Mahler's 6th Symphony

[Vaulted]

"Similar" to a "feeble-minded-Bruckner" (Ouch !!! Who said that ? Myth maybe ??)

Certainly wasn't me.

Maybe some more reading (Hurwitz, in English) will help. Don't deprive yourself of some additional sources. - the article I quoted is a mere 15 pages - a breeze).

That doesn't sound at all patronising! 

Hurwitz obviously starts in the same camp he ends up in, and labours painfully for the S/A case all the way through. He accuses Kubik of intellectual dishonesty, but then says things like:

"The Sixth Symphony, in particular, was left in an especially messy state before Mahler was forced to move on to other projects."
- It can't have been that messy if he was happy to publish it.
"Thus to insist ... that Mahler's decision to place the Andante second, was "final" and "unequivocal" is terribly naïve, as well as irresponsible."
- At the time of his death, A/S was the version he had published and performed, and death is pretty "final".
"...we, in turn, have no way of knowing exactly what he would have viewed as the more successful order because we don't know the specific factors that concerned him most, and to which he may have been paying special attention. Placing the Andante second thus offered a logical way for him to test the waters."
- So because we can't know what Mahler thought, let's assume A/S was a temporary experiment or the result of carelessness? Ironic, considering Hurwitz accuses the IGMG of "posing as mind readers"! (p.5) In fact, the whole thing is rife with such intuitions, leading to the inevitable conclusion that Mahler surely would have done exactly what Hurwitz would want him to do.

Also, Hurwitz makes great efforts to show how all the pieces of the work determine it can only be assembled one way, but makes no effort to show a musicological justification for A/S, something surely required by intellectual honesty (which he constantly implies is lacking in the official edition), and which Mahler himself must have considered.