Clytus Gottwald, 85, is founder of the Stuttgart Schola Cantorum, a former IRCAM associate of Pierre Boulez and an expert in musical paleography – the art of reading old handwriting. I can’t imaging he – or anyone else – would have wasted precious time on the doodles of an untalented teenager, had she not become the love object of a great composer. There have been several attempts to make more of Alma’s sings than is actually in them – the best being the orchestral versions made by Colin and David Matthews – but after more than one listening it is hard to escape the conclusion that Mahler was right: she had nothing to say in music –

unless, of course, her third song was a sketch for a bigger hit, sometimes attributed to Mahler. Now that would be a world premiere…