The monumental six-movement Symphony No. 3 in D minor, composed between 1893 and 1896, is considered one of Gustav Mahler’s most outstanding creative achievements. It was not premiered until 1902. Although the individual movements of the work initially had programmatic titles, the composer never wanted to reveal their content to the public. However, he did disclose them to his trusted friends. It suffices to recall them to illustrate the significance of the poetic and philosophical message conveyed by this extraordinary music, imbued with heroic humanism and emotional depth: 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’. This seemingly minimalist programme has a very profound meaning. It is not only a manifestation of modernist pantheism, but also a testimony to the eternal human and existential dilemmas experienced by the composer: the questions that trouble us about the meaning of suffering, the immense longing for liberation from its power and the dreams of achieving eternal happiness. This is what the text introduced by the composer in Part IV, taken from Nietzsche’s Also sprach Zarathustra and sung by a female solo voice (‘O Mensch! Gib Acht!’), is about. In movement V, the ‘wisdom of angels’ is entrusted to a boys’ choir, which intones the song ‘Es sungen drei Engel einen süßen Gesang’ (the text comes from Mahler’s favourite collection by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, Des Knaben Wunderhorn). Beings condemned to suffering and death find solace in love, which is the only thing that will remain with us forever. It will last eternally and never die.
Grzegorz Zieziula
