Bernard Chasan wrote: >I agree with Dave that the word "perfectly" must be considered in context, >so indeed Mahler's Symphonies can be considered as perfectly messy, etc. In summary, I suppose, it has been seen that Mahler probably intentionally wrote perfectly messy symphonies & it could well have been that that _had been_ Mahler's purpose, which would in fact be pluperfect. Whether or not that had been seen also by Mahler's contemporaries remains to be seen in the light of recent Mahlerian scholarship. Geoffrey Gaskell