Rare Gustav Mahler Manuscript Displayed at Cleveland Museum of Art

The autograph of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2 will be exhibited at the museum from October 31, 2023, to February 11, 2024

The rare manuscript was donated to the Cleveland Museum of Art in 2020 by Dr. Herbert G. Kloiber, an Austrian media executive and philanthropist and Cleveland Orchestra trustee.

Prior to arriving at the Cleveland Museum, the manuscript was briefly displayed at the Cleveland Orchetsra’s Severance Music Center to mark the start of the 2022/23 season.

Mahler composed his Symphony No. 2 between 1888 and 1894. The 232-page, unbound bifolio (folded sheets) contains handwritten revisions in blue crayon and violet ink, legible deletions, alterations, and notes in “intense black ink,” according to Sotheby’s, which auctioned the manuscript in 2016.

“He’s drawing his own staves. He’s writing all of his key signatures, putting his instrumentation in and then he’s also altering it,” said Cleveland Orchestra archivist Andria Hoy in Ideastream.

“You can see where Mahler sometimes has taken something he didn’t like and, instead of crossing it out, he’s actually scratched it out,” she continued. “You could actually see the little marks on the paper where he scratched off the ink. You can feel them with your finger, little indents in the paper.”

The document is the only autograph manuscript of the complete symphony that exists. According to Cleveland.com, the orchestra and museum experts have stored it in a climate-controlled space at the museum in order to maintain the paper’s condition.

“To see the composer’s handwriting on the page, to discover where he emphasized something important, you feel so close to the creator and what he wrote,” said Cleveland Orchestra’s music director Franz Welser-Möst.

Considered the grandest of 19th-century symphonies and a musical interpretation of humanity’s search for meaning in life and death, Mahler’s 80- to 90-minute “Resurrection” symphony requires soloists, a chorus, and over 100 musicians. 

Origins of the manuscript can be traced to Mahler’s widow, Alma, who gave it to Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg, from which the Mengelberg Foundation gained ownership.

After spending time at the then Gemeentemuseum in the Hague, Netherlands, in 1982, the manuscript was bought by American financial publisher Gilbert Kaplan in 1984. Following the latter’s death in 2016, Kloiber purchased it for 4.5 million pounds on auction — the equivalent of around $6 million at the time.

The Cleveland Orchestra also recently released a production of its September 2022 performance of Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 via the streaming platform Adella.