“Nothing is certain except death and taxes,” said Benjamin Franklin. But while taxation has rarely, if ever, been the inspiration for great music, fear of, fascination with, and gratitude for avoiding death have all served to spark creativity in composers over the centuries. Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Grieg, Mussorgsky, Richard Strauss—the list of composers writing funeral marches or other works associated with death is long and contains many of the most celebrated names in the history of Western music. Gustav Mahler’s preoccupation with death likely stems from his childhood, as he was the second of 14 children, only six of whom survived into adulthood. But it was his own near-death experience, after suffering an intestinal hemorrhage on February 24, 1901, that profoundly changed him, giving the composer new perspective on his own mortality. Two surgeries and an extended convalescence gave Mahler plenty of time to contemplate his own brush with death, and he confided to a friend, “While I was hovering on the border between life and death, I wondered whether it would not be better to have done with it at once, since everyone must come to that in the end. Besides, the prospect of dying did not frighten me in the least … and to return to life seemed almost a nuisance.” It was during his convalescence, as he recuperated in the Austrian town of Maiernigg, that the 41-year-old Mahler began work on his monumental Symphony No. 5.

Constructed in three parts, comprising a total of five movements, the Fifth Symphony is the first of Mahler’s symphonies to have no vocal connection. His First Symphony had been peppered with melodies from his Songs of a Wayfarer, and the Second, Third, and Fourth Symphonies all incorporated voices. In the Fifth Symphony, the power is purely instrumental, with no underlying text or story providing context. There is no shortage of drama, however, as Part One opens ominously with a Trauermarsch (Funeral March). No genteel introduction invites the listener in, but rather a solo trumpet intones a foreboding, menacing fanfare. The brass and percussion sections join, and the heaving music is terrifying. A sorrowful lament in the strings follows, interrupted repeatedly by the sinister fanfare. A central section features an anguished full-orchestral wail, as yet another aspect of grief is made manifest before the fanfare returns to shut everything down. There is a final recurrence of the nostalgic lament, but the eerie fanfare has the final word, as muted trumpets and a lone flute leave us in devastating silence.

The anxiety does not relent as the second movement, marked Stürmisch bewegt, mit grösster Vehemenz (Stormy, played with great vehemence), opens in a full-orchestra frenzy. When the melee subsides, gentle woodwinds introduce a poignant cello melody. Like a touching reminiscence that is interrupted by a painful reminder of loss, anguish interrupts the nostalgia and then yields again to another extraordinarily sad theme, again introduced by the cellos. The vacillation between torment and nostalgia continues for the remainder of the movement, as joyous memories mix and bleed into anger and grief. The storm subsides momentarily as the brass offer a brief glimpse of heaven, before the movement dissolves into pieces and the anguish finally relents.

The sun finally comes out in the third movement Scherzo, which comprises the entirety of the Symphony’s Part II. The longest of the five movements, here the dread and angst of the previous music disappear, and Mahler offers a buoyant ländler dance. “Every note is full with life,” Mahler wrote to a friend, “and the whole thing whirls around in a dance. There is nothing romantic or mystical about it. It is simply the expression of unheard-of energy. It is a human being in the full light of day, in the zenith of life.” A genteel waltz section follows, before the ländler returns, this time with a slightly more demonic tone. Suddenly, a regal solo horn shuts down the party and introduces a more reflective middle section. The extraordinary, noble writing for the solo horn is a great departure from the high spirits of the opening, almost like a preacher reminding us that life can also be bittersweet. (The hornist is sometimes even asked to stand for this section, in recognition of the importance of their role.) Chastened, pizzicato strings and woodwinds quietly resume playing the ländler theme. The music slowly grows in complexity, and eventually the wild spinning returns. The solo horn makes one final appearance near the end before a raucous coda, where Mahler pulls out all the stops and the music rushes to an ecstatic conclusion.

Part III of the symphony begins with the fourth movement Adagietto, perhaps the most famous work Mahler ever composed. Scored for only strings and harp, the exquisitely delicate music has been performed at public memorial services, including Robert Kennedy’s 1968 funeral, where Leonard Bernstein led the New York Philharmonic. Its original intent, however, was as a love letter to Alma Schindler, whom Mahler had first met in November of 1901, and who would soon after become his wife. When he offered the score of the Adagietto to Alma, Mahler included a poem:

How I love you, oh my sun,
I cannot tell you with words.
Only my longing can I exclaim
And my love, and my bliss.

Marked sehr langsam (very slowly), the music could not be more different from what has come prior. Here, after the potent anxiety and spinning energy of the previous movements, we witness the innermost thoughts of a 41-year-old man who has fallen deeply in love. Ranging from impossibly tender and delicate moments to passages of sweeping passion, the movement reflects the bliss and euphoria of new love. It also had the desired effect on Alma, as the two were married the following spring.

It was the summer of 1902 by the time Mahler began composing the symphony’s final movement, and this time he and Alma had returned together to Mahler’s favored vacation spot in Maiernigg. Alma was expecting their first child, and Mahler’s mood could not have been more different than it had been the previous summer. The finale opens with a solo horn and woodwinds trading snippets of folk song before launching into the main theme of the movement, a joyful, pastoral tune that will return repeatedly. In between repetitions of the main theme, Mahler embarks on virtuosic sections where he can show off his compositional prowess, the first beginning with a bustling fugue in the strings. After a second repeat of the opening theme, we hear a reprise of the music from the Adagietto, this time in a completely different, more animated setting. There is a restless joy to the music—chirping woodwinds and heroic brass fanfares, all set over a dizzying whirlwind of notes in the strings. The Adagietto theme returns a second time, again in “disguise,” and the general barn dance continues. A sudden, abrupt pull back into a more contemplative section allows a momentary respite from the relentless energy, but the electricity gradually rebuilds, culminating in a restatement of the brass section’s “glimpse of heaven” music from the end of the second movement. This regal chorale, whose glory was only hinted at earlier, is now allowed to bloom fully as heaven is no longer just a dream. A madcap race to the finish brings the triumphant movement to a close – a raucous, celebratory finale from a composer who, having glimpsed death, had finally found his way back to the unbridled joy of living.