In general, poetic instruction manuals for music are often either a nuisance or a red flag. Our great symphonic masters — from Haydn and Mozart to Brahms and Dvořák — usher us into their celestial realms without requiring such an entrée ticket. Even so, I doubt Mahler’s symphony would have delighted us more with a program than it did without. But we were not indifferent to what a clever man like Mahler might have imagined with each movement. In this darkness, we lacked a guide to show us the path. What, for instance, are we to make of this apocalyptic finale crashing in out of nowhere? What is the funeral march with the old student canon Bruder Martin [Frère Jacques] doing there — and what’s with the so-called “parody” section interrupting it? The music itself would have gained neither charm nor depth from a program — that’s certain — but the composer’s intent might have become clearer, and the work more comprehensible. As it was, we had to make do with the occasional flashes of wit and Mahler’s dazzling orchestral craftsmanship.

The performance of this fiendishly difficult novelty was admirable, and the applause — at least from the youth, packed into the standing room and the galleries — was nothing short of feverish. They could not stop calling Mahler back again and again.

I hope to write more — and perhaps more generously — if I hear this symphony again. For now, what I lack in offering a full appreciation of it is what sometimes deserts even the most inspired composers: “the grace of God.”

Is he sisterposter's ancestor? Must be the case, all this lacks is brevity and it'd be a sistershitter message