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Schoenberg
"And now my wish for your fiftieth birthday is that you may soon return to our hated and beloved Vienna; and that you may feel inclined to conduct here and yet not do so, because such riff-raff certainly don't deserve it; or that you may feel no inclination and yet do it for our joy, because perhaps we do deserve it. "
During his last days and while his mind was still unclouded his thoughts often went anxiously to Schoenberg. 'If I go, he will have nobody left.'
And I believe I felt your symphony. I shared in the battling for illusion; I suffered the pangs of disillusionment; I saw the forces of evil and good wrestling with each other; I saw a man in torment struggling towards inward harmony; I divined a personality, a drama, and truthfulness, the most uncompromising truthfulness.
"I cannot forbear telling you that such music could come from only one man in the whole world and that man is: Mahler."