The Wagner Journal
At Sixtus and Sevens: A study of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony reveals Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’ as one of many intertexts, John Warner finds
At Sixtus and Sevens: A study of Mahler’s Seventh Symphony reveals Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’ as one of many intertexts, John Warner finds
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Review of Anna Stoll Knecht, Mahler’s Seventh Symphony (Oxford University Press, 2019).
March 2021, Volume 15, Number 1, 89–93.
Each of Mahler’s symphonies is well overdue a book-length study, and perhaps none more so than the Seventh. Variously seen as either Mahler’s Cinderella or an almighty flop, it is at last given a thorough, open-minded and meticulously researched investigation in Anna Stoll Knecht’s recent publication. The symphony is all too often dismissed as fragmented, unnecessarily bombastic, insincere, over-reminiscent of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and a poor successor to the Sixth. Stoll Knecht tackles these main issues head-on, giving the work the fair hearing it deserves.