Based on the folk song collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn by Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano, over many years Mahler created a musical cosmos that contains all facets of human life. The ballad-like, humorous orchestral songs are intended to be gender-neutral, regardless of the vocal range, and can be freely combined. Meanwhile, Mahler's Adagietto, the 4th movement from his 5th symphony, is surrounded by a touch of sentimentality: a few weeks before the composition, Mahler had met his future wife Alma, to whom he sent the autograph as a declaration of love.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's love life was rather complicated at the time of composing his 4th symphony: the symphony was composed at a time when Tchaikovsky was beginning his correspondence with his patron Nadezhda von Meck and was suffering from the unhappy marriage to the conservatory student Antonina Ivanovna. Tchaikovsky wrote "our symphony", which he completed in January 1878, "a mon meilleur ami" - meaning Frau von Meck.