tam, cymbals, a triangle,
glockenspiel, three deep-toned bells, in the chief orchestra; besides a
bass-drum, triangle and cymbals in the supplementary. In the Eighth
Symphony, the instruments of percussion form a little band by
themselves. And he utilized the common instruments in original fashion,
made the harps imitate bells, the wood-wind blow fanfares, the horns
hold organ-points; combined piccolos with bassoons and contrabasses,
wrote unisons for eight horns, let the trombones run scales----

But there is not one of poor Mahler's nine symphonies, honest and
dignified as some of them are, that exists as fresh, new-minted, vivid
music. His genius never took musical flesh. His scores are lamentably
weak, often arid and banal. There is surely not another case in musical
history in which indubitable genius, a mighty need of expression, a
distinctly personal manner of sensation, a respectable musical science,
a great and idealistic effort, achieved results so unsatisfactory. One
wonders whether Mahler the composer was not, after all, the greatest
failure in music. If there is any music that is eminently
Kapellmeistermusik, eminently a routine, reflective, dusty sort of
musical art, it is certainly Mahler's five latter symphonies. The
musical Desert of Sahara is surely to be found in these unhappy
compositions. They are monsters of ennui, and by their very
pretentiousness, their gargantuan dimensions, throw into cruelest relief
Mahler's essential sterility. 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