Symphony No. 6 in A minor "Tragic"

Mahler's Sixth Symphony (1903–04) is the most tragic and perhaps the most purely abstract of his symphonies. Unlike his other works it ends definitively in the minor key, with three hammer blows in the finale (reduced to two in Mahler's later revision) that he described as blows of fate. The opening march movement introduces a recurring fate-motif in brass; the slow movement is a song of heartbreaking beauty; the scherzo pulses with sardonic energy; and the finale is a vast, 30-minute struggle ending in annihilation. Mahler's wife Alma wrote that he wept after completing it. The cowbells in the slow movement evoke pastoral distance, making the final defeat all the more desolate.