Rückert Symphonies

Abstract When discussing the three central instrumental symphonies, Nos. 5, 6 and 7, several writers seem to have been so dazzled by their complexity and ingenuity that it is difficult, when listening to the music, to equate it with the verbal contortions and metaphors employed. There is perhaps a parallel with the late quartets of Beethoven, which for years were regarded as on such a high plane of musical philosophy that hardly a coherent paragraph could be written about them. Bernard Shaw was not merely an iconoclast but a heretic when he wrote in 1894 of the late quartets as ‘beautiful, simple, straightforward, unpretentious, perfectly intelligible’. Mahler’s three middle symphonies are not simple and straightforward, but they are beautiful and intelligible. Few composers have benefited more from the invention of the longplaying record and tape-recording. Only in the second half of the twentieth century has it been possible fully to absorb these works, not through the score and the memories of isolated performances but by constant study of their sound in a series of superb interpretations. Far from breeding contempt, familiarity increases admiration for their mastery. They are complex, but Mahler’s grand designs are logical and purposive, becoming clearer and simpler with each repetition.