The different voices of Mahler's tragicomic juxtaposition are just one example of the ways in which the composer employed pluralism in his early symphonies. Beyond the redemptive power of this contrasting combination, Mahler's plural voices reflect to some extent his own experiences. In one of the most frequently cited remarks relayed by Alma, Mahler claimed to be “thrice homeless: as a native of Bohemia, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.” His place “on the margins” of society, as his friend the Czech music critic Richard Batka wrote in 1910, certainly may have informed his portrayal of plural musical experiences, even – or especially – those that contradict one another. Mahler often combines the alienated and heartbroken, the unsuccessful alongside the joyful, the parodistic with the genuine. An explanation for this pluralism can be located in Mahler's famous conversation with Jean Sibelius, in which he said “the symphony must be like the world. It must be all-embracing.”

Mahler's use of plural voices as a means for the symphony to embrace the world resonates with another facet of Nietzsche's philosophy, the appreciation of plurality through perspectivism. The philosopher, who did not believe in any “absolute truth,” nonetheless argued that the closest we can come to understanding something objectively is through the insight of multiple sources.