The tune 'Brother John,' or 'Bruder Martin' to Mahler's recognition, is used in the third movement, titled 'Funeral March in the Manner of Callot,' to create a sense of irony. The inspiration for this section was a woodprint froma book of fairy tales. The print depicts forest animals serving as pallbearers at a hunter's forest funeral. The question is not so much, 'Are you sleeping (forever)?' as it is 'Are we mourning or celebrating?' The animalsappear unsure whether to focus on the end of the hunter, or the end of the hunt. Mahler sets the tune in a minor key to stress this irony as the music moves between merriness and brooding. The tune appears as a canon, or round.
