Really big, huge, and absurdly enormous: thus goes the progression of Mahler's symphonies, in scale, scope, ensemble size and ambition — by the time he got to his Eighth, the "Symphony Of A Thousand," there was nowhere else to go, so in his Ninth he bid farewell to Earth, in one of the most exquisitely drawn-out, beatific denouements ever written (Mahler departing the mortal coil is a little like a Liza Minelli farewell tour: both take the same amount of time to say goodbye that most people take to introduce themselves, tell their story, leave, encore, and leave again). Mahler, more than any composer before him, wanted to fit the world into his symphonies, and he kept upping the ante on himself and his audience, all the while taking great pains not to lose anyone. Like all of history's most maniacally ambitious pop musicians, he was constantly torn between his musical aspirations and his hunger for wider recognition and fame. It is to Mahler that generations of self-described "misunderstood" composers attribute the quote "My time will come" when their more difficult works fall on indifferent ears, but this quote misremembers just how greedily Mahler latched onto to a single positive… read more »