The interval of the fourth unites many themes in Mahler’s first symphonic movement. To allow it to emerge naturally from the falling fourths in the violins, Mahler portrays the cuckoo call with this same interval, which gradually becomes the basis of the movement’s main theme.

Mahler alters a pre-existing melody in Finale of the First Symphony in order to make its shape correspond to the unifying interval of the entire work. As he did with the cuckoo’s call, Mahler adapts a famous phrase from Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus, changing the falling sixths to fourths.

Mahler often lets us in on the creation of a lyrical idea by giving us the first two notes of a phrase, then three, and eventually the whole musical thought. In this piano introduction to a song on a poem by Fredrich Rückert, "I am Lost to the World" (Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen), this sequence evokes the quality of introspective thought.

Many of Mahler’s most gripping slow movements combine rondo with variation form. Every time the theme returns, it is elaborated, ornamented, extended, or combined with a countermelody or even a variation of itself. In this way, themes that are already very powerful when first stated, reach ever higher degrees of intensity. In the Tenth Symphony, this mode of expression reaches its greatest realization.