Mahler Symphony No. 6 - 4th Movement - Listening Guide

The last movement is an extended sonata form, characterized by drastic changes in mood and tempo, the sudden change of glorious soaring melody to deep agony. The movement is punctuated by three hammer blows. Alma quoted her husband as saying that these were three mighty blows of fate befallen by the hero, “the third of which fells him like a tree”.She identified these blows with three later events in Gustav Mahler’s own life: the death of his eldest daughter Maria Anna Mahler, the diagnosis o...