Disentangling Nietzsche's contributions to late nineteenth-century concepts of music and drama from those of Wagner, especially as derived from ancient Greece, is a thorny task. In particular, Mahler's comment to Natalie Bauer-Lechner in the summer of 1900 that his first four symphonies formed “a perfectly self-contained tetralogy” might evoke connections to Wagner's Ring of the Nibelungen. Yet here the four-part magnum opus, designed to be performed on consecutive nights and culminating with the tragic Götterdammerung, bears little dramaturgical resemblance to the trajectory of Mahler's first four symphonies. Rather the lighter classical style and themes of childhood that populate the Fourth Symphony recall the ancient Greek genre of tetralogy, consisting of three tragic dramas and a fourth, concluding satyr play. When considered alongside Mahler's early symphonies, Nietzsche's pronounced appreciation for the tetralogy, especially the redemptive effect of tragicomic juxtaposition, reveals a clear example of how the latter's ideas were influential on the young composer in important ways.

Scholars have previously offered other inadequate explanations for Mahler’s characterization. In the second volume of his extensive biography of the composer, Donald Mitchell writes, “Mahler regarded the four symphonies as a ‘perfectly self-contained tetralogy’ … If they are such – and perhaps ‘perfectly self-contained’ is something of an exaggeration – it is surely because they all in various ways employ song, and more particularly Wunderhorn songs, or songs in the Wunderhorn manner (i.e. the Gesellen cycle), as a principal compositional technique.”