The Unanswered Question”
~ Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

“Music is the language of God.”

“Music can change the world.”

~ Ludwig van Beethoven




“Rise again, yes, rise again,

Will you, my dust, after a brief rest!

Immortal life! Immortal life

Will he who called you, give you.

“You are sown to bloom again!

The lord of the harvest goes

And gathers sheaves,

Us, who have died.

“O believe, my heart, O believe:

Nothing is lost to you!

Yours, yes yours, is what you desired

Yours, what you have loved

What you have fought for!

“O believe,

You were not born for nothing!

Have not lived for nothing,

Nor suffered!

“What was created

Must perish;

What perished, rise again!

Cease from trembling!

Prepare yourself to live!

“O Pain, you piercer of all things,

From you, I have been wrested!

O Death, you conqueror of all things,

Now, are you conquered!

“With wings which I have won for myself,

In love’s fierce striving,

I shall soar upwards

To the light which no eye has penetrated!

“I shall die in order to live.

“Rise again, yes, rise again,

Will you, my heart, in an instant!

That for which you suffered,

To God shall it carry you!”



~ Gustav Mahler – “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2

Gustav-Mahler- ~ July 7, 1860 – May 18, 1911

Ron’s Introduction to “The Unanswered Question”
~ Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony

Dear Friends,

Last month – to demonstrate how passionate mystical music elevates us beyond earthly cares and fears, and to so experience the eternal Light of timeless LOVE – I posted three YouTube video performances of one of the greatest symphonies of all time, Gustav Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2 (composed between 1888-1894) including a performance conducted by Leonard Bernstein, a long-time Mahler enthusiast and interpreter.

The concluding choral fifth movement of Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony ends with the above-quoted words written by Mahler characterizing inevitable physical death, as a rebirth to the eternal Divine Light of God.

Mahler’s Ninth Symphony (composed in 1909), was his last completed symphony. Like his “Resurrection” Symphony No. 2, it can be conducted and interpreted, as an ode to spiritual rebirth, but also as prophetic of inevitable and unavoidable physical death.

Today, to augment the Mahler “Resurrection” Symphony posting, I’ve posted below as “The Unanswered Question”, Leonard Bernstein’s interpretation of Mahler’s music given in a 1973 Harvard University public lecture titled: “The Twentieth Century Crisis”.

In that lecture, Bernstein interprets Mahler’s music as a reflection of Mahler’s fifty year life and times (from 1860 to 1911), as well as prophetic of current times. Bernstein has even further believed that this Mahler Ninth symphony was a foreboding of the end of musical tonality, and end of honoring artists as European cultural heroes of Mahler’s era, and even of fascist world wars.

In 1973 Bernstein had become the Charles Eliot Norton Professor of Poetry at Harvard. This prestigious position had previously been awarded to such notable musical figures as Igor Stravinsky and Aaron Copland, and to poets such as e.e. cummings and W.H. Auden. The professorship required Bernstein to deliver a series of six public lectures. Bernstein, a “Harvard man”, was honored to become a part of this distinguished tradition.

Bernstein’s “Twentieth Century Crisis” lecture began with his explanation of how during the twentieth century there had been gradually increasing and ultimately excessive musical ambiguity, that had destroyed the essential balance between clarity and ambiguity.

This “The Unanswered Question” lecture concluded with Bernstein’s deep discussion of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony.

Bernstein described the Ninth symphony as Mahler’s prediction of his imminent physical death at age 50. It was Mahler’s last full symphony, completed soon after the death of his young daughter Maria, and when he’d been diagnosed with a very serious heart condition. After talking, Bernstein showed a video with him conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in the concluding Adagio from this Mahler masterpiece.

One of those attending “The Twentieth Century Crisis” lecture was Zen Master Hyon Gak Sunim, whose Zen center organization extracted Bernstein’s discussion of Mahler and posted it on their cagin YouTube channel as “The Unanswered Question”.

In cooperation with that Zen center organization, I have copied and reposted below “The Unanswered Question”.

May we view and deeply enjoy this video. May Gustav Mahler’s passionate 9th Symphony spiritually elevate us beyond earthly cares and fears, to experience the eternal Light of timeless LOVE.

And so may it be!

Ron Rattner

“The Twentieth Century Crisis” and Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony