PINTO - The Symphony as a Novel. Mahler’s Tenth [eng]

ANGELO PINTO - The Symphony as a Novel. Mahler’s Tenth

This book offers a fresh exploration of Gustav Mahler’s Tenth Symphony through the lens of narratology and genetic criticism. While musical narratology has long approached Mahler’s works as narrative texts, little attention has been paid to the compositional process itself—the drafts, sketches, and revisions through which Mahler developed his musical language.

Drawing inspiration from literary theories of genetic criticism, particularly those applied to modernist works, the author examines how Mahler’s compositional materials reveal a deliberate narrative strategy at work. The Tenth Symphony, with its uniquely rich manuscript evidence and incomplete state, provides a compelling case for investigating how narrativity emerges throughout the creative process—not merely in the final score.

Through a three-stage methodology that moves from close analysis of the drafts to a broader interpretation of narrative intent, this study proposes that Mahler’s music enacts a kind of “scriptorial” narrative—a self-reflexive engagement with the act of musical composition itself.

In doing so, the book contributes not only to Mahler studies but also to broader debates in musicology concerning authorial agency, form, temporality, and the aesthetics of incompleteness in late Romantic and modernist music.