The Sixth Symphony was first published with the Scherzo as its second movement, the Andante as its third. However, as Mahler rehearsed the orchestra for the first performance, he reversed the order of these middle movements. Thereafter, it was published twice during his lifetime in the revised order. Mahler invariably conducted the piece that way, and as far as we know, gave no indication that he ever wished it otherwise.
No one knows exactly why the composer changed his mind; perhaps he felt the Scherzo to be too similar in style and dynamism to the first movement, or too emotionally overpowering in combination with its relentless twenty-two-minute span. He may have felt as well that the juxtaposition of the Andante with the long slow introduction that opens the monumental finale was unsatisfactory. The simple reversal of course, became a solution to both problems, if indeed they were such to Mahler.
In 1963, a strange phenomenon occurred: the score of the Critical Edition of the International Mahler Society was published, restoring the original order (though the parts remain to this day in Mahler’s reversed order). Since that time most conductors have followed the original order (Scherzo-Andante), assuming that Mahler must have changed his mind back, as the editor Erwin Ratz suggests, though there is no hard evidence to support this. Naturally, there has been a fierce controversy among scholars on this issue ever since.
Rather than go over the numerous and rather technical arguments on either side of the case–and there are many fascinating issues of harmonic structure and form involved here–it seems better to recognize that there are, in a sense, two Mahler Sixths: the one that was the original conception of Mahler the composer and the one that was the result of the revisions of Mahler the conductor, made in the process of rehearsing and performing the work.
If Mahler had misgivings as to the structural efficacy of the original version, I do not share them. The initial conception is powerful and convincing and conveys an emotional truth that is different, certainly, from the revised version, but nevertheless one in which the emotion is held in an effective aesthetic balance. However, we cannot be unaffected by the knowledge that, as a result of his practical experience as a conductor in the concert hall, Mahler reversed the movements and that this was, as far as we know, his final version. In any case, in the age of digital technology such decisions need not be final. Anyone wishing to hear the movements in the order in which Mahler conducted them (Andante-Scherzo) may program them that way.
This crucial reversal of the middle movements is not the only significant revision Mahler made after the publication of the first score. He reportedly identified so intensely with his own hero and was so superstitious that he stood in terror of conducting the dreaded third hammer blow and ultimately suppressed it from the score, weakening the moment further by wholesale reorchestration. However, since “Fate” cannot any longer be felt to stand threateningly over the composer, we feel justified in restoring the third hammer blow and with it the original orchestration.
-Benjamin Zander
