Heard at the first performances of the first symphony in Budapest, Hamburg and Weimar was a serenade-like andante movement that Mahler called “Blumine” and which he eliminated after the weimar performance.
 
The first symphony was thus played as a four-movement work from its Berlin premiere on 16 march 1896 onwards.
 
Even the first edition of the symphony appeared in 1898 without the “Blumine”. the movement was first published in 1968 by the Theodore Presser Company (Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania). The scholarly world could identify it as one of the pieces of music that Mahler composed in june 1884 for the kassel theater’s presentation of the popular epic poem Der trompeter von Säckingen by Joseph Victor von Scheffel.
 
The presentation and music of these seven “tableaux vivants”, premiered on 23 June 1884, were well received and were also performed in Munich, Wiesbaden, Kalsruhe and Altone.
 
Mahler called the piece “Blumine” following Jean Paul’s herbstblumine, a collection of essays. A key factor in deleting the piece would likely have been the manifold reminiscences of salon music.
 
Constantin Floros 
Hamburg, Spring 2019