Vienna, Austria — A recently found score of Gustav Mahler's First Symphony, said to contain the composer's own handwritten revisions, actually may have been annotated by someone else, a scholar said Tuesday.
Renate Stark-Voit, a musicologist with the International Gustav Mahler Society in Vienna, urged caution in attributing the revisions in the score found last month in Jerusalem to the Austrian composer.
"The few pages that were made available (to us) for review suggest more another author," she said. "Mahler often let others enter his numerous changes in scores and voices. Additionally, some of his copyists had writing similar to his."
The International Gustav Mahler Society researches the composer's life and works.
A teacher at the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, Charles Bornstein, came upon the score last month in the archives. It had been unknowingly filed away at the academy for more than 40 years, said academy chairman Avner Biron.
Bornstein, a conductor, believed the score to be an early version of the First Symphony, published by Viennese music publisher Josef Weinberger, probably in the 1890s. He noticed red-inked M's crossing out a whirlwind of trumpets that sounded throughout the first movement's frenetic end.
Bornstein arranged for the score to be sent to a Mahler expert and musicologist in Paris, Henry-Louis de la Grange, who confirmed the handwriting as that of Mahler.
The Israeli police's forensic unit confirmed that the paper and ink date back more than 100 years. Mahler lived from 1860 to 1911.
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