“It has almost ceased to be music; it is hardly anything but sounds of Nature. It’s eerie, the way life gradually breaks through, out of soulless, petrified matter. (I might equally well have called the movement “What The Mountain Rocks Tell Me.”) And, as this life rises from stage to stage, it takes on ever more highly developed forms: flowers, beasts, man, up to the sphere of the spirits, the “Angels.” Once again, an atmosphere of brooding summer midday heat hangs over the introduction . . . ; not a breath stirs, all life is suspended, and the sun-drenched air trembles and vibrates. I hear it in my inner ear, but how to find the right notes for it?” – Gustav Mahler