mahler.

Mahler represents the epitome of art music. Here is why.

• He is unrestricted by human resources. His gargantuan orchestras and choruses are delicately and purposefully used (rather than spamming winds, brass and other odd instruments to create more noise as many others are fond of doing).
  
• He is unrestricted by the usual audience's attention span. (It is debatable whether this is actually a good thing to do)
  
• He wrote what he thought. Each symphony is a philosophical work, a treatise on a subject and exposes his struggles and emotions in life with extreme vividness.
• His music is not limited by 'properness'. Raw emotion hits you hardest. Why sacrifice the effectiveness of music because of tradition?
  
• A conductor himself, he knew that other conductors would have a hell of a time reading his scores so he helped them by adding footnotes.
• He constructed many of his symphonies from themes and ideas in his orchestral songs and this reworking of material puts all his creative resources to the greatest possible purpose in his symphonies. The symphonies are like summaries of everything he thought and everything he had written.
  
• Basically he had something to say and he knew how to say it.

As a purist, it is hard to reconcile the fact that sung texts are used in symphonic works. After all, why add a literary or textual dimension to music if it is possible to say the same things without the words?