If Mahler is not a great man, he is at
least the silhouette of one. The need of expression that drove him to
composition was indubitably mighty. The passion with which he addressed
himself to his labor despite all discouragement and lack of success, the
loftiness and nobleness of the task which he set for himself, the
splendor of the intentions, reveal how fierce a fire burnt in the man.
He was not one of those who come to music to form little jewels. On the
contrary, in gesture he was ever one of the eminently faithful. He came
to music to create a great, simple, popular symphonic art for these
latter days, a thing of broad lines and simple contours and spiritual
grandeur. He sought to express sincerely his deep, real sorrow, his
choking homesickness for the something which childhood seems to possess
and maturity to be without; to dream himself into childlike, paradisaic
joys and wake himself to faith and action once again. He attempted to
create a musical language that would be gigantic and crude and powerful
as Nature herself; tried to imbue the orchestra with the Dionysiac might
of sun and winds and teeming clay; wished to be able to say of his
symphonies, "Hier roerht die Natur." To a friend who visited him at his
country house in Toblach and commented upon the mountains surrounding
the spot, Mahler jestingly replied, "Ich hab' sie alle fortcomponiert.
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