They seek to be colossal and achieve
vacuity chiefly. They remind one of nothing so much as the huge, ugly,
misshapen "giants" that stand before the old Palace in Florence, work of
the obscure sculptor who thought to outdo Michelangelo by sheer bulk.
And the first four of his symphonies, though less utterly banal and
pedantic, are still amorphous and fundamentally second-hand. For Mahler
never spoke in his own idiom. His style is a mongrel affair. The
thematic material is almost entirely derivative and imitative, of an
unequaled mediocrity and depressingness. One wonders whether indeed
there has ever been a respectable composer who has utilized ideas as
platitudinous as the ones employed in the first movement of the First
Symphony, or the brassy, pompous theme that opens the Eighth, or the
tune to which in the latter work the mystic stanza beginning
"Alles vergaengliche
Ist nur ein Gleichnisz"
is intoned. One wonders whether any has used themes more saccharine and
characterless than those of the last movement of the Third Symphony, or
the adagio of the Fourth. Once in a while, no doubt, a vague personal
tone, a flavor of the Bohemian countryside where Mahler was born, does
manage to distinguish itself from the great inchoate masses of his
symphonies.
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