The first three movements of Symphony No. 4 gradually build up to the finale, incorporates its music. The text of Himmlische Leben was taken from an early 19^th-century collection of Romantic folk poetry. The emotional themes of the first sonata movement return in the reprise in heightened form. The middle development section is inflated into terrifying music with natural motifs borrowed from the finale. The main part of the scherzo movement features the fiddle of the Reaper. The minor-key theme of the slow variation theme painfully responds to the storytelling of the classicising form.