7 Gustav Mahler 7were conceived on a programmatic basis (i.e., founded on
a nonmusical story or idea), the actual programs (later dis-
carded) being concerned with establishing some ultimate
ground for existence in a world dominated by pain, death,
doubt, and despair. To this end, he followed the example
of Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 6 in F Major
(Pastoral) and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique in
building symphonies with more than the then-traditional
four movements; that of Wagner’s music-dramas in
expanding the time span, enlarging the orchestral
resources, and indulging in uninhibited emotional
expression; that of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 in D
Minor (Choral) in introducing texts sung by soloists and
chorus; and that of certain chamber works by Franz
Schubert in introducing music from his own songs (set-
tings of poems from the German folk anthology Des
Knaben Wunderhorn [The Youth’s Magic Horn] or of poems
by himself in a folk style).
These procedures, together with Mahler’s own tense
and rhetorical style, phenomenally vivid orchestration, and
ironic use of popular-style music, resulted in three sym-
phonies of unprecedentedly wide contrasts but unified
by his firm command of symphonic structure. The pro-
gram of the purely orchestral Symphony No. 1 in D Major
(1888) is autobiographical of his youth: the joy of life
becomes clouded over by an obsession with death. The
five-movement Symphony No. 2 (1894; popular title
Resurrection) begins with the death obsession and culmi-
nates in an avowal of the Christian belief in immortality, as
projected in a huge finale portraying the Day of Judgment
and involving soloists and chorus. The even vaster
Symphony No. 3 in D Major (1896), also including a soloist
and chorus, presents in six movements a Dionysiac vision
of a great chain of being, moving from inanimate nature to
human consciousness and the redeeming love of God.