the trouble with mahler analysis is that there isn't a consensus about his compositional thinking so like it or not comments are going to be subjective and may well look like original research but it ought to be possible to explain why he thought of this work as a symphony he deliberately withheld a number from it because he had a superstition about ninth symphonies being terminal the work we know as his ninth was in fact his tenth and like das lied von der erde posthumously premiered this article doesn't address that it has been suggested that the six movements can actually be seen as covering the traditional four movements jointly fulfilling the scherzo function and helping to balance the finale one also quotes the eighth symphony's second movement it might be possible to find in the finale a texture resembling a hybrid of scena and aria two of each separated by a funeral march based on elements of the trinklied which begins the work in the role of a development section and sonata the last section of the finale with its repeated ewig could also be seen both as a cabaletta and the coda to the whole symphonic conception so the intellectual and formal weight distribution of the classical symphony is completely reversed but we still have something which can be called a symphony even though nothing more different from its immediate predecessor the eighth could be imagined i'm not proposing this as an addition to the article simply suggesting that it wouldn't be too hard to find similar thinking in the literature croy