ABSTRACT
Critics were quick to complain that Mahler tried out his symphonies on others before bringing them back to Vienna. Sanna Pederson argued that the definitions of program music and absolute music cannot be separated from the definition of "German": Dahlhaus, for instance, has observed that "the idea of absolute music, gradually and against resistance, became the esthetic paradigm of German musical culture in the nineteenth century". This chapter suggests the reverse: it was the idea of a German musical culture that, gradually and against resistance, became the paradigm of absolute music in the nineteenth century. In the comments of both Hanslick and Geisler, the underlying problem is not really that Mahler's music may or may not be program music, but rather that it fails to communicate message in a coherent way. The chapter proposes equating problems of form with problems of comprehension. It offers a cartoon as an example, published in 1907 after the premiere of Mahler's Sixth in Vienna.
