The Adagietto from Mahler’s Fifth is undoubtedly the composer’s best-known piece of music. It was immortalised by Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice where it was used as incidental music, although it had been very popular in the first half of the twentieth century and was performed on its own in concerts. The monumental, 70-minute symphony is divided into three parts and five movements. The fourth short Adagietto forms a transition from the vivacious Scherzo to the fiery Finale.
From the Fifth onwards Mahler no longer provided a written programme with his symphonies; however, Mahler and his wife Alma Mahler are said to have unanimously confided to conductor Willem Mengelberg that the Adagietto was written as a love song to Alma. There is really no reason to doubt this, hearing the wonderful melody, the intimate orchestration of the strings with the discrete harp accompaniment and the occasional passionate, expressive outburst. It has also been interpreted to be linked with thoughts of death; and considering that Adagietto bears resemblance to the Rückert-Lied ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ and it also features a quotation from the overture to Wagner’s Tristan, it can be said that perhaps the two interpretations are not mutually exclusive. It seems then that the concept of love and death were not incompatible to Mahler either.