window from Otto Wagner's Kirche am Steinhof

"What the Angels tell me"

Moving beyond Man, Mahler comes to the realm of angels. Though this level of creation is supposedly one step closer to God, Mahler again chooses a text from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, and a more child-like one at that. The fist few lines of text are as follows:

"Es sungen drei Engel einen süßen Gesang,
Mit Freuden es selig in den Himmel klang.
Sie jauchzen fröhlich auch dabei,
Daß Petrus sei von Sünden frei."

"Three Angels once sang a sweet song,
It rang out with peace and joy in Heaven.
They cheered merrily throughout,
That Peter would be free from sin."

--from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, author's translation

All this is sung to the accompaniment of a children's choir, imitating tolling bells. Mahler's vision of Heaven is one of child-like singing at the end of sin and suffering. In fact, the entire song reads like a child's Sunday school lesson. Peter asks what he should do about his sins, only to be comforted by the choir that he has already been forgiven. The next step closer to God, then is to forgive and learn like a child (Helfling 1999, 358)

"What love tells me"

The final movement of this symphony and the last "day" of creation is an expansive instrumental adagio. This movement embraces Mahler's highest form of being--joining God in universal love. It incorporates several motives from the first movement, thus joining the two longest sections of the symphony and closing it out symmetrically. By now, though, we have progressed from elemental powers, through Nature and Man, to a God of love. The "world" that is the symphony has been completely transformed--without this movement it would be neither complete musically or philosophically. Yet again, this movement explores both the enjoyable and painful aspects of love: it does not dwell in sentimentality. The pure breadth and longevity of the movement's ascending fourth motive, however, attests to the lasting quality of the love Mahler wished he and others could possess.

But love is still two steps from Man, and while we seem capable of redemption, this would take several jumps out of our nature. Though Man is reverent and thoughtful, he still must be like a child and love to attain redemption. Notice how unlike popular science and Wagnerian myth, Man is not the end-all of a grand evolutionary chain. He is in the middle; past the natural and the animal, but not quite to heaven.