With his feverish activity, and burdened as he is with heavy tasks, he
works unceasingly and has no time to dream. Mahler will only be Mahler
when he is able to leave his administrative work, shut up his scores,
retire within himself, and wait patiently until he has become himself
again--if it is not too late.
His _Fifth Symphony_, which he conducted at Strasburg, convinced me,
more than all his other works, of the urgent necessity of adopting this
course. In this composition he has not allowed himself the use of the
choruses, which were one of the chief attractions of his preceding
symphonies. He wished to prove that he could write pure music, and to
make his claim surer he refused to have any explanation of his
composition published in the concert programme, as the other composers
in the festival had done; he wished it, therefore, to be judged from a
strictly musical point of view. It was a dangerous ordeal for him.
Though I wished very much to admire the work of a composer whom I held
in such esteem, I felt it did not come out very well from the test. To
begin with, this symphony is excessively long--it lasts an hour and a
half--though there is no apparent justification for its proportions.
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