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6/21/2025, 12:44:44 PM
Eduard Hanslick on Mahler’s First Symphony Nov. 20, 1900
“One of us must be mad — and it’s not me!” So concluded one of two stubborn scholars at the end of a long dispute. “It’s probably me,” I thought, with honest humility, after recovering from the terrifying finale of Mahler’s Symphony in D major. As a sincere admirer of Director Mahler — to whom both our opera and the Philharmonic concerts owe so much — I hesitate to rush to judgment on his peculiar and grandiose symphony. On the other hand, I owe my readers honesty, and so I must admit, regretfully, that this new symphony belongs to that species of music which, to me, is simply not music. Perhaps I might have formed some closer relation to it (though surely not a love affair) had we not been denied the knowledge of its origins and meaning. At its first performance in Weimar, the symphony bore the title “Titan” and came with a detailed program. The critics found it “preposterous,” and so the composer erased both title and explanation.
cont
“One of us must be mad — and it’s not me!” So concluded one of two stubborn scholars at the end of a long dispute. “It’s probably me,” I thought, with honest humility, after recovering from the terrifying finale of Mahler’s Symphony in D major. As a sincere admirer of Director Mahler — to whom both our opera and the Philharmonic concerts owe so much — I hesitate to rush to judgment on his peculiar and grandiose symphony. On the other hand, I owe my readers honesty, and so I must admit, regretfully, that this new symphony belongs to that species of music which, to me, is simply not music. Perhaps I might have formed some closer relation to it (though surely not a love affair) had we not been denied the knowledge of its origins and meaning. At its first performance in Weimar, the symphony bore the title “Titan” and came with a detailed program. The critics found it “preposterous,” and so the composer erased both title and explanation.
cont
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