For,
like Bruckner's, they appear chosen with an eye to their serviceability
for contrapuntal deformation and dissection. Wagner, Haydn, Schumann and
Brahms, the sentimental _Wienerwald_ Brahms, also pass incessantly
through these scores. But it was Beethoven whom Mahler sought chiefly to
emulate. Over his symphonies (and it is a curious fact that Mahler, like
the three men that he most frequently imitated, Schubert, Bruckner, and
Beethoven, wrote just nine symphonies), over his entire work, his songs
as well as his orchestral pieces, there lies the shadow of the Master of
Bonn. Mahler was undoubtedly Beethoven's most faithful disciple. All his
life he was seeking to write the "Tenth Symphony," the symphony that
Beethoven died before composing. He was continually attempting to
approximate the other's grand, pathetic tone, his broad and
self-righteous manner. His music is full of but slightly disguised
quotations. The trumpet-theme that ushers in Mahler's Fifth Symphony,
for instance, appears the result of an attempt to cross the theme of the
funeral march of the "Eroica Symphony" with the famous four raps of
Beethoven's Fifth. In the first movement of the Second Symphony, just
before the appearance on the oboe of the scarcely disguised "Sleep"
motif from "Die Walkuere," a theme almost directly lifted out of
Beethoven's violin concerto is announced on the 'cellos and horns.
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