Symphony No. 6 in A Minor

Mahler contemplated calling his Symphony No. 6 (1904) “Tragic” but, probably wisely, he decided against it: this darkly impassioned, catastrophic and ultimately bleak symphony is quite capable of speaking for itself. The only controversy as to its content hinges on what kind of tragedy Mahler had in mind. For his friend, the conductor Bruno Walter, it was pure pessimism and hopelessness, and others have read it as a grim prophecy of the horrors to come in the 20th century. But for the composer’s biographer Michael Kennedy, the “tragedy” was closer to that of the Ancient Greeks: cathartic, even uplifting in effect, and formally tightly controlled. Perhaps the truth is that both were right. The Sixth is the most “classically” proportioned and integrated of all Mahler’s symphonies. It also sets new standards in its virtuosic, scintillatingly colourful use of its huge orchestral forces, which include celesta (first use in a symphony), cowbells and, in the colossal finale, a large hammer, which shatteringly portrays the blows of fate. The other source of major disagreement concerns the order of the middle two movements—a sinister “Scherzo” and an ardent pastoral “Andante”—about which Mahler changed his mind at least twice. There is probably no final answer, other than to be open to both possibilities: the Sixth Symphony can be devastatingly moving either way.