Mahler Symphony No. 1 in D major "Titan"

Mahler had mostly finished this piece in early 1888, while working as second conductor at the Leipzig Opera. He conducted the premiere himself in Budapest on November 20, 1889, but the response was poor.

The nickname "Titan" was borrowed from the title of a novel by Jean Paul for the 1893 Hamburg and 1894 Weimar performances. Mahler said it had nothing to do with the novel, and from later performances on he dropped the title and the program notes. So strictly speaking, the name belonged only to those two versions.

At first it had five movements. In second place there was a slow movement called "Blumine" (Flower Chapter), which was later dropped. The musicologist Donald Mitchell rediscovered this movement at Yale University in 1966, and in 1967 Benjamin Britten performed it at the Aldeburgh Festival after a long gap.

The third movement was the one with the description "funeral march in the manner of Callot." It begins with a solo double bass playing the round "Frère Jacques" (Mahler wrote "Bruder Martin") in a minor key. The habit of singing this song in a minor key reportedly already existed in Austria at the time.