Afterthoughts

Abstract In the decade since I revised this book, research on Mahler has continued unabated. New books about him have been written, wonderful facsimile editions of some of his scores have been issued, and performances and recordings of his music have multiplied. As the twenty-first century arrives, there seems little likelihood of any diminution of interest in any aspect of Mahler. Much of the latest research has been brought together in one large and handsome volume, The Mahler Companion (Oxford, 1999), edited by Britain’s leading and indefatigable Mahler scholar Donald Mitchell and by Andrew Nicholson. It is to this book that I am indebted for most of this chapter, a debt I acknowledge with gratitude. The early cantata Das klagende Lied was heard in 1997 for the first time in its original form and scoring and has since been recorded. Mahler himself never heard this 1880 version, in which there were four soloists, an off-stage band and a children’s choir. This original version is more radical than the two-movement version which Mahler eventually conducted in Vienna in February 1901 after a lengthy process of revision, begun in Hamburg in 1893.