Robert Powell credited as playing...
Gustav Mahler
- [last lines]
- Gustav Mahler: [reminded of some medications he should take] They won't be needed! We're going to live forever!
- Gustav Mahler: You have wasted precisely two minutes of my time, Mr Krenek. Why don't you do what I do when I'm teaching the New York Philharmonic to play in time: beat it!
- Anna von Mildenburg: Your song was charming, Alma, even if it was a little naïve, a little childlike.
- Gustav Mahler: Critics are always accusing me of being naïve. Don't associate naïvete with children, though. They don't even know what it means. Heaven lies all around us in our infancy. To enter that world, we must see with the eyes of children and hear with the ears of children.
- Krenek: Which do you prefer, conducting or composing?
- Gustav Mahler: I conduct to live. I live to compose.
- [first lines]
- Alma Mahler: How do you feel? You dropped off.
- Gustav Mahler: Fine. I slept like a log. No, like a rock. The first movement of the 3rd Symphony kept running through my head.
- Gustav Mahler: You were part of the dream too.
- Alma Mahler: A pebble, I suppose.
- Gustav Mahler: No, you were a living creature, struggling to be born.
- Alma Mahler: At last! You've noticed.
- Gustav Mahler: A chrysalis.
- Alma Mahler: Ready to turn into a pretty, painted butterfly.
- Alma Mahler: All your music is a hymn to nature.
- Gustav Mahler: Not quite all. You forget the most important title: what love tells me.
- Krenek: Dr Mahler, is it true that you cancelled your conducting commitments in New York; because, competition with Toscanini is too strong? Or, because the people didn't appreciate your own music? Or, was it simply ill health?
- Gustav Mahler: I was tired of skyscrapers and Sarsaparilla. I want to find a place near Vienna where the sun shines and the grapes grows and I can breathe again.
- Krenek: Congestion of the lungs. So, it was ill health.
- Gustav Mahler: Why is everyone so literal these days? I was speaking metaphorically.
- Gustav Mahler: It's about time you changed your tune.
- Alma Mahler: I have plenty of tunes, until you killed them all.
- Gustav Mahler: I don't want to imitate nature. I want to capture its very essence. As if all the birds and the beasts die tomorrow and the world became a desert, when people heard my music - they would still know, feel, what nature was.
- Princess: I understand you're searching for tranquility, Dr. Mahler.
- Gustav Mahler: Good Heavens. Yes.
- Princess: I fully appreciate the sensitivity of a mind so rare as yours. So delicately tuned into vibrations of the infinite, not to mention the harmony of the universe.
- Princess: It's a great privilege to meet someone who knows what it's all about.
- Gustav Mahler: The music of the spheres, you mean?
- Princess: No. I mean death!
- Gustav Mahler: Look, whether your spirit's been good or bad, it makes no difference. There are no presents or punishments. Heaven and Hell are made up by man, not God.
- Glucki: So there's nothing then.
- Gustav Mahler: Oh, yes. There is something, all right. Something He shares with us all.
- Glucki: What?
- Gustav Mahler: Love.
- Glucki: [looking at an engraving in a book] Who's that man flying through the air?
- Gustav Mahler: Some people say he's God. Lunch.
- Glucki: What's God?
- Gustav Mahler: He made everything.
- Glucki: He looks just like a man. Is everyone God?
- Gustav Mahler: Everyone is part of God.
- Putzi: That tree?
- Gustav Mahler: Yes.
- Glucki: And the water?
- Gustav Mahler: Yes.
- Putzi: And when we die, does the bit of God die too?
- Gustav Mahler: No. It's the part of us that never dies.
- Gustav Mahler: Before we get to Vienna, you must choose between Max or me.
- Alma Mahler: Gustav, please.
- Gustav Mahler: Your choice must be made out of love, not duty. Duty destroys. Duty always destroys.