

Simply keeping those titles in mind might help you tune in to the music’s message.

Fifth movement: What the angels tell me.Third movement: What the animals of the forest tell me.Second movement: What the flowers of the field tell me.Here’s the final version, slightly abridged: Even he needed them, because he had aimed at a towering goal: to depict man and his troubles in the midst of the natural world that envelopes him and the spiritual world that offers him hope.Īs the symphony took shape, Mahler created a verbal outline to help point his way. Mahler himself left us guideposts to the musical voyage.

There is no escape!”īut don’t be intimidated, newcomers to the piece. “It is as though the torrent of creation has proved to be an irresistible force, after having been pent up for years. But the symphony “has outgrown me and sweeps me along,” Mahler explained. As he worked on that massive opening, he told a friend that he had tried to resist going big. The ruggedly vigorous first movement takes a half-hour – a scale that astonished even Mahler. Laid out in six movements, the symphony typically clocks in at 90-plus minutes. But let’s be up-front about one thing: It’s a journey. 3 radiates dynamism, charm and eloquence, and it closes with one of the most glowing slow movements in the orchestral repertoire. Gustav Mahler in 1892, the year before he began composing his Symphony No.
