Biography
Early life
Family background
The Mahler family came from easternChildhood
In December 1860, Bernhard Mahler moved with his wife and infant son to the city of Jihlava (german: Iglau), where Bernhard built up a successful distillery and tavern business.Franklin, (1. Background, childhood education 1860–80) The family grew rapidly, but of the 12 children born to the family in the city, only six survived infancy. Jihlava was then a thriving commercial city of 20,000 people, in which Gustav was introduced to music through the street songs of the day, through dance tunes, folk melodies and the trumpet calls and marches of the local military band. All of these elements would later contribute to his mature musical vocabulary. When he was four years old, Gustav discovered his grandparents' piano and took to it immediately.Blaukopf, pp. 20–22 He developed his performing skills sufficiently to be considered a local '' Wunderkind'' and gave his first public performance at the town theatre when he was ten years old. Although Gustav loved making music, his school reports from the Jihlava Gymnasium portrayed him as absent-minded and unreliable in academic work. In 1871, in the hope of improving the boy's results, his father sent him to the New Town Gymnasium in Prague, but Gustav was unhappy there and soon returned to Jihlava. On 13 April 1875 he suffered a bitter personal loss when his younger brother Ernst (b. 18 March 1862) died after a long illness. Mahler sought to express his feelings in music: with the help of a friend, Josef Steiner, he began work on an opera, ''Herzog Ernst von Schwaben'' ("Duke Ernest of Swabia"), as a memorial to his lost brother. Neither the music nor theStudent days
Bernhard Mahler supported his son's ambitions for a music career, and agreed that the boy should try for a place at the Vienna Conservatory. The young Mahler was auditioned by the renowned pianist Julius Epstein, and accepted for 1875–76. He made good progress in his piano studies with Epstein and won prizes at the end of each of his first two years. For his final year, 1877–78, he concentrated on composition and harmony under Robert Fuchs andEarly conducting career 1880–88
First appointments
From June to August 1880, Mahler took his first professional conducting job, in a small wooden theatre in the spa town of Bad Hall, south ofPrague and Leipzig
In Prague, the emergence of the Czech National Revival had increased the popularity and importance of the new Czech National Theatre, and had led to a downturn in the ''Neues Deutsches Theater'' fortunes. Mahler's task was to help arrest this decline by offering high-quality productions of German opera.Franklin, (4. Prague 1885–86 and Leipzig 1886–88). He enjoyed early success presenting works by Mozart and Wagner, composers with whom he would be particularly associated for the rest of his career, but his individualistic and increasingly autocratic conducting style led to friction, and a falling out with his more experienced fellow-conductor, Ludwig Slansky. During his 12 months in Prague he conducted 68 performances of 14 operas (12 titles were new in his repertory), and he also performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony for the first time in his life. By the end of the season, in July 1886, Mahler left Prague to take up his post at the ''Neues Stadttheater'' in Leipzig, where rivalry with his senior colleague Arthur Nikisch began almost at once. This conflict was primarily over how the two should share conducting duties for the theatre's new production of Wagner's '' Ring'' cycle. Nikisch's illness, from February to April 1887, meant that Mahler took charge of the whole cycle (except ''Götterdämmerung''), and scored a resounding public success. This did not, however, win him popularity with the orchestra, who resented his dictatorial manner and heavy rehearsal schedules. In Leipzig, Mahler befriended Captain (1849–1897), grandson of the composer, and agreed to prepare a performing version of Carl Maria von Weber's unfinished opera '' Die drei Pintos'' ("The Three Pintos"). Mahler transcribed and orchestrated the existing musical sketches, used parts of other Weber works, and added some composition of his own. The premiere at the Stadttheater, on 20 January 1888, was an important occasion at which several heads of various German opera houses were present. (The Russian composer Tchaikovsky attended the third performance on 29 January.) The work was well-received; its success did much to raise Mahler's public profile, and brought him financial rewards.Carr, pp. 44–47 Mahler's involvement with the Weber family was complicated by Mahler's alleged romantic attachment to Carl von Weber's wife Marion Mathilde (1857–1931) which, though intense on both sides – so it was rumoured by for example English composer Ethel Smyth – ultimately came to nothing. In February and March 1888 Mahler sketched and completed his First Symphony, then in five movements. At around the same time Mahler discovered the German folk-poem collection '' Des Knaben Wunderhorn'' ("The Youth's Magic Horn"), which would dominate much of his compositional output for the following 12 years. On 17 May 1888, Mahler suddenly resigned his Leipzig position after a dispute with the ''Stadttheater's'' chief stage manager, Albert Goldberg. However, Mahler had secretly been invited by Angelo Neumann in Prague (and accepted the offer) to conduct the premiere there of "his" ''Die drei Pintos'', and later also a production of '' Der Barbier von Bagdad'' by Peter Cornelius. This short stay (July–September) ended unhappily, with Mahler's dismissal following his outburst during a rehearsal. However, through the efforts of an old Viennese friend, Guido Adler, and cellist David Popper, Mahler's name went forward as a potential director of the Royal Hungarian Opera in Budapest. He was interviewed, made a good impression, and was offered and accepted (with some reluctance) the post from 1 October 1888.Apprentice composer
In the early years of Mahler's conducting career, composing was a spare time activity. Between his Laibach and Olmütz appointments he worked on settings of verses byBudapest and Hamburg, 1888–97
Royal Opera, Budapest
On arriving in Budapest in October 1888, Mahler encountered a cultural conflict between conservative Hungarian nationalists who favoured a policy ofStadttheater Hamburg
Mahler's Hamburg post was as chief conductor, subordinate to the director, Bernhard Pohl (known as Pollini) who retained overall artistic control. Pollini was prepared to give Mahler considerable leeway if the conductor could provide commercial as well as artistic success. This Mahler did in his first season, when he conducted Wagner's ''Tristan und Isolde'' for the first time and gave acclaimed performances of the same composer's ''Tannhäuser (opera), Tannhäuser'' and ''Siegfried (opera), Siegfried''.Franklin, (6. Hamburg 1891–97). Another triumph was the German premiere of Tchaikovsky's ''Eugene Onegin (opera), Eugene Onegin'', in the presence of the composer, who called Mahler's conducting "astounding," and later asserted in a letter that he believed Mahler was "positively a genius." Mahler's demanding rehearsal schedules led to predictable resentment from the singers and orchestra in whom, according to music writer Peter Franklin, the conductor "inspired hatred and respect in almost equal measure." He found support, however, from Hans von Bülow, who was in Hamburg as director of the city's subscription concerts. Bülow, who had spurned Mahler's approaches in Kassel, had come to admire the younger man's conducting style, and on Bülow's death in 1894 Mahler took over the direction of the concerts. In the summer of 1892 Mahler took the Hamburg singers to London to participate in an eight-week season of German opera—his only visit to Britain. His conducting of ''Tristan'' enthralled the young composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, who "staggered home in a daze and could not sleep for two nights." However, Mahler refused further such invitations as he was anxious to reserve his summers for composing. In 1893 he acquired a retreat at Steinbach am Attersee, Steinbach, on the banks of Attersee (lake), Lake Attersee in Upper Austria, and established a pattern that persisted for the rest of his life; summers would henceforth be dedicated to composition, at Steinbach or its successor retreats. Now firmly under the influence of the ''Wunderhorn'' folk-poem collection, Mahler produced a stream of song settings at Steinbach, and composed his Second and Symphony No. 3 (Mahler), Third Symphonies there. Performances of Mahler works were still comparatively rare (he had not composed very much). On 27 October 1893, at Hamburg's Konzerthaus Ludwig, Mahler conducted a revised version of his First Symphony; still in its original five-movement form, it was presented as a ''Tondichtung'' (tone poem) under the descriptive name "Titan". This concert also introduced six recent ''Wunderhorn'' settings. Mahler achieved his first relative success as a composer when the Second Symphony was well-received on its premiere in Berlin, under his own baton, on 13 December 1895. Mahler's conducting assistant Bruno Walter, who was present, said that "one may date [Mahler's] rise to fame as a composer from that day." That same year Mahler's private life had been disrupted by the suicide of his younger brother Otto Mahler, Otto on 6 February. At the Stadttheater Mahler's repertory consisted of 66 operas of which 36 titles were new to him. During his six years in Hamburg, he conducted 744 performances, including the debuts of Verdi's ''Falstaff (opera), Falstaff'', Humperdinck's ''Hänsel und Gretel (opera), Hänsel und Gretel'', and works by Bedřich Smetana, Smetana. However, he was forced to resign his post with the subscription concerts after poor financial returns and an ill-received interpretation of Gustav Mahler's orchestration of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, his re-scored Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Already at an early age Mahler had made it clear that his ultimate goal was an appointment in Vienna, and from 1895 onward was manoeuvring, with the help of influential friends, to secure the directorship of the Vienna Hofoper. He overcame the bar that existed against the appointment of a Jew to this post by what may have been a pragmatic conversion to Catholicism in February 1897. Despite this event, Mahler has been described as a lifelong agnostic.Vienna, 1897–1907
Hofoper director
As he waited for the Franz Joseph I of Austria, Emperor's confirmation of his directorship, Mahler shared duties as a resident conductor with Joseph Hellmesberger Jr. (son of the former conservatory director) and Hans Richter (conductor), Hans Richter, an internationally renowned interpreter of Wagner and the conductor of the original ''Ring'' cycle at ''Bayreuth'' in 1876. Director Wilhelm Jahn had not consulted Richter about Mahler's appointment; Mahler, sensitive to the situation, wrote Richter a complimentary letter expressing unswerving admiration for the older conductor. Subsequently, the two were rarely in agreement, but kept their divisions private. Vienna, the imperial Austria-Hungary, Habsburg capital, had recently elected an anti-Semitic conservative mayor, Karl Lueger, who had once proclaimed: "I myself decide who is a Jew and who isn't." In such a volatile political atmosphere Mahler needed an early demonstration of his German cultural credentials. He made his initial mark in May 1897 with much-praised performances of Wagner's ''Lohengrin (opera), Lohengrin'' and Mozart's ''Die Zauberflöte''.Franklin (7. Vienna 1897–1907) Shortly after the ''Zauberflöte'' triumph, Mahler was forced to take sick leave for several weeks, during which he was nursed by his sister Justine and his long-time companion, the viola player Natalie Bauer-Lechner.La Grange, Vol 2 pp. 32–36 Mahler returned to Vienna in late July to prepare for Vienna's first uncut version of the ''Ring'' cycle. This performance took place on 24–27 August, attracting critical praise and public enthusiasm. Mahler's friend Hugo Wolf told Bauer-Lechner that "for the first time I have heard the ''Ring'' as I have always dreamed of hearing it while reading the score." On 8 October Mahler was formally appointed to succeed Jahn as the Hofoper's director. His first production in his new office was Smetana's Czech nationalist opera ''Dalibor (opera), Dalibor'', with a reconstituted finale that left the hero Dalibor alive. This production caused anger among the more extreme Viennese German nationalists, who accused Mahler of "fraternising with the anti-dynastic, inferior Czech nation." The Austrian author Stefan Zweig, in his memoirs ''The World of Yesterday'' (1942), described Mahler's appointment as an example of the Viennese public's general distrust of young artists: "Once, when an amazing exception occurred and Gustav Mahler was named director of the Court Opera at thirty-eight years old, a frightened murmur and astonishment ran through Vienna, because someone had entrusted the highest institute of art to 'such a young person' ... This suspicion—that all young people were 'not very reliable'—ran through all circles at that time." Zweig also wrote that "to have seen Gustav Mahler on the street [in Vienna] was an event that one would proudly report to his comrades the next morning as it if were a personal triumph." During Mahler's tenure a total of 33 new operas were introduced to the Hofoper; a further 55 were new or totally revamped productions.La Grange, Vol. 3 pp. 941–44 However, a proposal to stage Richard Strauss's controversial opera ''Salome (opera), Salome'' in 1905 was rejected by the Viennese censors. Early in 1902 Mahler met Alfred Roller, an artist and designer associated with the Vienna Secession movement. A year later, Mahler appointed him chief stage designer to the Hofoper, where Roller's debut was a new production of ''Tristan und Isolde''. The collaboration between Mahler and Roller created more than 20 celebrated productions of, among other operas, Beethoven's ''Fidelio'', Gluck's ''Iphigénie en Aulide'' and Mozart's ''Le nozze di Figaro''.Sadie, pp. 510–11 In the ''Figaro'' production, Mahler offended some purists by adding and composing a short recitative scene to Act III. In spite of numerous theatrical triumphs, Mahler's Vienna years were rarely smooth; his battles with singers and the house administration continued on and off for the whole of his tenure. While Mahler's methods improved standards, his histrionic and dictatorial conducting style was resented by orchestra members and singers alike. In December 1903 Mahler faced a revolt by stagehands, whose demands for better conditions he rejected in the belief that extremists were manipulating his staff. The anti-Semitic elements in Viennese society, long opposed to Mahler's appointment, continued to attack him relentlessly, and in 1907 instituted a press campaign designed to drive him out.Carr, pp. 150–51 By that time he was at odds with the opera house's administration over the amount of time he was spending on his own music, and was preparing to leave. In May 1907 he began discussions with Heinrich Conried, director of the New YorkPhilharmonic concerts
When Richter resigned as head of the Vienna Philharmonic subscription concerts in September 1898, the concerts committee had unanimously chosen Mahler as his successor. The appointment was not universally welcomed; the anti-Semitic press wondered if, as a non-German, Mahler would be capable of defending German music.La Grange, Vol. 2 p. 117 Attendances rose sharply in Mahler's first season, but members of the orchestra were particularly resentful of his habit of re-scoring acknowledged masterpieces, and of his scheduling of extra rehearsals for works with which they were thoroughly familiar. An attempt by the orchestra to have Richter reinstated for the 1899 season failed, because Richter was not interested. Mahler's position was weakened when, in 1900, he took the orchestra to Paris to play at the Exposition Universelle (1900), Exposition Universelle. The Paris concerts were poorly attended and lost money—Mahler had to borrow the orchestra's fare home from the Rothschild banking family of France, Rothschilds.Carr, pp. 87–94 In April 1901, dogged by a recurrence of ill-health and wearied by more complaints from the orchestra, Mahler relinquished the Philharmonic concerts conductorship. In his three seasons he had performed around 80 different works, which included pieces by relatively unknown composers such as Hermann Goetz, Wilhelm Kienzl and the Italian Lorenzo Perosi.Mature composer
The demands of his twin appointments in Vienna initially absorbed all Mahler's time and energy, but by 1899 he had resumed composing. The remaining Vienna years were to prove particularly fruitful. While working on some of the last of his ''Des Knaben Wunderhorn'' settings he started his Symphony No. 4 (Mahler), Fourth Symphony, which he completed in 1900. By this time he had abandoned the composing hut at Steinbach and had acquired another, at Maiernigg on the shores of the Wörthersee in Carinthia, where he later built a villa. In this new venue Mahler embarked upon what is generally considered as his "middle" or post-''Wunderhorn'' compositional period.Cooke, pp. 71–94 Between 1901 and 1904 he wrote ten settings of poems by Friedrich Rückert, five of which were collected as ''Rückert-Lieder''. The other five formed the song cycle ''Kindertotenlieder'' ("Songs on the Death of Children"). The trilogy of orchestral symphonies, the Symphony No. 5 (Mahler), Fifth, the Symphony No. 6 (Mahler), Sixth and the Symphony No. 7 (Mahler), Seventh were composed at Maiernigg between 1901 and 1905, and the Eighth Symphony written there in 1906, in eight weeks of furious activity. Within this same period Mahler's works began to be performed with increasing frequency. In April 1899 he conducted the Viennese premiere of his Second Symphony; 17 February 1901 saw the first public performance of his early work ''Das klagende Lied'', in a revised two-part form. Later that year, in November, Mahler conducted the premiere of his Fourth Symphony, in Munich, and was on the rostrum for the first complete performance of the Symphony No. 3 (Mahler), Third Symphony, at the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein festival at Krefeld on 9 June 1902. Mahler "first nights" now became increasingly frequent musical events; he conducted the first performances of the Fifth and Sixth Symphonies at Cologne and Essen respectively, in 1904 and 1906. Four of the ''Rückert-Lieder'', and ''Kindertotenlieder'', were introduced in Vienna on 29 January 1905.Marriage, family, tragedy
During his second season in Vienna, Mahler acquired a spacious modern apartment on the Auenbruggergasse and built a summer villa on land he had acquired next to his new composing studio at Maiernigg. In November 1901, he met Alma Mahler, Alma Schindler, the stepdaughter of painter Carl Moll, at a social gathering that included the theatre director Max Burckhard.La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 418–20 Alma was not initially keen to meet Mahler, on account of "the scandals about him and every young woman who aspired to sing in opera." The two engaged in a lively disagreement about a ballet by Alexander von Zemlinsky (Alma was one of Zemlinsky's pupils), but agreed to meet at the Hofoper the following day. This meeting led to a rapid courtship; Mahler and Alma were married at a private ceremony on 9 March 1902. Alma was by then pregnant with her first child, a daughter Maria Anna, who was born on 3 November 1902. A second daughter, Anna Mahler, Anna, was born in 1904. Friends of the couple were surprised by the marriage and dubious of its wisdom. Burckhard called Mahler "that rachitic degenerate Jew," unworthy for such a good-looking girl of good family. On the other hand, Mahler's family considered Alma to be flirtatious, unreliable, and too fond of seeing young men fall for her charms. Mahler was by nature moody and authoritarian—Natalie Bauer-Lechner, his earlier partner, said that living with him was "like being on a boat that is ceaselessly rocked to and fro by the waves." Alma soon became resentful because of Mahler's insistence that there could only be one composer in the family and that she had given up her music studies to accommodate him. "The role of composer, the worker's role, falls to me, yours is that of a loving companion and understanding partner ... I'm asking a very great deal – and I can and may do so because I know what I have to give and will give in exchange." She wrote in her diary: "How hard it is to be so mercilessly deprived of ... things closest to one's heart."Carr, pp. 143–44 Mahler's requirement that their married life be organized around his creative activities imposed strains, and precipitated rebellion on Alma's part; the marriage was nevertheless marked at times by expressions of considerable passion, particularly from Mahler. In the summer of 1907 Mahler, exhausted from the effects of the campaign against him in Vienna, took his family to Maiernigg. Soon after their arrival both daughters fell ill with scarlet fever and diphtheria. Anna recovered, but after a fortnight's struggle Maria died on 12 July.Franklin (8. Europe and New York, 1907–11) Immediately following this devastating loss, Mahler learned that his heart was defective, a diagnosis subsequently confirmed by a Vienna specialist, who ordered a curtailment of all forms of vigorous exercise. The extent to which Mahler's condition disabled him is unclear; Alma wrote of it as a virtual death sentence, though Mahler himself, in a letter written to her on 30 August 1907, said that he would be able to live a normal life, apart from avoiding over-fatigue. The illness was, however, a further depressing factor.Blaukopf, p. 217 Mahler and his family left Maiernigg and spent the rest of the summer at Schluderbach. At the end of the summer the villa at Maiernigg was closed and never revisited.Last years, 1908–11
New York
Mahler made his New York debut at theIllness and death
In spite of the emotional distractions, during the summer of 1910 Mahler worked on his Symphony No. 10 (Mahler), Tenth Symphony, completing the Adagio and drafting four more movements. He and Alma returned to New York in late October 1910, where Mahler threw himself into a busy Philharmonic season of concerts and tours. Around Christmas 1910 he began suffering from a sore throat, which persisted. On 21 February 1911, with a temperature of 40 °C (104 °F), Mahler insisted on fulfilling an engagement at Carnegie Hall, with a program of mainly new Italian music, including the world premiere of Busoni's ''Berceuse élégiaque''. This was Mahler's last concert. After weeks confined to bed he was diagnosed with Infective endocarditis, bacterial endocarditis, a disease to which sufferers from defective heart valves were particularly prone and which could be fatal. Mahler did not give up hope; he talked of resuming the concert season, and took a keen interest when one of Alma's compositions was sung at a public recital by the soprano Frances Alda, on 3 March. On 8 April the Mahler family and a permanent nurse left New York on board USS America (ID-3006), SS ''Amerika'' bound for Europe. They reached Paris ten days later, where Mahler entered a clinic at Neuilly-sur-Seine, Neuilly, but there was no improvement; on 11 May he was taken by train to the Löw sanatorium in Vienna, where he developed pneumonia and slipped into a coma. Hundreds had come to the sanitorium during this brief period to show their admiration for the great composer. After receiving treatments of radium to reduce swelling on his legs and morphine for his general ailments, he died on 18 May. On 22 May 1911 Mahler was buried in the , as he had requested, next to his daughter Maria. His tombstone was inscribed only with his name because "any who come to look for me will know who I was and the rest don't need to know." Alma, on doctors' orders, was absent, but among the mourners at a relatively pomp-free funeral were Arnold Schoenberg (whose wreath described Mahler as "the holy Gustav Mahler"), Bruno Walter, Alfred Roller, the Secessionist painter Gustav Klimt, and representatives from many of the great European opera houses. ''The New York Times'', reporting Mahler's death, called him "one of the towering musical figures of his day," but discussed his symphonies mainly in terms of their duration, incidentally exaggerating the length of the Second Symphony to "two hours and forty minutes." In London, ''The Times'' obituary said his conducting was "more accomplished than that of any man save Richter," and that his symphonies were "undoubtedly interesting in their union of modern orchestral richness with a melodic simplicity that often approached banality," though it was too early to judge their ultimate worth. Alma Mahler survived her husband by more than 50 years, dying in 1964. She married Walter Gropius in 1915, divorced him five years later, and married the writer Franz Werfel in 1929. In 1940 she published a memoir of her years with Mahler, entitled ''Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters''. This account Alma Problem, was criticised by later biographers as incomplete, selective and self-serving, and for providing a distorted picture of Mahler's life. The composer's daughter Anna Mahler became a well-known sculptor; she died in 1988. The International Gustav Mahler Society was founded in 1955 in Vienna, with Bruno Walter as its first president and Alma Mahler as an honorary member. The Society aims to create a complete critical edition of Mahler's works, and to commemorate all aspects of the composer's life.Music
Three creative periods
Deryck Cooke and other analysts have divided Mahler's composing life into three distinct phases: a long "first period," extending from ''Das klagende Lied'' in 1880 to the end of the ''Wunderhorn'' phase in 1901; a "middle period" of more concentrated composition ending with Mahler's departure for New York in 1907; and a brief "late period" of elegiac works before his death in 1911. The main works of the first period are the first four symphonies, the ''Antecedents and influences
Mahler was a "Romantic music, late Romantic," part of an ideal that placed Austro-German classical music on a higher plane than other types, through its supposed possession of particular spiritual and philosophical significance.Franklin (9. Musical style) He was one of the last major composers of a line which includes, among others, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms.Cooke, pp. 10–11 From these antecedents Mahler drew many of the features that were to characterise his music. Thus, from Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven), Beethoven's Ninth Symphony came the idea of using soloists and a choir within the symphonic genre. From Beethoven, Liszt and (from a different musical tradition) Hector Berlioz, Berlioz came the concept of writing music with an inherent narrative or "programme," and of breaking away from the traditional four-movement symphony format. The examples of Wagner and Bruckner encouraged Mahler to extend the scale of his symphonic works well beyond the previously accepted standards, to embrace an entire world of feeling. Early critics maintained that Mahler's adoption of many different styles to suit different expressions of feeling meant that he lacked a style of his own; Cooke on the other hand asserts that Mahler "redeemed any borrowings by imprinting his [own] personality on practically every note" to produce music of "outstanding originality." The music critic Harold Schonberg sees the essence of Mahler's music in the theme of struggle, in the tradition of Beethoven. However, according to Schonberg, Beethoven's struggles were those of "an indomitable and triumphant hero," whereas Mahler's are those of "a psychic weakling, a complaining adolescent who ... enjoyed his misery, wanting the whole world to see how he was suffering." Yet, Schonberg concedes, most of the symphonies contain sections in which Mahler the "deep thinker" is transcended by the splendour of Mahler the musician.Genre
Except for his juvenilia, little of which has survived, Mahler composed only in the media of song and symphony, with a close and complex interrelationship between the two. Donald Mitchell writes that this interaction is the backcloth against which all Mahler's music can be considered. The initial connection between song and symphony occurs with the song-cycle ''Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen'' and the First Symphony. Although this early evidence of cross-fertilisation is important, it is during Mahler's extended ''Wunderhorn'' phase, in which his Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies were written, that the song and symphony genres are consistently intermingled. Themes from the ''Wunderhorn'' song ''Das himmlische Leben'' ("The Heavenly Life"), composed in 1892, became a key element in the Third Symphony completed in 1896; the song itself forms the finale to the Fourth (1900) and its melody is central to the whole composition. For the Second Symphony, written between 1888 and 1894, Mahler worked simultaneously on the ''Wunderhorn'' song, ''Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt'' ("The Sermon of St Anthony of Padua to the Fishes"), and on the Scherzo based on it which became the symphony's third movement. Another ''Wunderhorn'' setting from 1892, ''Urlicht'' ("Primal Light"), is used as the Second Symphony's fourth (penultimate) movement. In Mahler's middle and late periods, the song-symphony relationship is less direct. However, musicologist Donald Mitchell notes specific relationships between the middle period songs and their contemporaneous symphonies—the second ''Kindertotenlieder'' song and the Adagietto from the Symphony No. 5 (Mahler), Fifth Symphony, the last ''Kindertotenlieder'' song and the Symphony No. 6 (Mahler), Sixth Symphony finale. Mahler's last work employing vocal and orchestral forces, ''Das Lied von der Erde'', is subtitled "A Symphony ..."—Mitchell categorises it as a "song ''and'' symphony."Style
The union of song and symphonic form in Mahler's music is, in Cooke's view, organic; "his songs flower naturally into symphonic movements, being already symphonic in cast." To Jean Sibelius, Sibelius, Mahler expressed the belief that "The symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything." True to this belief, Mahler drew material from many sources into his songs and symphonic works: bird calls and cow-bells to evoke nature and the countryside, bugle fanfares, street melodies and country dances to summon the lost world of his childhood. Life's struggles are represented in contrasting moods: the yearning for fulfilment by soaring melodies and chromatic harmony, suffering and despair by discord, distortion and grotesquerie. Amid all this is Mahler's particular hallmark—the constant intrusion of banality and absurdity into moments of deep seriousness, typified in the second movement of the Fifth Symphony when a trivial popular tune suddenly cuts into a solemn funeral march. The trite melody soon changes its character, and in due course re-emerges as one of the majestic Brucknerian chorales which Mahler uses to signify hope and the resolution of conflict. Mahler himself recognised the idiosyncrasies in his work, calling the Scherzo in the Third Symphony "the most farcical and at the same time the most tragic piece that ever existed ... It is as though all nature is making faces and sticking out its tongue." The range of musical moods, Cooke maintains, comes from Mahler's "amazing orchestration" which, in the writer's view, defies analysis—"it speaks for itself."Cooke, p. 14 Franklin lists specific features which are basic to Mahler's style: extremes of volume, the use of off-stage ensembles, unconventional arrangement of orchestral forces, and frequent recourse to popular music and dance forms such as the ländler and the waltz. Musicologist Vladimír Karbusický maintains that the composer's Jewish roots had lasting effects on his creative output; he pinpoints the central part of the third movement of the First Symphony as the most characteristically "Yiddish" music in Mahler's work. The Czech composer-journalist Max Brod has also identified Jewish tunes and rhythms in Mahler's music. A technical device much used by Mahler is that of "progressive tonality," which Deryck Cooke describes as "the procedure of resolving a symphonic conflict in a different key from that in which it was stated," and which is often used "to symbolise the gradual ascendancy of a certain value by progress from one key to another over the whole course of a symphony." This technique was also used by Mahler's Danish contemporary Carl Nielsen. Mahler first employed the device in an early song, ''Erinnerung'' ("Memory"), and thereafter used it freely in his symphonies. For example, the predominant key of the First Symphony is D major; at the beginning of the Finale, the "conflict" movement, the key switches to F minor, and only after a lengthy battle gets back to D, near the end. The Second Symphony begins in C minor and ends in E flat. The movements of the Fifth Symphony progress successively from C-sharp minor to A minor, then D major, F major and finally to D major. The Sixth Symphony, unusually for Mahler, begins and ends in the same key, A minor, signifying that in this case the conflict is unresolved.Reception
Early responses, 1889–1911
Mahler's friend Guido Adler calculated that at the time of the composer's death in 1911 there had been more than 260 performances of the symphonies in Europe, Russia and America, the Fourth Symphony with 61 performances given most frequently (Adler did not enumerate performances of the songs). In his lifetime, Mahler's works and their performances attracted wide interest, but rarely unqualified approval; for years after its 1889 premiere critics and public struggled to understand the First Symphony, described by one critic after an 1898 Dresden performance as "the dullest [symphonic] work the new epoch has produced." The Second Symphony was received more positively, one critic calling it "the most masterly work of its kind since Mendelssohn." Such generous praise was rare, particularly after Mahler's accession to the Vienna Hofoper directorship. His many enemies in the city used the anti-Semitic and conservative press to denigrate almost every performance of a Mahler work; thus the Third Symphony, a success in Krefeld in 1902, was treated in Vienna with critical scorn: "Anyone who has committed such a deed deserves a couple of years in prison." A mix of enthusiasm, consternation and critical contempt became the normal response to new Mahler symphonies, although the songs were better received. After his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies failed to gain general public approval, Mahler was convinced that his Sixth would finally succeed. However, its reception was dominated by satirical comments on Mahler's unconventional percussion effects—the use of a wooden mallet, birch rods and a huge square bass drum. Viennese critic Heinrich Reinhardt (composer), Heinrich Reinhardt dismissed the symphony as "Brass, lots of brass, incredibly much brass! Even more brass, nothing but brass!" The one unalloyed performance triumph within Mahler's lifetime was the premiere of the Eighth Symphony in Munich, on 12 September 1910, advertised by its promoters as the "Symphony of a Thousand." At its conclusion, applause and celebrations reportedly lasted for half an hour.Relative neglect, 1911–50
Performances of Mahler's works became less frequent after his death. In the Netherlands the advocacy of Willem Mengelberg ensured that Mahler remained popular there, and Mengelberg's engagement with the New York Philharmonic from 1922 to 1928 brought Mahler regularly to American audiences.Carr, pp. 221–24 However, much American critical reaction in the 1920s was negative, despite a spirited effort by the young composer Aaron Copland to present Mahler as a progressive, 30 years ahead of his time and infinitely more inventive than Richard Strauss.Copland, pp. 149–50 Earlier, in 1916, Leopold Stokowski had given the American premieres of the Eighth Symphony and ''Das Lied von der Erde'' in Philadelphia. The Eighth was a sensationally successful performance that was immediately taken to New York where it scored a further triumph.Ander Smith, p. 91 An early proponent of Mahler's work in Britain was Adrian Boult, who as conductor of the City of Birmingham Orchestra performed the Fourth Symphony in 1926 and ''Das Lied von der Erde'' in 1930. The Hallé Orchestra brought ''Das Lied'' and the Ninth Symphony to Manchester in 1931; Sir Henry Wood staged the Eighth in London in 1930, and again in 1938 when the youngModern revival
According to American composer David Schiff, his compatriot Leonard Bernstein used to imply that he had single-handedly rescued Mahler from oblivion in 1960, after 50 years of neglect. Schiff points out that such neglect was only relative—far less than the (incomplete) disregard of Johann Sebastian Bach, Bach in the years after his death. Although Bernstein gave the Mahler revival further impetus, it was well under way before 1960, sustained by conductors such as Stokowski, Dimitri Mitropoulos and John Barbirolli, and by the long-time Mahler advocate Aaron Copland. Mahler himself predicted his place in history, once commenting: "Would that I could perform my symphonies for the first time 50 years after my death!" Deryck Cooke argues that Mahler's popularity escalated when a new, postwar generation of music-lovers arose, untainted by "the dated polemics of anti-romanticism" which had affected Mahler's reputation in the inter-war years. In this more liberated age, enthusiasm for Mahler expanded even into places—Spain, France, Italy—which had long been resistant to him. Robert Carr's simpler explanation for the 1950s Mahler revival is that "it was the LP record, long-playing record [in the early 1950s] rather than the ''Zeitgeist'' which made a comprehensive breakthrough possible. Mahler's work became accessible and repeatable in the home." In the years following his centenary in 1960, Mahler rapidly became one of the most performed and most recorded of all composers, and has largely remained thus. In Britain and elsewhere, Carr notes, the extent of Mahler performances and recordings has replaced a relative famine with a glut, bringing problems of over-familiarity. Harold Schonberg comments that "it is hard to think of a composer who arouses equal loyalty," adding that "a response of anything short of rapture to the Mahler symphonies will bring [to the critic] long letters of furious denunciation." In a letter to Alma dated 16 February 1902, Mahler wrote, with reference to Richard Strauss: "My day will come when his is ended. If only I might live to see it, with you at my side!" Carr observes that Mahler could conceivably have lived to see "his day"; his near-contemporary Richard Strauss survived until 1949, while Sibelius, just five years younger than Mahler, lived until 1957.Later influence
Donald Mitchell writes that Mahler's influence on succeeding generations of composers is "a complete subject in itself."Mitchell, Vol. II pp. 373–74 Mahler's first disciples includedMemorials and museums
In Hamburg, the Gustav Mahler Museum is dedicated to Gustav Mahler's life and work. It is situated in the Composers Quarter Hamburg, Composers Quarter. In Altschluderbach, near Toblach in South Tyrol, Italy, there remains a little museum and memorial in the former composer's hut of Mahler. It is situated in the animal park next to the Gustav Mahler Stube. The ''Stube'' formerly had a museum on the first floor. There, Mahler and his wife Alma Werfel, Alma resided from 1907 to 1910.Opus KlassiekReferences
Notes
Citations
Sources
* Anon. (1908). * Anon. (1909). * Anon. (1911). * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *Further reading
* * *External links