[log in to unmask] responds to me:

>>Come to think who better to write a Requiem then Mahler who seemed to
>>think about Death constantly anyway and used choirs in two of his
>>Symphonies.  Didn't he convert to to Catholicism?
>
>Sounds as if you're not very familiar with his music.  "seemed to think
>about Death constantly"? Sounds like one of the canards that used to be
>put around 40 year ago.  Do you think he was neurotic too?

Songs on the Death of Children
The Resurrection Symphony
"Farewell" from the Songs of the Earth
The program from the Sixth Symphone (ie. the Demise of the hero)
Funeral marches in the 2nd and 5th Symphony
A Child's Vision of the Afterlife in the Fourth Symphony

Need I say more and that is just off the top of my head.  I don't think
it would too much of a stretch to say that Death is a reoccuring theme in
his work.  Oh yeah and many of siblings died while he was still young.  Oh
yeah, his daughter died right after he wrote Kindertotenlieder.  Oh yeah,
he knew he was going to die when he wrote Das Lied and the Ninth Symphony.
Need I say more? I don't think this is merely a cannard.

Who better to write a Requiem then a man who dealt with mortality constantly
in his work?

Steve M. (Northern Virginia)