Mahler: Symphony No. 3

Status of copy at Case Memorial Library
Natalie Bauer-Lechner wrote: "[Mahler] said to me … 'You know, there's no money to be earned from the Third either! Its gaiety is not going to be understood or appreciated: it's the gaiety that soars above the world of the First and Second, with their conflict and pain, and it can exist only as the product of that world. It's not really appropriate to call it a symphony, for it doesn't stick to the traditional form at all. But "symphony" means to me building a world with all the resources of the available techniques. The content, continually new and changing, determines its own form. This being so, I must always first learn again to re-create my medium of expression. … I shall use two poems from Des Knaben Wunderhorn and a glorious poem by Nietzsche as the basis for the songs in the short movements. "Summer comes in" will be the prologue. For this I need a military band, to achieve the crude effect of the arrival of my martial hero. It will really be as if the garrison band were marching in. … Naturally, there has to be a struggle with the adversary, Winter, but it is easily vanquished.'" (quoted in Mahler: His Life, Work, and World, p. 110).