" The obsession with last things was not just apparent from his late style. It had been there right from the beginning of his composing career, as far back as the Second Symphony, which was an extended musical exploration of death and resurrection. Had he, in later years, written only Das Lied von der Erde, it would have been thought a fitting final statement, one of the great ones, to stand with Mozart’s Requiem, Beethoven’s Ninth, and Schubert’s last piano sonata. But to have followed Das Lied, as he did, with the equally immense Ninth Symphony the following summer, in 1909, was to become, through the force of his will, the genius of prolonged farewells. "
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