Mahler score containing first revisions found at Israeli academ

JERUSALEM -- A rare musical find -- a score containing Gustav Mahler's own handwritten revisions -- has been unearthed at a music academy in Israel, officials said Thursday.

The score of Mahler's First Symphony had been unknowingly filed away for over 40 years in the archives of the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance.

Musicologists said the discovery held enormous value for Mahler scholarship, shedding light on the Austrian composer's thought process, although they noted that Mahler constantly revised his works and this was likely one of many versions of the symphony.

The score was accidentally uncovered when a teacher at the academy, Charles Bornstein, extracted it from the archives while preparing for a class, said academy chairman Avner Biron.

"It was like a bolt of lightning," the Israeli daily Haaretz quoted Bornstein as saying in its online editions Thursday. "Mahler cried out to me from the score. The manuscript dazzled me, the passion that dominates his writing, the incredible speed at which he worked. You can actually see the process of creation, as though he were writing it now."

Handwriting confirmed

Biron said that Henry-Louis de la Grange, a Mahler expert and musicologist in Paris, confirmed the handwriting as being that of Mahler. The Associated Press was unable to contact de la Grange, the founder of Paris's Mahler library, Thursday night for an interview.

The Israeli police forensic unit has confirmed that the paper and ink date back over 100 years, which corresponds to the time when Mahler composed his symphonies. Mahler lived from 1860 to 1911.

"This is a very rare discovery, and very important from a historic, musical and archival perspective," Biron said.

Haaretz quoted de la Grange as saying the score accepted as the final version of the work would have to be altered to take into account the revisions. He described the find as being of "inestimable importance."

Leon Botstein, the president of the American Symphony Orchestra, echoed his view in a telephone interview with the AP, although he stressed that Mahler was a notorious reviser and that it remained to be seen what impact the new score would have on performances today.

Haaretz said the score was an early version of the First Symphony, published by the Viennese music publisher Josef Weinberger, probably in the 1890s, and that Mahler subsequently thorougly revised it.