Gustav Mahler -- Symphony No. 3 in D Minor -- Score

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It is doubtful if the phrase "Go big or go home" was around in Mahler's time, but he certainly seemed to subscribe to the idea. His compositions consist mostly of nine symphonies of tremendous scope and breadth, and while the Eighth bears the nickname "Symphony of a Thousand", the Third is actually the longest, with a running time of at least ninety minutes.

Like some of his other early symphonies, the Third had a program at first, one which was eventually discarded, although it still influenced the themes and structure of the final work. The first movement, a half-hour in itself, was to be the First Part, followed by a brief pause, and the remaining movements as the Second Part. Provisional titles for the movements were:

I: "Pan Awakes, Summer Marches In"
II: "What the Flowers in the Meadow Tell Me"
III: "What the Animals in the Forest Tell Me"
IV: "What Man Tells Me"
V: "What the Angels Tell Me"
VI: "What Love Tells Me"

A seventh movement, "What the Child Tells Me" or "Heavenly Life" was dropped, and eventually turned up as the final movement of the Fourth Symphony. Like the Second, text was taken from the poem and story collection "Des Knaben Wunderhorn", forming the children's chorus of the fifth movement. Friedrich Nietzsche's "Thus Spake Zarathustra" is quoted in the fourth movement, part of Mahler's ever-ranging personal exploration of philosophy and religion.

0:00 I: Kräftig. Entschieden
32:22 II: Tempo di Menuetto Sehr mässig
42:40 III: Comodo (Scherzando) Ohne Hast
59:27 IV: Sehr langsam—Misterioso
1:08:09 V: Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck
1:12:10 VI: Langsam—Ruhevoll—Empfunden

Score sourced through the International Music Score Library Project / Petrucci Music Library: https://imslp.org/wiki/Special:Imagef...

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