An almost complete set of pages from the remarkable 1924 facsimile of Mahler's unfinished 10th symphony, including two copies of the partitur of the Scherzo-Finale but missing page 4 from the Adagio (the page as numbered 4 by Mahler on the upper right corner). This page is supplied in facsimile.

Mahler wrote the 10th symphony at a time of turmoil in his life which led him to counseling with Sigmund Freud. He was tortured by his wife Alma's having an affair with the architect Walter Gropius and it can be considered that another way of working through the crisis was the Symphony No. 10 with the pages of the draft showing outcries including Madness, seize me, the accursed! Negate me, so I forget that I exist, that I may cease to be!..., To live for you! To die for you as well as the dedication of the love song at the heart of the symphony's finale to his wife, using an affectionate form of her name, "Almschi!". Whatever their marital difficulties, Alma stayed with Mahler during his final illness and death in Vienna in May of 1911.

Alma Mahler kept the sketches for the Tenth Symphony for 13 years. In 1924, at the urging of Mahler's biographer Richard Specht, she took the brave step of publishing a facsimile of the sketches "warts and all", leaving the pained inscriptions.

The facsimile eventually led to the 1964 performable reconstruction from British musicologist Deryck Cooke, with revisions in 1972 and in 1976, as well as to other later versions and later facsimiles. It remains however to the 1924 facsimile to present the accurate score as Mahler left it.

Mahler's drafts and sketches for the Tenth Symphony comprise 72 pages of full score, 50 pages of continuous short score draft (two of which are missing), and a further 44 pages of preliminary drafts, sketches, and inserts. In the form in which Mahler left it, the symphony has five movements:

Finale. Langsam, schwer: 400 bars drafted in short score. Adagio: 275 bars drafted in orchestral and short score Scherzo – Finale: 521 bars drafted in orchestral and short score Purgatorio oder Inferno. Allegro moderato 144 bars drafted in short score, the first 30 bars also drafted in orchestral score Der Teufel tanzt es mit mir: 580 bars drafted in short score Finale: 400 bars drafted in short score

Paul Zsolnay, the Austrian publisher of this fine edition, was married to Mahler's daughter, Anna Justine, from 1929 to 1934. Thos copy of the 10th symphony formerly belonged to the conductor Roland Gagnon (1937-1979). Gagnon was for many years Beverly Sills's vocal coach at the New York City Opera.