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He wrote them so that one leads to the next, so if you stop at #4 you're kind of missing the point...live 'n' learn - I didn't know about the progressive integrity of Mahler's works - I do recall that he lost a child through drowning about the time he was writing the fifth or sixth symphony, and somehow his compositions from that period on have always seemed a bit too dark and dense for my simple-minded tastes - just an incurable old "romantic", I guess...

Sokay intolerant- most people don't know that. He was also pretty torn up over his religion too. Mahler was born a Jew but converted to Christianity because he thought his music would be more widely accepted. You really start to hear this in #5. The trumpet solos (after the initial funeral march) are where you can really hear this. Mahler walked around with the voices in his sick head going, "Chistian! No Jew! No Christian! Dammit I'm Jewish! Oy Vey I'm A Christian! No, A Jew! Or.....A Christian! No, Jewish!" (You get the point) This was all on top of the fact that all Mahler really wanted in life was to be Richard Wagner......Is that too much to ask for a composer?