The very opening of the symphony (which is in the key of F-sharp major) maintains a connection with the final movement of the Ninth. A long, bleak Andante melody for violas alone leads to the exposition of the slow first theme in the strings. This theme is developed and another, lighter theme is exposed. The music dies away and the violas repeat the opening theme.

With slight variation, the opening adagio is repeated and developed in a growing intensity. This also soon dies away, leaving several variations upon the more light second theme. This works up to the climax: an extremely powerful variation upon the first theme. This intense restatement culminates in a terrifying dissonance. The music after this massive outburst becomes very quiet and does not suggest any resolution to the darkness of the climax.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 10 - 1st Movement with Lew Smoley

The second movement, the first of two brilliant Scherzo movements, consists of two main ideas, the first of which is notated in consistently changing metres, which would have proved a challenge to Mahler’s conducting technique had he lived to perform the symphony. This alternates with a joyful and typically Mahlerian Ländler.

It is almost certainly this movement Paul Stefan (1879-1943) had in mind when he described the symphony as containing “gaiety, even exuberance” (Cooke’s translation).

Movement 2: Scherzo. Schnelle Viertel

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 10 - 2nd Movement with Lew Smoley

The Purgatorio movement (originally entitled Purgatorio oder Inferno (Purgatory or Hell)) but the word “Inferno” was struck out, is a brief vignette presenting a struggle between alternately bleak and carefree melodies with a perpetuum mobile accompaniment, that are soon subverted by a diabolical undercurrent of more cynical music.

The short movement fails to end in limbo though, as after a brief recapitulation a sudden harp arpeggio and gong stroke pull the rug out from under it; it is consigned to perdition by a final grim utterance from the double basses.

“Purgatorio oder Inferno“. 

On the title page of the short score. The title page was cut in two with scissors or a razor blade. The word “Pergatorio” might have been suggested to Mahler by the identical title of a set of poems by Siegfried Lipiner (1856-1911). Because Alma had always disliked him she would have destroyed Mahler’s reference to him. However, the word “Purgatorio” was very appropriate, considering Mahler’s present ordeal.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 10 - 3rd Movement with Lew Smoley

The scene is now set for the peculiarities of the second scherzo, which has a somewhat driven and harried character, and this also has significant connections to Mahler’s recent work: the sorrowful first movement of Das Lied von der Erde, Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde. There is an annotation on the cover of the draft to the effect that in this movement “The Devil dances with me”, and at the very end Mahler wrote “Ah! God! Farewell my lyre!”.

Cooke’s version finishes with a percussion coda employing both timpanists, bass drum, and a large military drum which is to be muffled, that leads directly into the final slow movement. This scherzo does not resemble the second scherzo in spirit; it is far more grave and sinister. Some consider it to be Mahler’s last “Horror Scherzo”.

The use of the military drum stems from a funeral procession that Mahler once observed: one day in the winter of 1907 when the Mahlers were staying in New York, the cortége of a deceased fire chief passed way below their hotel window, and from high up the only sound that could be heard was the muffled stroke of a large bass drum. The introduction to the fifth movement re-enacts this scene as a rising line on tubas supported by two double bassoons slowly tries to make headway and is repeatedly negated by the loud (but muffled) drum strokes.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 10 - 4th Movement with Lew Smoley 

The emotional weight of the symphony is resolved by the long final movement, which incorporates and ties together music from the earlier movements, whereby the opening passage of the symphony, now transferred to the horns, is found to be the answer to tame the savage dissonance that had racked the end of the first movement.

The music of the flute solo that was heard after the introductory funeral scene can now return to close the symphony peacefully, and unexpectedly, in the principal key of F-sharp major. The draft for this movement reveals that Mahler had originally written the ending in B-flat major, but in the process of revision worked the same music into F-sharp, the key of the first movement.

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A listening guide of Symphony No. 10 - 5th Movement with Lew Smoley