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 the rise and the growing, to which its power accrues by the variety of the appearances and which perceives its aim only en route.
Mahler’s notes, memorandums and entries in several handwritten sources document impressively that his symphonic music has to be considered as an art, where personal, biographical, literary and philosophical concerns find expression.
Mahler’s attitude towards the program music was characterized on the one hand by an unshakable faith in the „inner” programs, on the other hand by the awe of communicating them.
I am in Mahler-mood …