Mahler’s fourth symphony is built around a single song, “Das himmlische Leben” (“The Heavenly Life”). It is prefigured in various ways in the first three movements and sung in its entirety by a solo soprano in the fourth movement. Mahler compared his Fourth Symphony as a whole to a primitive painting with a gold background and described the final movement in particular as follows: “When man, now full of wonder, asks what all this means, the child answers him with the fourth movement: ‘This is Heavenly Life’.”