Symphony No. 3 (Mahler)

The Symphony No. 3 in D minor is a piece of orchestral music by Gustav Mahler. The composer started to write the symphony in 1893 but mostly worked on it in 1895. The work was finished in 1896.Constantin Floros, Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies, translated by Vernon Wicker (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1993) . The work has six movements and is the longest piece of music Mahler wrote. It takes 90 to 105 minutes to play.

 Instrumentation 
The symphony is was written for a large orchestra, with:

Woodwinds
4 flutes (3rd and 4th doubling piccolos, 1st and 2nd doubling piccolos in movements 1, 3 and 5)
4 oboes (4th doubling cor anglais)
3 B, A clarinets (3rd doubling bass clarinet)
2 E clarinets (2nd doubling 4th clarinet in B-flat)
4 bassoons (4th doubling contrabassoon)

Brass
posthorn (sometimes substituted by a flugelhorn or trumpet, used only in movement 3, offstage)
8 horns
4 trumpets (plus 2 more trumpets for reinforcement if possible)
4 trombones
tuba

Percussion
8 timpani (two players, four timpani each)
bass drum (with suspended cymbal attached)
several snare drums (used only in movement 1, one onstage, the rest offstage)
several pairs of cymbals (at the minimum 3)
suspended cymbals
triangle
tambourine
tam-tam
rute (used only in movement 2)
5 to 6 tuned bells (used only in movement 5, "on a high gallery")
2 glockenspiels (2nd used only in movement 5)

Voices
alto soloist (used only in movements 4 and 5)
women's choir (used only in movement 5, "on a high gallery")
boys' choir (used only in movement 5, "on a high gallery")

Strings
2 harps
1st violins
2nd violins
violas
cellos
double basses (with low C string)

 Form 

The symphony has six parts, also called movements. They are:

References

Other reading
Barham, Jeremy. 1998. "Mahler's Third Symphony and the Philosophy of Gustav Fechner: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Criticism, Analysis, and Interpretation". Ph.D. thesis. University of Surrey.
Filler, Susan M. 1976. "Editorial Problems in Symphonies of Gustav Mahler: A Study of the Sources of the Third and Tenth". PhD diss. Evanston: Northwestern University.
Franklin, Peter. 1977. "The Gestation of Mahler's Third Symphony". Music & Letters 58:439–446.
Franklin, Peter. 1999. "A Stranger's Story: Programmes, Politics, and Mahler's Third Symphony". In The Mahler Companion, edited by Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson, 171–186. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.  (cloth)  (pbk).
Franklin, Peter. 1991. Mahler: Symphony No. 3. Cambridge Music Handbooks. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. .
Johnson, Steven Philip. 1989. "Thematic and Tonal Processes in Mahler's Third Symphony". Ph.D. diss. Los Angeles: University of California, Los Angeles.
 La Grange, Henry-Louis de. 1995. Gustav Mahler, vol. 3: "Triumph and Disillusion (1904–1907)", revised edition. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. .
Hurwitz, David. "The Mahler Symphonies, An Owner's Manual." Amadeus Press, pp. 31–32.
Micznik, Vera. 2005. Ways of Telling' in Mahler's Music: The Third Symphony as Narrative Text", In Perspectives on Gustav Mahler, edited by Jeremy Barham, 295–344. Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate Publishers. .
Pavlović, Milijana. 2010. "Return to Steinbach: An Unknown Sketch of Mahler's Third Symphony". Il Saggiatore Musicale 17:43–52. 
Reilly, Edward R. 1986. A Re-examination of the Manuscripts of Mahler's Third Symphony. In Colloque International Gustav Mahler: 25, 26, 27 janvier 1985, edited by Henry-Louis de La Grange, 62–72. Paris: Association Gustav Mahler.

Williamson, John. 1980. Mahler's Compositional Process: Reflections on an Early Sketch for the Third Symphony's First Movement. Music & Letters 61:338–345.

Outside links


Category:Symphonies by Gustav Mahler
Category:Compositions in D minor
Category:Choral symphonies
Category:1890s compositions