What the Angels Tell Me

The Wanderer

Church
Music shaped by the sacred tradition reflects Mahler’s ongoing search for spiritual transcendence through art.
“O believe, my heart, O believe”
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VIDEO:SFS principal trombone Tim Higgins on Mahler's music
  • Mahler ended his Third Symphony with a translucent slow movement: In its initial conception, the movement was subtitled “What Love Tells Me.” He did not mean merely romantic love, however, but something higher: “the steady intensification of feeling, from the indistinct, unbending, elemental existence (of the forces of nature) to the tender formation of the human heart, which in turn points toward and reaches a region beyond itself (God).

  • Mahler works with the beautiful theme in various ways, a musical equivalent of his verbal description of a “steady intensification of feeling.”