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The Ninth Symphony is the last work, that Mahler has finished. Like “Das Lied von der Erde”, Mahler’s Ninth Symphony endeavors to obtain a new independence of the several voices, which is reflected in the instrumentation and causes an broken, ascetic orchestral sound. The first movement starts with a basic motif from “Das Lied von […]

The Eight Symphony , also called “Die Symphonie der Tausend”, reckons with four-part double choir, boys’ choir eight solo voices and full orchestra. After having finished the composition, he wrote: “… It is the greatest thing that I have ever made. And so peculiar in content and form, that I can’t write about it. Imagine, […]

The Seventh brings the liberation from the mental agony of the Sixth Symphony. Here, no struggles were fought out, but contrasts were compares all of the sudden. Also for this symphony Mahler demands again some unusual instruments: tenor horn (a kind of ‘bugle’), mandolin and guitar and even, in addition to the percussion section including […]

The programmatic content of this symphony can be described as the struggle for existence of the wanting, creative man against the inexorability of destiny, which ends catastrophically with the undoing of the hero. Among all of Mahler’s symphonies, the Sixth is the only, that shows no way out and finishes in a gloomy minor key. […]

The first movement TTrauermarsch” – funeral march – (With measured steps. Severe. Like a conduct) is thematically and formally an integral part of the second. The powerful scherzo, which Mahler considered to be the most important movement of the symphony, was followed by an “Adagietto” for harp and strings, Mahler’s certainly most popular symphonic movement. […]

Initially, the first movement was called “Die Welt als ewige Jetztzeit” and is so a pendant to the finale. The initial title of the second movement, “Freund Hein spielt auf”, is missing in the partition. It is replaced by the expression mark “Sehr zufahrend, wie eine Fiedel” – according to Mahler’s own statement, the Death […]

In 1895/96, Mahler composed the symphony in D Minor with alto solo, women’s and boys’ choir after words by Friedrich Nietzsche and verses from “Des Knaben Wunderhorn”. At that time, Mahler was a very busy conductor at the municipal theatre of Hamburg and conducted also the subscription concerts in Hamburg. As in the second and […]

For the first movement, he revised a previous work, a symphonic piece similar to a funeral march, entitled „”otenfeier”. Obviously, Mahler adopted this title from a poem of the Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, that he received translated by his friend Siegfried Lipiner. A scherzo movement follows an idyllic andante, the symphonic transposition of the Lied […]

Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought. You are the music while the music lasts. Mahler’s symphonic music is a symphonic music of […]