It comes crashing down like doom. A martial fanfare begins a long conversation questioning fate, arguing for the human condition, and for death's open invitation, which we dare not deny.
WHAT THE MEADOW FLOWERS TELL ME (Movement no. 2)
Their blooming voices are oboes and lush violins. The sun is surely brassy bright in the sky above. Radiant alpine flowers and woodwinds from deep within their burrows make the case for a music well tended and serenely fed by sweet springs emerging from the depths here below.
WHAT THE CREATURES OF THE FOREST TELL ME (Movement no. 3)
The life force tends to run amok. Yet things do not fall apart, the center still holds.
And though it is mundane - pedestrian, at times - we cannot deny the joy in this life, nor do we wish to.
But know, traveler, that submerged in every caldron of joy is a small *** of darkness. And it will find you or you will find it - not only because it is fated, but for the sake of your sanity.
WHAT MAN TELLS ME (Movement no. 4)
Here darkness sings. Again the plucked string. O Mensch! You tell the tale! You take this story back to the mountain.
A woeful tale you bring, but it is gilded with joy.
A chorus exalts your condition. Deep is its grief, but joy is deeper still.
WHAT THE ANGELS TELL ME (Movement no. 5)
Bimm Bamm Bimm Bamm the children's choir sweetly intones. And what, pray tell, do Angels have to say to us?
I've heard about love I've heard about emptiness I've heard about absence without presence, about nothingness and the void.
But I have never heard such singing!
WHAT LOVE TELLS ME (Movement no. 6)
Sweet the air we breathe. Pleasant the sights before us. Words are stilled, anxious thoughts banished.
There is nothing on Earth or in Heaven that disputes this sweet resolution all the parts made whole Nothing that could possibly speak against it (though French Horns will have their interests heard).
But here it is. The end.
O Mensch come to your last and best resting place.
Also sprach Gustav Mahler.
The lines "words are stilled, anxious thoughts banished" are borrowed from Bruno Walter's description of this movement. Herr Walter was as we know a great conductor and student of Mahler's.