Ann Arbor Symphony

continued

chorus enters alone, singing the words of a German hymn: "Arise, yes, arise will you." The soprano and mezzo soloists join the chorus singing words Mahler himself wrote: "With wings I have won for myself, striving in most passionate love, shall I ascend into the Light."

Lacking Yahweh and the Covenant, it is not what one might expect from a man who was born a Jew. And lacking Christ and the Redemption, it is not what one might expect from a man who later converted to Catholicism. But since there is no reason to believe his conversion was sincere — and every reason to believe he went through it only to get a better job in the Catholic Austrian Empire — why should it be?