Hans Rott, Gustav Mahler and the 'New Symphony': New Evidence for a Pressing

Question
Author(s): Stephen McClatchie
Source: Music & Letters , Aug., 2000, Vol. 81, No. 3 (Aug., 2000), pp. 392-401
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/854859

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/854859?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms

Oxford University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Music & Letters

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
? Oxford University Press

HANS ROTT, GUSTAV MAHLER AND THE

'NEW SYMPHONY': NEW EVIDENCE FOR A
PRESSING QUESTION
BY STEPHEN MCCLATCHIE

UNTIL RELATIVELY RECENTLY, the few who recognized the name of the Austrian
composer Hans Rott (1858-84) knew him only as a friend of Gustav Mahler's youth
who went mad and died at an early age. In the last decade, however, no fewer than
three recordings of Rott's Symphony in E major (1878-80) have appeared, as well as a
handful of articles about the work, leading one scholar to write of Rott as 'the
musicological sensation of the 1990s'.' Almost without exception, this body of material
has focused on presenting Rott as a kind of musicological 'missing link' between Anton
Bruckner and Gustav Mahler in the development of the late nineteenth-century
symphony. This preoccupation was certainly understandable given the astonishing
similarities between Rott's work and Mahler's own symphonies, not only in general
terms but also in terms of motivic material.2 In conversation with Natalie Bauer-
Lechner, Mahler himself drew attention to their closeness:

What music has lost in him is immeasurable. His First Symphony, written when he was a
young man of twenty, already soars to such heights of genius that it makes him-without
exaggeration-the founder of the New Symphony as I understand it . . . His innermost
nature is so much akin to mine that he and I are like two fruits from the same tree, produced
by the same soil, nourished by the same air. We would have had an infinite amount irl
common. Perhaps we two might have gone some way together towards exhausting the
possibilities of this new age that was then dawning in music.3

More recently, however, the situation has started to change with the publication of a
detailed study of Rott's symphony, largely free of implicit or explicit comparisons with
Mahler.4 A critical edition of the score is in preparation, and Rott's other compositions
are beginning to be performed and published-notably the String Quartet in C minor
and the Pastorales Vorspiel. But just as Rott and his works are beginning to be studied in
I am grateful to Dr James Zychowicz for lending me his copy of the score of Rott's symphony; to Dr Paul Banks for
sharing his unpublished catalogue of Rott's works; and to both men for their comments on earlier versions of this
article. I would also like to extend my thanks to my colleague Dr Bruce Plouffe for his assistance in translating several
passages of tortuous German.
'Helmuth Kreysing, preface to Hans Rott: Der Begrunder der neuen Symphonie ('Musik-Konzepte', ciii-civ), Munich,
1999, p. 5. The recordings are by the Cincinnati Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Gerhard Samuel (Hyperion
CDA 66366; 1989, with notes by Paul Banks); the Norrkoping Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Leif Segerstam (Bis
CD 563; 1992); and the Radio Filharmonisch Orkest, conducted by Jac van Steen (Dutch Radio ZOC 9702; 1997).
2 This initial fixation is perfectly understandable, since Rott was first brought to notice by Mahler scholars, Paul
Banks in particular: Paul Banks, 'Hans Rott, 1858-1884', The Musical Times, cxxv (1984), 493-5; and idem, 'Hans Rott
and the New Symphony', The Musical Times, cxxx (1989), 142-7. Likewise, the exigencies of compact-disk marketing
meant that Rott needed to be positioned vis-d-vis Mahler; for example, Mahler's praise of Rott to Natalie Bauer-Lechner
is prominently displayed on the back cover of the Hyperion CD.
3 Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Recollections of Gustav Mahler, trans. Dika Newlin, ed. & annotated by Peter Franklin,
London, 1980, p. 146.
4 Frank Litterscheid, 'Die E-Dur-Sinfonie von Hans Rott: Analytische Betrachtungen', Hans Rott: Der Begrunder der
neuen Symphonie, pp. 15-44.

392

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
their own right, there is still a pressing question that needs to be answered about his
relationship with Mahler: when did the younger composer get to know Rott's
symphony? New biographical evidence suggests two things: first, that Rott and
Mahler were not particularly close friends; and second, as a consequence, that the
traditional assumption that Mahler first heard the symphony from Rott himself needs
at least to be called into question. This last point is supported by new evidence from
Mahler's unpublished letters to his sister, Justine, that suggests that Mahler actively
studied the score at the end of 1890, about ten years earlier than hitherto suspected.
Rott's biography has been presented many times by now, and needs to be rehearsed
here only briefly. In September 1874, he entered the Vienna Conservatory, where he
studied the organ with Bruckner and, from 1875, composition with Franz Krenn. He
enjoyed a particularly close relationship with Bruckner, who several times recom-
mended him for organ posts and once, famously, defended him when the Beethoven
Prize committee openly laughed at his submission. After leaving the Conservatory in
1878, Rott was unable to find a position in Vienna. Although he did obtain a post in
Miihlhausen, he did everything in his power not to have to take it up. He applied for a
state stipend from the Ministry of Arts and Education (successfully, it turned out, but
too late for Rott-the stipend was awarded six months after his mental breakdown),
and approached the conductor of the Philharmonic, Hans Richter, about performing
his symphony. Rott finally played it for him on 14 October 1880. Richter was
complimentary but, for unknown reasons, chose not to programme the work. Rott
planned to enter it, along with a string sextet, in the Beethoven competition that year.
To this end, he had visited Brahms on 17 September in an attempt to gain his support,
but Brahms rejected the work and advised Rott to give up composing. With all avenues
now closed, Rott boarded the train for Miihlhausen on 21 or 22 October. During the
journey, the crisis came. After another passenger attempted to light a cigar, Rott
confronted him, brandishing a revolver and raving that Brahms had filled the train
with dynamite. On 23 October, Rott was admitted to the psychiatric ward of the
general hospital in Vienna. The next year, not having recovered his sanity, he entered a
psychiatric hospital in Vienna, where he developed tuberculosis, and died on 25 June
1884.

At his death, Rott left behind works for piano and organ, chamber music, sacred
works, overtures, Lieder and choruses, as well as the E major Symphony, none of
which had been published or publicly performed.5 His surviving manuscripts-he
destroyed some works, including the string sextet, in the asylum-were collected
together and preserved by his close friends, Joseph Seemiiller (1855-1920), a
philologist, and Friedrich Lohr (1859-1924), an archaeologist. Both men, but particu-
larly the latter, were also friends of Mahler, whose years at the Vienna Conservatory
(1875-8) had coincided with Rott's last three. After Lohr's death in 1924, Rott's
Nachlass passed to his daughter, Dr Maja Loehr, a historian.6 She began work on a
biography of Rott, which has only recently resurfaced.7 To this end in 1925 she asked a

5 He also left sketches for operas and oratorios as well as a second symphony. Leopold Nowak, 'Die Kompositionen
und Skizzen von Hans Rott in der Musiksammlung der Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek', Beitrage zur Musikdoku-
mentation: Franz Grasberger zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Giinter Brosche, Tutzing, 1975, pp. 273-340, includes a thematic
catalogue of Rott's works, both complete and incomplete.
6 Although Friedrich Lohr's name is always spelt with an umlaut in the Mahler literature, his daughter consistently
spelt the name 'Loehr', the spelling of her name that I adopt in this article.
7 It is being edited for publication by Uwe Harten, of the Kommission fur Musikforschung der Osterreichischen
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Wien. For a preliminary sketch of her work, see Maja Loehr, 'Hans Rott: Der
Lieblingsschtiler Anton Bruckners', Lebendige Stadt (1958), 16-22.

393

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
surviving member of the same circle of friends, Heinrich Krzyzanowski (1855-1933), to
write down his recollections of Rott.8 This record is invaluable for the light it sheds on
the relationship between Rott and Mahler. In 1950 Loehr gave most of Rott's Nachlass
to the Musiksammlung (see n. 8), then under the direction of Leopold Nowak, who
later published a thematic catalogue.9
Like Mahler, Rott was a committed Wagnerian as well as an admirer of Bruckner.
In the Vienna of the time, this affiliation carried with it a host of aesthetic and
philosophical presuppositions, the most important of which was an adherence to the
Schopenhauerian-Wagnerian aesthetic of Musik als Ausdruck. Under such an aesthetic
system, musical gestures were held to transmit the emotional states of the ingenious
composer himself, and to offer access to the noumenal realm of presence, of the
Absolute, out of which a musical work was unconsciously conceived.?1 Rott's sym-
phony should be seen within this tradition." It is a four-movement work, in which the
main theme of the first movement returns, cyclically, in the last two movements. As
well as the use of chorale-like themes, clearly derived from Bruckner, it includes
explicit references to Wagner, and-rather more oddly, perhaps-what can only be a
deliberate reference to the famous 'Beethoven' theme from Brahms's First Symphony.
Its heavy brass textures, however, make clear its Wagnerian-Brucknerian orientation.
Rott submitted the first movement of the symphony for the Conservatory com-
petition in July 1878, when its obvious debt to both Wagner and Bruckner did not meet
with approval.'2 Despite this apparent setback, the rest of the symphony was completed
over the next two years. Although the autograph full scores for the final three
movements are undated, sketches and drafts for the slow movement are dated
August and September 1878; those for the Scherzo and final movement bear dates
between July and October 1879, and an inscription notes that the orchestration of the
latter was completed on 26 June 1880. Heinrich Krzyzanowski's memoirs give some
idea of Rott's environment during these years:
More important than all this, however, was the fact that at this time, Rott had created a great
symphony-great, first in its scale, and second in its orchestration [Besetzung], if one listened
to his friends, among whom, in this matter, fellow musicians [Berufsgenossen] were also
numbered. In their judgement, the latter were somewhat more collegial, i.e. more reticent,
than the others. For them, the outstanding greatness of the work was beyond a shadow of
doubt, and this valuation was gradually transferred to Rott too, this in accordance with the
8 Vienna, Osterreichische Nationalbibliothek [ONB] Mus. Hs. 34.247/IV/13-15. I am grateful to Thomas Leibnitz
of the library's Musiksammlung for providing me with copies of these, and other letters. After the research for this
article was completed, Krzyzanowski's recollections, along with the rest of Rott's epistolary and biographical Nachlass,
appeared in print in Hans Rott: Der Begriinder der neuen Symphonie. In what follows, I cite this source, as well as the
manuscript originals.
9 See n. 6, above.
10 In the second chapter of my Analyzing Wagner's Operas: Alfred Lorenz and German Nationalist Ideology (Rochester,
1998), I attempt to re-create the expressive aesthetic position (Musik als Ausdruck) favoured by Wagnerians until well into
the twentieth century. Its core is the seemingly paradoxical espousal of absolute music: a logocentristic valorization of
the extralinguistic signifying powers of music, that is, its seeming ability to reveal Truth, the idealistic Ding an sich. The
basic texts include Schopenhauer's The World as Will and Representation, Wagner's Beethoven, Nietzsche's Die Geburt der
Tragodie aus dem Geist der Musik and Friedrich von Hausegger's Musik als Ausdruck. This second connotation of 'absolute
music' is also discussed by Carl Dahlhaus in The Idea of Absolute Magic, trans. Roger Lustig, Chicago, 1989. Stephen
McClatchie, 'Hans Pfitzner's Palestrina and the Impotence of Early Lateness', The University of Toronto Quarterly, lxvii
(1998), 812-27, discusses the role of genius in this context.
" Rott was a member of the Wiener akademischen Wagner-Verein from 1875 to 1879, and his Wagnerian
predilections are discernible in several of his letters to Heinrich Krzyzanowski.
2 Mahler won first prize in composition for a piano quintet movement (now lost) at this same competition, which
was also noteworthy for Bruckner's public defence of Rott. According to Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler: Memories and
Letters, trans. Basil Creighton, ed. Donald Mitchell & Knud Mantner, 4th edn. (London, 1990), Mahler's mother was
indignant at his victory because 'Rott's work was better than [his]': p. 8. (But see p. 398, below.)

394

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 nature of his character, which was predicated on his friends' views. An atmosphere of
reverence surrounded the symphony and its creator; his symphony became simply 'the
symphony', which was not good or healthy for Rott either, in my humble opinion.'3

Krzyzanowski's words, written many years later with the benefit of hindsight, aptly
evoke the ethos of the Wagnerian-Schopenhauerian aesthetic with its worship of the
artist-as-genius.
Perhaps the most surprising thing about the (re)discovery of Rott's symphony was
the apparent impact it had on Mahler-an influence that was not just generic but also
seemed to extend to direct quotation. The passages in question (which have already
been discussed several times in the literature) are summarized in Table I.l4 Apart from
these specific instances, there are a significant number of what might be termed
generic influences: ideas and procedures found elsewhere in Mahler's works. The
apotheosis of the final movement of Rott's symphony is based on a chorale melody that
is first introduced in the slow second movement; Mahler does the same thing in the
Fifth Symphony (and uses chorales in the First, Third and Seventh Symphonies).15
Secondly, even apart from the apparent borrowings enumerated in Table I, Rott's
Scherzo sounds very much like many of Mahler's in its use of deliberately popular,
even banal, themes that are given immense rhetorical weight and development within
the movement.16 Rott also employs the frequent alternation between the major and
minor modes identified by Adorno as comprising Mahler's 'tone' (for example, in the
second theme of the Scherzo, bars 51 ff. (1'6")).17 There are obvious similarities in
orchestration: a favouring of heavy brass textures, for example, as well as extended
lyrical writing for the brass. At several climactic places, Rott directs the trumpets and
trombones to play with their bells up, a rather unusual effect at the time, but one often
employed later by Mahler. More interestingly, a passage in the trio of Rott's Scherzo
demonstrates all the characteristics of what Floros refers to in Mahler as 'music from
another world': a slow, soft, almost ametrical passage of sustained (string) sounds
13 'Wichtiger als all dies warjedoch die Tatsache, daB R[ott] in dieser Zeit eine groBe Sinfonie geschaffen hatte, groB
erstens dem Umfange und zweitens der Besetzung nach, wenn man die Stimmen der Freunde horte, zu denen in
diesem Falle auch die der Berufsgenossen zahlten, nur daB die letzteren in ihrem Urteile etwas collegialischer, d.h.
zuriickhaltender waren als die anderen. Fir diese stand die iiberragende GroBe des Werkes auBer jedem Zweifel, und
diese Wertung iibertrug sich nun allmahlich auch auf Rott, dem Gesetz seines Wesens gemiB, das ja von jeher durch
den Freund oder die Freunde bestimmt gewesen war. Eine Atmosphare der Andacht umgab die Sinfonie und ihren
Sch6pfer, seine Sinfonie wurde 'die Sinfonie' schlechtin-auch fir Rott war das nicht gut, nicht gesund-meiner
unmaBgeblichen Meinung nach'. Letter to Maja Loehr, ONB Mus. Hs. 34.247/IV/14; Hans Rott: Der Begriinder der
neuen Symphonie, p. 57. In a note, Loehr agrees with Krzyzanowski's assessment of the effect that Rott's symphony had
on his friends, but disagrees with his suggestion that Rott was over-influenced by their views.
14 Banks offers two suggestions to explain the aesthetic and personal significance of these borrowings for Mahler.
First, the Rott references could be Mahler's expression of grief and despair at his friend's fate, and a symbol of his own
frustrations and bitterness ('Hans Rott, 1858-1884', p. 494). But if this is the case, why would Mahler have waited
almost a decade after Rott's death so to apostrophize him? Elsewhere Banks argues that Mahler used Rott's symphony
as a model for a new, non-programmatic view of the symphony which bore fruit in his own Fifth Symphony ('Hans Rott
and the New Symphony', p. 147). But then why the allusions to Rott in the Second and Third? Like all questions of
compositional intent after the fact, these may be ultimately unanswerable.
15 Of course, the use of chorales in a symphony is unique to neither Rott nor Mahler, who probably first encountered
the practice in Bruckner. Mahler certainly knew Bruckner's Third Symphony very early, for his first publication was a
piano arrangement of it for Theodor Rattig. Incidentally, a letter from Rott to Heinrich Krzyzanowski, dated 3 October
1878, confirms Rudolf Krzyzanowski's involvement with this arrangement (as scholars have long asserted), although
Mahler's is the only name that appears on the title-page. Rott writes: 'Bruckner sends his greetings to Rudolf and asks
him to please hurry along with the symphony; Rattig is pressing him'. ONB Mus. Hs. 34.247/III/11; Hans Rott: Der
Begriinder der neuen Symphonie, p. 77. Is it possible that Mahler inherited the task from a dilatory Rudolf?
16 See Banks, 'Hans Rott and the New Symphony', for a comparison of Rott's Scherzo with that of Mahler's Fifth
Symphony.
7Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler: a Musical Physiognomy, trans. Edmund Jephcott, Chicago, 1991, p. 21 and Chap. 2,
passim.

395

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 TABLE I

Apparent Quotations of Hans Rott's Symphony in E major (1878-80) in the Symp

Gustav Mahler

ROTT MAHLER

Symphony/mov't Lo

1/i 155 ff. (5'47" )a (K/L, Ex. 6)b 7/v 50 ff.

1/ii 1 ff. (14") (facs. in Banks) 3/vi 1 ff.

1/ii 74ff. (5'18") (K/L, Ex. 4; 3/i 363-9; 859-63

facs. in Banks)

1/ii 120 ff. (8'50") (K/L, Ex. 5) 3/vi 245 ff.

1/iii 10ff. (11") (K/L, Ex. 1; facs. 2/iii 212ff.; 257ff.; 441 ff.
in Banks)

1/iii 71 ff. (1'14") (facs. in Floros) 5/iii 139 ff.

1/iii 208 ff. (4'58") (K/L, Ex. 2) 2/v 28 ff.; 696 ff.
4/iii 326 ff.

1/iv 29 ff. (2') (K/L, Ex. 3) 2/v 43 ff.

7/ii 1 ff.

a These timings are taken from the Cincinnati P

66366).
b The score of Rott's symphony is unpublished. Music examples or autograph facsimiles may be found in the
following:
K/L = Helmuth Kreysing & Frank Litterscheid, 'Mehr als Mahlers Nullte! Der Einfluss der E-Dur Sinfon2e
Hans Rotts auf Gustav Mahler', Gustav Mahler: Der unbekannte Bekannte ('Musik-Konzepte', xci),
Munich, 1996, pp. 46-64;
Floros = Constantin Floros, 'Ein Vorliufer Gustav Mahlers?-Hans Rott', Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift, vi
(1998), 8-16;
Banks = Paul Banks, 'Hans Rott and the New Symphony', The Musical Times, cxxx (1989), 142-7.

punctuated by horncalls and nature sounds (4'58").18 Passages in Mahler's First,

Second and Third Symphonies immediately spring to mind. Finally, the unpublished
sketches for Rott's incomplete Second Symphony reveal that he planned to use the
opening theme of the Scherzo in the First Symphony as the main theme of the first
movement of the Second: in other words, it seems that even the idea of re-using themes
from one work in another, thereby creating what could be termed a symphonic cycle
(such as Mahler's 'Wunderhorn' symphonies), has its precedent in Rott.19
18 See also the fourth movement, bars 29 ff. An example from Rott's Pastorales Vorspiel given in the introduction to
Hans Rott: Der Begriinder der neuen Symphonie (Ex. 2) is also in this style.
19 See Nowak, 'Die Kompositionen und Skizzen von Hans Rott', pp. 305-6. The dates on the surviving material are
all between January and August 1880.

396

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 It is important, however, not to over-emphasize Mahler's debt to Rott. To argue, as
some have done, that our new knowledge of Rott's symphony puts the extent of
Mahler's originality in question is surely to go too far.20 While many sections of the
work indeed sound astonishingly like Mahler, others do not. The first movement, in
particular, with its opening solo trumpet over undulating strings, is more Brucknerian
than Mahlerian. Other places sound more like Wagner, or even Brahms, than Mahler.
In other words, there is as much pre-Mahler as there is Mahler in the work. It would
be a gross oversimplification to see Rott's work as Mahler's 'Nullte', or 'Symphony
No. 0', as Constantin Floros has also recently pointed out.21 It would be dangerous,
too, given that so little of Mahler's own music of the late 1870s survives today. In his
comments to Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Mahler drew attention to their shared back-
ground and heritage. To take just one example, Floros has traced a gesture he refers to
as the 'Ewigkeit' motif from Mahler's Second and Fourth Symphonies back to
Wagner's Siegfried ('Ewig war ich, ewig bin ich').22 Rott uses this same motif in the
trio of his Scherzo (see Table I). Did Mahler have Wagner or Rott 'in his ear'? Or
Wagner through Rott? Such questions of influence are impossible to determine, given
the evidence at hand.23
So when did Mahler get to know Rott's symphony? Until now, scholars have based
their views on two assumptions. First, although we know from Bauer-Lechner that
Mahler took the score of Rott's symphony with him to Maiernigg in the summer of
1900 (with the intention of studying it for a possible performance with the Vienna
Philharmonic), it seems that he must have known the symphony already, given his
apparent references to it in the Second and Third Symphonies. This leads to the
second assumption, that Mahler first heard the work at the hands of Rott himself,
during its composition. Bauer-Lechner's account does mention that Rott often played
his works for his friends, and Mahler and Rott did both study composition with Franz
Krenn. Mahler would undoubtedly have heard Rott's first movement when it was
played at the Conservatory competition on 2 July 1878, but his acquaintance with the
middle two movements-composed later, and from which the bulk of the quotations
come-rests on this second assumption: a questionable foundation indeed, since
biographical evidence suggests that Mahler and Rott were not particularly close
friends.

The paucity of information about Mahler's early years in Vienna makes bio-
graphical certainty difficult. Mahler and his friends all lived in Vienna, saw one
another socially, and had very little need to communicate by letter. Consequently, it is

20 See Helmuth Kreysing & Frank Litterscheid, 'Mehr als Mahlers Nullte! Der Einfluss der E-Dur Sinfonie Hans
Rotts auf Gustav Mahler', Gustav Mahler: Der unbekannte Bekannte ('Musik-Konzepte', xci), Munich, 1996, 46-64. The
authors also argue that Mahler failed to perform the work in the Philharmonic concerts out of guilt that his 'plagiarism'
would be discovered. Others, correctly, point out that Mahler resigned from the Philharmonic post soon after (in April
1901 after a serious illness). Thomas Leibnitz (' "Ja, er ist meinem Eigensten so verwandt..." Hans Rott und Gustav
Mahler: Notizen zu einer tragischen Beziehung', Gustav Mahler: Werk und Wirken, ed. Erich Wolfgang Partsch, Vienna,
1996, pp. 73-83) suggests that Mahler rejected the work either because it was not up to his standard or because of
practical difficulties. Banks ('Hans Rott, 1958-1884', p. 494) agrees that Mahler may have felt guilty, but only for not
having done enough for Rott before, and perhaps also for winning the 1878 competition mentioned above.
' Constantin Floros, 'Ein Vorlaufer Gustav Mahlers? - Hans Rott', Osterreichische Musikzeitschrift, vi (1998), 8-16, at
p. 15.
22 Constantin Floros, Gustav Mahler, ii: Mahler und die Symphonik des 19. Jahrhunderts in neuer Deutung: Zur Grundlegung
einer zeitgemassen musikalischen Exegetik, Wiesbaden, 1977, pp. 259-60.
23 In a personal communication, James Zychowicz has suggested that Bruckner's Third Symphony, with its
considerable use of quotation and self-quotation, served as a model for the younger generation of composers, including
Rott and Mahler. If this work served as a paradigm for the 'new symphony', it may be that other contemporaries used
quotation similarly, and thus the Rott-Mahler connection may only be the most visible of a longer chain of influence.

397

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
 perhaps unsurprising that Mahler's published correspondence contains only one
reference to Rott: in a letter of 1 November 1880, Mahler tells his friend Emil
Freund that 'My friend Hans Rott has gone mad!-And I must fear the same for
Krisper'.24 Rott's death in 1884 goes unmentioned in Mahler's surviving letters to
Friedrich Lohr, who, along with Seemiiller, had been looking after Rott. Likewise, Rott
is unmentioned in Mahler's unpublished letters to his parents, the earliest of which
come from these years, and which form the largest cache of biographical material of the
1870s and '80s. Indeed, with one exception addressed below, I have found no other
reference to Rott in the many hundred unpublished Mahler letters known to me. As
Paul Banks has pointed out, Mahler did discuss Rott with four of his early biographers
(his wife, Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Paul Stefan and Richard Specht), but all of these
accounts were written many years after the fact.25 Furthermore, Alma Mahler's
tendency to embroider the truth is well known. For example, there is no evidence
whatever to support her tale of Mahler's mother's supposed grief over Rott's loss of the
Conservatory composition competition to Mahler. In fact, there is no evidence
whatever to suggest that Marie Mahler even knew Rott, let alone his music.26
Natalie Bauer-Lechner records two conversations she had with Mahler about Rott.
In the first, from April 1898, Mahler was lamenting how his failure to win the
Beethoven prize with Das klagende Lied condemned him to 'this hellish life in the
theatre'; Rott, too, came away empty-handed, 'became depressed, went mad, and died
soon after'.27 But Mahler and Rott never competed in the same Beethoven prize
competition: Das klagende Lied was entered in 1881, at which time Rott was already
mad. Rott's collapse took place in October 1880; he did not die 'soon after', however,
but lived until June 1884. It is probable that, some twenty years after these events,
Mahler's memory was simply faulty. It is unlikely, though, that one would forget so
much about a particularly close friend, especially one whose final years were so tragic.
The second conversation, which took place in the summer of 1900, has already been
mentioned.28 In it, in addition to reporting Mahler's praise of Rott, Bauer-Lechner
recounts that while Rott was composing the symphony in his cell at the Piarist
monastery (where he had an organ position), Mahler often visited him, and even slept
there on occasion. Even if this account is accurate, Rott left the position at the end of
September 1878. While Mahler may have heard the first movement of the symphony
from Rott, it is unlikely, then, that he heard much, if anything, of the second
movement sketched that summer (but not completed until April 1879), and the
surviving sketches and drafts for the final two movements all bear dates of 1879 or
1880. Moreover, Heinrich Krzyzanowski reports that-even if Mahler and Rott were
close friends, which now seems unlikely-Rott seldom frequented his earlier circle of
friends after 1878. Notice, too, that Mahler's comment about his closeness with Rott is
expressed conditionally: 'An ihm hitte ich viel haben konnen'. He does not say that
they had a lot in common, as might have been expected, just that they might have, as if
on some level-perhaps personal-they in fact did not.
Biographical material in Rott's Nachlass supports this characterization of their

24 Letter to Emil Freund, 1 November 1880, Gustav Mahler Briefe, 2nd, rev. edn., ed. Herta Blaukopf, Vienna, 1996.
p. 39.
25 Banks, 'Hans Rott, 1858-1884', p. 494.
26 Likewise, her amusing story about Rott's mother being greeted by a totally nude Anton Bruckner is a fabrication:
Rott's mother had died in 1860; his stepmother died in 1872 (before Rott started at the Conservatory); and by 1876, Rott
was an orphan.
27 Bauer-Lechner, Recollections, p. 116.
28 Ibid., p. 146.

398

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
relationship. Mahler comes up only once, inconsequentially, in Rott's letters to
Heinrich and Rudolf Krzyzanowski (also friends of Mahler's).29 This absence is
particularly noteworthy, since Rott's letters are otherwise teeming with news of the
activities of his friends. Although Mahler's name does appear among a list of names in
Rott's 1878 Tagebuch and in an address book of about the same time (the latest date in
it is 1 February 1879), Heinrich Krzyzanowski reports that the two men were not close.
Krzyzanowski does include Mahler in Rott's circle of friends for the years 1877-8 but,
somewhat contradictorily, later states that Mahler was only around from time to time
[zuweilen]. His further comments are particularly revealing:
As much as they were together, a real friendship never arose between Rott and Mahler,
principally because Rott opposed it. Out of jealousy. His love for my brother could not bear
it that [Rudolf] was also a close and intimate friend of Mahler. Moreover there were a good
number of Jewish and non-Jewish ill-mannered habits which did not lend grace to the small,
gnome-like, unpolished Mahler; these habits repelled not only Rott, who was sensitive for a
number of reasons, but others as well who nonetheless were to become Mahler's friends later
on. In fact, one could not imagine a greater contrast than the proud, noble, almost colossus-
like figure of Rott, which looked distinguished even in rags, with that of the nimble, fidgety,
gambolling, jerking little Mahler, in his over-large coat that almost swept the ground.30

Krzyzanowski also recounts a quarrel between Mahler and Rott, 'as a consequence
[of which] they became bitter enemies'.3' That anti-Semitism on the part of Rott may
have played a role is hinted at by Krzyzanowski's comments, and seems to be
confirmed by his letter to Hans Richter requesting a hearing of his symphony
(23 August 1880): here, he opines that Viennese art was in retreat 'thanks to the
whoring immigrants from Jerusalem'.32 Finally, even if Krzyzanowski's account is
biased or inaccurate with respect to the Rott/Mahler connection, he also tells of a real
change in Rott after graduating from the Conservatory and leaving the Piarists:
Rott had given up the organist's position with the Piarists and now lived in a very spacious,
well-decorated, respectable room with alcoves in the so-called bazaar of the Rothen-
turmstraBe. Rumour already had it that he become an 'elegant gentleman', [who] even
wore Oriental [gelbe] shoes (still no everyday occurrence at that time). He had considerably
restricted, if not completely given up, his contact with the musical bohemians. His innermost
circle, apart from Seemiiller, comprised the L6hr brothers, especially Fritz.33
29 'Mahler wohnt in unserer nachsten Nihe: nimlich in der Floriangasse, woselbst er ein hubsches Quartier zur
Verfugung hat'. Letter of 6 May 1878, ONB Mus. Hs. 34.247/III/3; Hans Rott: Der Begrunder der neuen Symphonie, p. 63.
30 'Zwischen R[ott] & Mahler hat, soviel sie auch beisammen waren, eine richtige Freundschaft nie bestanden, u[nd]
z[war] vorehmlich weil R[ott] einer solchen widerstrebte. Schon aus Eifersucht. Die Liebe zu meinem Bruder vertrug
es nicht, daB dieser auch mit Mahler eng und innig befreundet war. Dazu eine Menge groBer & kleiner jiidischer &
nichtjiidischer Unarten, die dem keinen kobaldartigen vom Leben noch gar nicht abgeschliffenen Mahler gerade nicht
nur Zier gereichten und auch andere als den aus vielen Grunden empfindlichen Rott, die spater Mahlers Freunde
wurden, zunachst abstieBen. Man konnte sich in der Tat keinen groBeren Gegensatz vorstellen als die ans hunenhafte
gemahnende stolz gelassene Figur R[ott]s, die auch in Lumpen etwas Vomehmes hatte, und den beweglichen,
zappelnden, hiipfenden, stoBenden kleinen Mahler in seinem vielzulangen Mantel, der beinahe den Boden fegte'. ONB
Mus. Hs. 34.247/IV/13; Hans Rott: Der Begrunder der neuen Symphonie, p. 51.
31 The quarrel revolved around the question of whether an artist, especially a musician, ought to eat meat; Mahler,
like many enthusiastic Wagnerians, went through a phase of vegetarianism in the late 1870s in imitation of the Master.
Rott disagreed. ONB Mus. Hs. 34.247/IV/15; Hans Rott: Der Begriunder der neuen Symphonie, p. 58.
32 'Wir Osterreicher haben eine nationale Kunst, mein Vater gehorte ihr an; sie ist Dank der Einwanderung aus
Jerusalem der Hurerei gewichen'. ONB Mus. Hs. 34.247/III/22; Hans Rott: Der Begrinder der neuen Symphonie, p. 96.
Tellingly, given the latent anti-Semitic discourse that surrounds it, Thomas Leibnitz compares the relationship between
Rott and Mahler to that between Siegfried and Mime ('Hans Rott und Gustav Mahler', p. 78).
3 'Rott hatte die Organistenstelle bei den Piaristen aufgegeben und bewohnte nun ein sehr geriumiges, gut
biirgerlich ausgestattetes Zimmer mit Alkoven im s.g. Bazar der Rothenturmstr. Die Fama hatte bereits gemeldet, daB
er ein >eleganter Herro geworden sei, ja sogar gelbe Schuhe trage (damals noch keine Alltaglichkeit). Der Umgang mit
der Musikanten-Boheme hatte er, wenn auch nicht ganz aufgegeben, doch ziemlich eingeschrankt, seinen vertrauten

399

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
That this passage precedes the discussion of Rott's symphony, already cited, makes it
clear that the 'friends' there mentioned were Rott's new ones. In his next letter to Maja
Loehr, Krzyzanowski returns to this theme:

I regard it as absolutely fateful that at this time Rott was almost without contact-or at least
intimate contact-with his old school friends and musical colleagues. His new friends-as
splendid, honest and dependable they also were as human beings-could not replace them,
the musicians (those others, who were just his equals, although, in purely human terms, they
displayed all kinds of flaws); in fact, in the respect with which they [his new friends]
surrounded him as a musical genius, they were almost a hazard for him.34

He even goes on to suggest that had Rott not given up his old friends, they might have
been able to help avert his collapse; in a note, Loehr disagrees with this assessment,
stating that Rott did in fact keep in touch with several of his Conservatory friends (but
Mahler is not mentioned). At any rate, the emergence of Krzyzanowski's testimony,
when taken together with the rest of the surviving biographical evidence, casts a very
strong shadow of doubt on our traditional assumption that Mahler first heard the
symphony from Rott himself.
There are two implications to be drawn from the aforementioned biographical
evidence. First, it seems unlikely that Rott and Mahler were as close friends as has
generally been supposed. Second, even if they were, in his final years of sanity-the
very years in which he completed the symphony-Rott had much less contact with his
earlier circle of friends. While Mahler may have heard the first movement of the
symphony from Rott, he almost certainly did not hear the last three movements from
him. To return to my question: when did Mahler get to know Rott's symphony?
Earlier I alluded to a mention of Rott in an unpublished Mahler letter. The letter in
question was addressed to his sister, Justine, and dates from late December 1890. In it,
Mahler reports that he has 'received Hans's symphony just fine'.35 Mahler must have
borrowed the score from his close friend Friedrich L6hr, with whom his siblings were
living in Vienna; as already mentioned, Lohr had assumed responsibility for Rott's
JVachlass.36 There is no record of when Mahler returned the score. It is quite probable
that his most intensive engagement with Rott's music occurred after Rott's death, as a
Verkehr bildeten nur auBer Seemiiller die Briider Lbhr bes. Fritz'. ONB Mus. Hs. 34.247/IV/15; Hans Rott: Der
Begrunder der neuen Symphonie, pp. 56-7.
34 'Ich halte es geradezu fir schicksalsvoll, daB R. in dieser Zeit fast auBr Verkehr - will sagen intimen Verkehr mit
seinen alten Schulfreunden & Berufsgenossen war. Die neuem Freunde, so trefflich, lauter und verliBlich dieselben als
Menschen auch waren, konnten ihm, dem Musikanten, jene anderen, die nun einmal seinesgleichen waren, obgleich
sie rein menschlich genommen allerlei Mangel aufwiesen, nicht ersetzen, ja sie wurden durch den Respekt, mit dem sie
ihn as musikalisches Genie umgaben, geradezu eine Gefahr fur ihn'. ONB Mus. Hs. 34.247/IV/15; Hans Rott: Der
Begriinder der neuen Symphonie, p. 58.
35 'Die Symphonie von Hans habe ich richtig empfangen.' Unpublished letter to Justine in the Gustav Mahler-
Alfred Rose Collection, Music Library, University of Western Ontario; shelfmark E3-MJ-363. Cited by permission of
the University of Western Ontario Library System. Like most of Mahler's letters, it is undated. On the basis of its
content and the similarity of the content to that of another letter in the collection that mentions Christmas, it seems to
date from between 18 and 24 December 1890. Because it also asks Justine to send him Fritz Lohr's address in Rome, it
has a terminus post quem of September 1890 and a terminus ante quem of September 1891. Gustav Mahler Briefe No. 102 was
written to Lohr in Rome and is postmarked 28 January 1891. This letter was not known to Henry-Louis de La Grange
when he completed his monumental biography of the composer. I am currently preparing an edition and translation of
these family letters, which number over 500.
36 Banks ('Hans Rott and the New Symphony', p. 142) likewise assumes that Mahler borrowed the score from Lohr
in 1900. It is true that Lohr was in Italy in late 1890, but Mahler's siblings remained at the same address, presumably
with the L6hrs' effects (although they moved immediately upon their return to Vienna). Mahler and his sisters and
brother Otto had spent the summer of 1890 together with the Lbhrs in Hinterbriihl, near Vienna (see Liohr's n. 62,
Gustav Mahler Briefe, pp. 439-40); it is quite possible that Mahler was reminded of the work at this time, and discussed
Rott with Friedrich Lohr.

400

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
consequence of his friendship with Lohr. Two remarks support this idea. First, in 1904
Lohr wrote that 'only a few people know [Rott's symphony], either from the time that
Rott himself played it for his friends, orfrom the manuscript [my emphasis]'.37 Second, no
one appears to have pointed out that Mahler, in his comments to Natalie Bauer-
Leehner in 1900, refers to Rott's First Symphony, thus implying knowledge that Rott
had sketched another one. Given that he seems not to have been close to Rott, it is
likely that Mahler's familiarity with Rott's output came from conversations with L6hr.
New evidence suggests, then, that Mahler actively studied Rott's symphony in late
1890 and 1891 and that this study bore fruit in the Second and Third Symphonies. All
of his apparent quotations of Rott come after 1890: the earliest of these, in the last three
movements of the Second, date from 1893 and 1894. Mahler composed relatively little
during these years-only the five 'Humoresken' from Des knaben Wunderhom were
written before he completed the Second Symphony-so the delay is only apparent.38
Similarly, his perusal of the score in 1900 may have influenced the Scherzo of the Fifth
Symphony.
The similarities in tone between Rott and Mahler are more difficult to account for,
and also more fraught with peril. Mahler's First Symphony (1888-9) has a similar
scherzo-type and uses a chorale theme as an apotheosis.39 Are these to be credited to
Rott too? Assuming that he had already heard it, or some of it, it is certainly plausible
that Mahler could have remembered Rott's symphony in general terms and employed
similar effects. However, it is just as plausible that such devices originated independ-
ently from 'the same soil, [and were] nourished by the same air', as Mahler put it to
Bauer-Lechner.40 Without knowing more of Mahler's earlier music, as well as that of
his contemporaries, we may never know.

37 Die Musik, iii (1903-4), repr. in Hans Rott: Der Begrunder der neuen Symphonie, p. 12 n. 2.
38 The one unknown factor is when the nine early Wunderhorn songs were composed. La Grange dates them between
1887 and 1890, but there is no firm evidence that this is the case. Another letter to Justine from June or July 1890,
likewise unknown to La Grange, proves that at least one song was composed that summer.
39 He also instructs various instruments to play with their bells raised, for example the oboes and clarinets in the first
trio of the Scherzo.
40 See p. 392, above.

401

This content downloaded from

66.195.118.6 on Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:41:41 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms