E-Flat Clarinets Are...What?

This odd bit comes from Anna Picard of the British Sunday Independent, reviewing this year's Proms. Can anyone enlighten the DR about the veracity of this bizarre claim?


I've never bought the notion put about by Alma Mahler



that the three "hammer blows of fate" in the finale of the Sixth foretold the death of four-year-old Maria Mahler, the anti-semitic putsch at the Vienna Staatsoper and the diagnosis of the heart condition that would kill Mahler at the age of 51.

Me, neither. I guess I bought into the conventional wisdom that they signified the death blows of the nebulous "hero" of the symphony. But I could be wrong; meaning in music is, indeed, nebulous.

(The shriek of anti-Semitism is in any case a near-constant in his symphonies, present in each mocking call of the E flat clarinet.)

What? That...is truly...Jews hate E-flat clarinets? Or: anti-Semites hate them? What is the symbolism, or metaphor at work here? Is this some well-known musicological meme of which I'm just not aware? Anyone?

But the struggle depicted in the music must have a neurotic dimension if it is to be more than a panoramic slide-show of the Austrian Alps, with cow bells.

I don't know what that means, either. But it's not as off-putting as the equating-instrument-with-anti-Semitism thing.

A little help?

(h/t again to anzu)