Among composers of comparable reputation, Mahler's output is quite concise in quantity and limited as to type. Its inverse proportion to commentary is correspondingly striking. In recent years, more than with most composers, literature about literature has become an increasingly pressing concern in specialist publications on Mahler. Partly this is because of the peculiarly intense relationship between the composer's music and certain commentators. Deryck Cooke's views have acquired for many an added interest in that he is also the best-known and most widely accepted of those who have ‘finished’ the Tenth Symphony. Henry-Louis de La Grange has worked a sea-change in the way that Mahler has been perceived in France. Adorno's interpretation has steadily acquired an interest in its own right: his Mahler is virtually a separate entity from the composer Mahler, a forerunner and commentator who illuminates the world-view that is expounded systematically and cumulatively from Dialektik der Aufklärung to Negative Dialektik.

None of these can unequivocally be called an analyst. Cooke perhaps comes closest to the popular image in that he comments directly on specific works, and makes some effort to link discussion with formal categories that for concert-goers are staples of old-fashioned programme notes. La Grange behaves in a similar fashion on a grander scale. His sections on works, however, tend to be a special case of the massive documentation of reception history that is a key feature of his biography.