revising my summation of the manuscripts. (philip.m.legge AT gmail DOT com)

Mahler: Symphony No.10 - IMSLP Forums (2024)
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