Mahler, Gustav

Austrian composer and conductor. He composed nine large-scale symphonies incorporating folk music and pastoral imagery, with many using voices, including Symphony No 2, the ‘Resurrection’ (1884–86). He revised it in 1893–96, but left a tenth unfinished. He also composed orchestral lieder (songs) including Das Lied von der Erde/The Song of the Earth (1909) and Kindertotenlieder/Dead Children's Songs (1901–04).

The second movement of his Resurrection symphony, based on a ländler (folk dance in three time), is reinterpreted in stream-of-consciousness mode by Luciano Berio in Sinfonia (1968), into which Berio inserts a history of musical references from J S Bach to Stockhausen. The Adagietto slow movement from Symphony No 5 provided a perfect foil for Luchino Visconti's film Death in Venice (1971).