Cocktail Party Fact: This titanic work was, without a doubt, the biggest piece of music ever written when it was composed. It’s still in the top few.

Commitment Factor: 75 - 90 minutes (Mahler allows great freedom of tempo, so actual timings can vary considerably.)

Vital Statistics: Late Romantic Period (1894). This vast symphony has five movements–a huge opening funeral march, three shorter interludes, and a lengthy finale with chorus and soloists clearly modeled on Beethoven’s Ninth. In addition, the work is in cyclical form–themes from the first and third movements recur in the finale. The orchestra includes ten horns, ten trumpets, four flutes and piccolos, at least five clarinets, seven percussionists both on-stage and off, two harps, chorus, two soloists, organ–you get the idea.

What to Listen For: Although long, the form and concept of this symphony is remarkably clear. The first movement is a majestic, at times fierce, funeral oration, spiked with tranquil interludes. The climax is one of the most exciting passages in all of music (that wild, clicking sound is the entire string section slapping their instruments hard enough to include the wooden backs of their bows), and the writing for percussion (two gongs [tamtams--one high, one low] is extraordinary). The second movement is a wistful minuet, a glimpse of things past, while the scherzo is a orchestral setting of the song “Saint Anthony of Padua’s Sermon to the Fish.” It’s climax, what Mahler called a “scream of despair,” returns to open the finale. The first movement is a song of simple faith which is immediately rebuked by the finale, in which the terrors of the day of judgement yield at last to a vision of love and redemption. The closing pages are unforgettably glorious, with organ, bells, and crashing gongs cre ating a cosmic conclusion.