Mahler's Resurrection Symphony began as a funeral tone poem
Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor, the Resurrection, occupied him from 1888 to 1894 and premiered in 1895. Lasting some eighty to ninety minutes, it was among his greatest contemporary successes and later ranked fifth in a BBC Music Magazine conductors' poll of all-time symphonies.
The opening began life in 1888 as the symphonic poem Totenfeier; second-movement sketches share that year, but Mahler waited five years before committing to a full symphony. Movements two and three arrived in 1893. Seeking a vocal finale to match Beethoven's Ninth without copying it, he found the text at Hans von Bülow's 1894 funeral: Klopstock's Die Auferstehung with the cry to rise again. He kept two verses, added his own on redemption, finished the finale that year, and slotted the Wunderhorn song Urlicht—likely 1892 or 1893—as movement four.
A printed Dresden programme of 20 December 1901 walked listeners from funeral questions about afterlife through remembered joy, meaningless bustle, longing for release, and final transcendent renewal—then Mahler withdrew all such programs. Friedrich Hofmeister published the work in 1897; Universal Edition later issued revised critical texts, with a Kaplan Foundation joint edition premiered by Gilbert Kaplan at the Royal Albert Hall on 18 October 2005.
Five movements unfold: a solemn C-minor funeral march in modified sonata form hinting Dies irae and E-flat goals; a leisurely A-flat Ländler memory; a C-minor scherzo from the Antonius Fischpredigt that climaxes in a triple-forte cry of despair; alto Urlicht in D-flat; and a half-hour-plus finale with offstage brass, march of the dead, Great Summons, and chorus. Mahler asked five minutes' silence after movement one—often shortened now. Distance bands and Fernorchester extend the First Symphony's far-off sound into a world of its own.
Source: Symphony No. 2 (Mahler)
