Editing Gustav Mahler (section)

===Style===
The union of song and symphonic form in Mahler's music is, in Cooke's view, organic; "his songs flower naturally into symphonic movements, being already symphonic in cast."<ref>Cooke, p. 43</ref> To [[Jean Sibelius|Sibelius]], Mahler expressed the belief that "The symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything."<ref>Mitchell, Vol. II, p. 286</ref> True to this belief, Mahler drew material from many sources into his songs and symphonic works: bird calls and cow-bells to evoke nature and the countryside, bugle fanfares, street melodies and country dances to summon the lost world of his childhood. Life's struggles are represented in contrasting moods: the yearning for fulfilment by soaring melodies and chromatic harmony, suffering and despair by discord, distortion and grotesquerie. Amid all this is Mahler's particular hallmark—the constant intrusion of banality and absurdity into moments of deep seriousness, typified in the second movement of the Fifth Symphony when a trivial popular tune suddenly cuts into a solemn funeral march. The trite melody soon changes its character, and in due course re-emerges as one of the majestic Brucknerian chorales which Mahler uses to signify hope and the resolution of conflict.<ref>Cooke, pp. 16–17</ref> Mahler himself recognised the idiosyncrasies in his work, calling the Scherzo in the Third Symphony "the most farcical and at the same time the most tragic piece that ever existed&nbsp;... It is as though all nature is making faces and sticking out its tongue."<ref>La Grange, Vol. 2, p. 179</ref>

The range of musical moods, Cooke maintains, comes from Mahler's "amazing orchestration" which, in the writer's view, defies analysis—"it speaks for itself."<ref name=Cooke14>Cooke, p. 14</ref> Franklin lists specific features which are basic to Mahler's style: extremes of volume, the use of off-stage ensembles, unconventional arrangement of orchestral forces, and frequent recourse to popular music and dance forms such as the [[ländler]] and the waltz.<ref name=Franklin9 /> Musicologist Vladimír Karbusický maintains that the composer's Jewish roots had lasting effects on his creative output; he pinpoints the central part of the third movement of the First Symphony as the most characteristically "[[Yiddish theatre|Yiddish]]" music in Mahler's work.<ref>Barham, Karbusický, pp. 196–201</ref> The Czech composer-journalist [[Max Brod]] has also identified Jewish tunes and rhythms in Mahler's music.<ref>Blaukopf, p. 140</ref>

A technical device much used by Mahler is that of "progressive tonality", which Deryck Cooke describes as "the procedure of resolving a symphonic conflict in a different key from that in which it was stated",<ref name=Cooke14 /> and which is often used "to symbolise the gradual ascendancy of a certain value by progress from one key to another over the whole course of a symphony".<ref>Deryck Cooke, RLPO notes 29 May 1964</ref> This technique was also used by Mahler's Danish contemporary [[Carl Nielsen]]. Mahler first employed the device in an early song, {{lang|de|Erinnerung}} ("Memory"), and thereafter used it freely in his symphonies. For example, the predominant key of the First Symphony is D major; at the beginning of the Finale, the "conflict" movement, the key switches to F minor, and only after a lengthy battle gets back to D, near the end. The Second Symphony begins in C minor and ends in E-flat.<ref name=Cooke14 /> The movements of the Fifth Symphony progress successively from C-sharp minor to A minor, then D major, F major and finally to D major.<ref name=DLG805 /> The Sixth Symphony, unusually for Mahler, begins and ends in the same key, A minor, signifying that in this case the conflict is unresolved.<ref>Cooke, pp. 83–87</ref>