This is a featured article. Click here for more information.

Gustav Mahler
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Mahler" redirects here. For the 1974 film, see Mahler (film). For other people
with the surname, see Mahler (surname). For the racehorse, see Mahler (horse).
Middle-aged man, seated, facing towards the left but head turned towards the right.
He has a high forehead, rimless glasses and is wearing a dark, crumpled suit
Gustav Mahler, photographed in 1907 at the end of his period as director of the
Vienna Hofoper
Signature of Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler (German: ['ma?l?]; 7 July 1860, Kali�te, Bohemia, now Czech Republic
� 18 May 1911, Vienna, Austria-Hungary) was an Austrian late-Romantic composer, and
one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge
between the 19th century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early
20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established
beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of
relative neglect which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during
the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered and championed by a new
generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed
and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century.

Born in Bohemia (then part of Austrian Empire) as a German-speaking Jew of humble

circumstances, Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating
from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of
rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in
1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in
Vienna, Mahler�who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post�experienced
regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his
innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured
his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an
interpreter of the stage works of Wagner, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. Late in his life
he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York
Philharmonic.

Mahler's �uvre is relatively limited; for much of his life composing was
necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside
from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a
student in Vienna, Mahler's works are generally designed for large orchestral
forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists. These works were frequently
controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and
popular approval; exceptions included his Second Symphony, Third Symphony, and the
triumphant premiere of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Some of Mahler's immediate
musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably
Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin
Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by
Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Institute was established in 1955 to honour
the composer's life and work.

Contents [hide]
1 Biography
1.1 Early life
1.1.1 Family background
1.1.2 Childhood
1.1.3 Student days
1.2 Early conducting career 1880�88
1.2.1 First appointments
1.2.2 Prague and Leipzig
1.2.3 Apprentice composer
1.3 Budapest and Hamburg, 1888�97
1.3.1 Royal Opera, Budapest
1.3.2 Stadttheater Hamburg
1.4 Vienna, 1897�1907
1.4.1 Hofoper director
1.4.2 Philharmonic concerts
1.4.3 Mature composer
1.4.4 Marriage, family, tragedy
1.5 Last years, 1908�11
1.5.1 New York
1.5.2 Illness and death
2 Music
2.1 Three creative periods
2.2 Antecedents and influences
2.3 Genre
2.4 Style
2.5 Reception
2.5.1 Early responses, 1889�1911
2.5.2 Relative neglect, 1911�50
2.5.3 Modern revival
2.6 Later influence
3 List of compositions
4 Notes
5 References
5.1 Citations
5.2 Sources
6 External links
Biography[edit]
Early life[edit]
Family background[edit]
View of a street of old buildings, the largest of which is a tall clock tower with
an archway
Jihlava (German: Iglau) where Mahler grew up
The Mahler family came from eastern Bohemia and were of humble circumstances; the
composer's grandmother had been a street pedlar.[1] Bohemia was then part of the
Austrian Empire; the Mahler family belonged to a German-speaking minority among
Bohemians, and was also Jewish. From this background the future composer developed
early on a permanent sense of exile, "always an intruder, never welcomed."[2]

Bernhard Mahler, the pedlar's son and the composer's father, elevated himself to
the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie by becoming a coachman and later an innkeeper.
[3] He bought a modest house in the village of Kalischt (Kali�te), halfway between
Prague in Bohemia and Brno in Moravia, in the geographic center of today's Czech
Republic. Bernhard's wife, Marie (Herrmann),[4] gave birth to the first of the
couple's 14 children, a son Isidor, who died in infancy. Two years later, on 7 July
1860, their second son, Gustav, was born.[5]

Childhood[edit]
In October 1860, Bernhard Mahler moved with his wife and infant son, Gustav, to the
town of Iglau (Jihlava),[5] 25 km (16 mi) to the southeast (Moravia), where he
built up a distillery and tavern business.[6] The family grew rapidly, but of the
12 children (only 3 daughters) born to the family in Iglau only six survived
infancy.[5] Iglau was then a thriving commercial town of 20,000 people where Gustav
was introduced to music through street songs, dance tunes, folk melodies, and the
trumpet calls and marches of the local military band.[7] All of these elements
would later contribute to his mature musical vocabulary.[3]

When he was four years old, Gustav discovered his grandparents' piano and took to
it immediately.[8] 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.[3][6] Although Gustav loved making music, his school reports
from the Iglau Gymnasium portrayed him as absent-minded and unreliable in academic
work.[8] 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 Iglau.[6] 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 the libretto of this work has survived.
[8]

Student days[edit]
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.[9] The young Mahler was
auditioned by the renowned pianist Julius Epstein, and accepted for 1875�76.[6] 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 and Franz Krenn.[10][11] Few of Mahler's
student compositions have survived; most were abandoned when he became dissatisfied
with them. He destroyed a symphonic movement prepared for an end-of-term
competition, after its scornful rejection by the autocratic director Joseph
Hellmesberger on the grounds of copying errors.[12] Mahler may have gained his
first conducting experience with the Conservatory's student orchestra, in
rehearsals and performances, although it appears that his main role in this
orchestra was as a percussionist.[13]

Man wearing a cloak and an outsized bow tie, facing to the right with a severe
expression
Mahler was influenced by Richard Wagner during his student days, and later became a
leading interpreter of Wagner's operas.
Among Mahler's fellow students at the Conservatory was the future song composer
Hugo Wolf, with whom he formed a close friendship. Wolf was unable to submit to the
strict disciplines of the Conservatory and was expelled. Mahler, while sometimes
rebellious, avoided the same fate only by writing a penitent letter to
Hellmesberger.[12] He attended occasional lectures by Anton Bruckner and, though
never formally his pupil, was influenced by him. On 16 December 1877, he attended
the disastrous premiere of Bruckner's Third Symphony, at which the composer was
shouted down, and most of the audience walked out. Mahler and other sympathetic
students later prepared a piano version of the symphony, which they presented to
Bruckner.[13] Along with many music students of his generation, Mahler fell under
the spell of Richard Wagner, though his chief interest was the sound of the music
rather than the staging. It is not known whether he saw any of Wagner's operas
during his student years.[14]

Mahler left the Conservatory in 1878 with a diploma but without the silver medal
given for outstanding achievement.[15] He then enrolled in the University of Vienna
(he had, at his father's insistence, sat and with difficulty passed the "matura,"
or entrance examination) and followed courses which reflected his developing
interests in literature and philosophy.[6] After leaving the University in 1879,
Mahler made some money as a piano teacher, continued to compose, and in 1880
finished a dramatic cantata, Das klagende Lied ("The Song of Lamentation"). This,
his first substantial composition, shows traces of Wagnerian and Brucknerian
influences, yet includes many musical elements which musicologist Deryck Cooke
describes as "pure Mahler."[16] Its first performance was delayed until 1901, when
it was presented in a revised, shortened form.[17]

Mahler developed interests in German philosophy, and was introduced by his friend
Siegfried Lipiner to the works of Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Gustav
Fechner and Hermann Lotze. These thinkers continued to influence Mahler and his
music long after his student days were over. Mahler's biographer Jonathan Carr says
that the composer's head was "not only full of the sound of Bohemian bands, trumpet
calls and marches, Bruckner chorales and Schubert sonatas. It was also throbbing
with the problems of philosophy and metaphysics he had thrashed out, above all,
with Lipiner."[18]

Early conducting career 1880�88[edit]

First appointments[edit]
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 of Linz.[15] The repertory
was exclusively operetta; it was, in Carr's words "a dismal little job," which
Mahler accepted only after Julius Epstein told him he would soon work his way up.
[18] In 1881, he was engaged for six months (September to April) at the
Landestheater in Laibach (now Ljubljana, in Slovenia), where the small but
resourceful company was prepared to attempt more ambitious works. Here, Mahler
conducted his first full-scale opera, Verdi's Il trovatore, one of 10 operas and a
number of operattas that he presented during his time in Laibach.[19] After
completing this engagement, Mahler returned to Vienna and worked part-time as
chorus-master at the Vienna Carltheater.[20]

From the beginning of January 1883, Mahler became conductor at the Royal Municipal
Theatre in Olm�tz (now Olomouc) in Moravia.[19] He later wrote: "From the moment I
crossed the threshold of the Olm�tz theatre I felt like one awaiting the wrath of
God."[21] Despite poor relations with the orchestra, Mahler brought nine (13 times)
operas to the theatre, including the new Bizet's Carmen, and won over the press
that had initially been sceptical to him.[21] After a week's trial at the Royal
Theatre in the Hessian town of Kassel, Mahler became the theatre's "Musical and
Choral Director" from August 1883.[20] The title concealed the reality that Mahler
was subordinate to the theatre's Kapellmeister, Wilhelm Treiber, who disliked him
(and vice-versa) and set out to make his life miserable.[22] Despite the unpleasant
atmosphere, Mahler had moments of success at Kassel. He directed a performance of
his favourite opera, Weber's Der Freisch�tz,[23] and 25 other operas. on 23 June
1884, he conducted his own incidental music to Joseph Victor von Scheffel's play
Der Trompeter von S�ckingen ("The Trumpeter of S�ckingen"), the first professional
public performance of a Mahler work.[n 1] An ardent, but ultimately unfulfilled,
love affair with soprano Johanna Richter led Mahler to write a series of love poems
which became the text of his song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen ("Songs of
a Wayfarer").[22]

In January 1884, the distinguished conductor Hans von B�low brought the Meiningen
Court Orchestra to Kassel and gave two concerts. Hoping to escape from his job in
the theatre, Mahler unsuccessfully sought a post as B�low's permanent assistant.
However, in the following year his efforts to find new employment resulted in a
six-year contract with the prestigious Leipzig Opera, to begin in August 1886.
Unwilling to remain in Kassel for another year, Mahler resigned on 22 June 1885,
and applied for, and through good fortune was offered a standby appointment as
conductor at the Royal Deutsches Landestheater in Prague by the theatre's newly
appointed director, the famous Angelo Neumann.[24]

Prague and Leipzig[edit]

Light-coloured two-storey stone building with an ornamental ledge below the roof.
There are rows of five windows at ground level and the floor above, with a balcony
at the middle upper window.
Gustav Mahler's home in Leipzig, where he composed his Symphony No. 1
In Prague, the emergence of Czech National Revival had increased the popularity and
importance of the new Czech National Theatre, and had led to a downturn in the
Royal Landstheater fortunes. Mahler's task was to help arrest this decline by
offering high-quality productions of German opera.[25] He enjoyed early success
presenting works by Mozart and Wagner, composers with whom he would be particularly
associated for the rest of his career,[23] but his individualistic and increasingly
autocratic conducting style led to friction, and a falling out with his more
experienced fellow-conductor, Ludwig Slansky.[25] 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 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
almost began 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 G�tterd�mmerung), 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.[25][26]

In Leipzig, Mahler befriended Captain Carl von Weber (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.[27] 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 famous Russian composer Tchaikovsky was present at
the 3rd performance on 29 January.).[25] The work was well-received; its success
did much to raise Mahler's public profile, and brought him financial rewards.[27]
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 for example by English composer
Ethel Smyth, but it is very unlikely), 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.[25][n 2]

On 17 May 1888, Mahler suddenly resigned his Leipzig position after a dispute with
the Stadttheater's chief stage manager, Albert Goldberg.[29] 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
Peter Cornelius's Der Barbier von Bagdad. 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.[30]

Apprentice composer[edit]
Young dark-haired man wearing a loose necktie with a white shirt and a dark jacket
Gustav Mahler at the time of his First Symphony
In the early years of Mahler's conducting career, composing was a spare time
activity. Between his Laibach and Olm�tz appointments he worked on settings of
verses by Richard Leander and Tirso de Molina, later collected as Volume I of
Lieder und Ges�nge ("Songs and Airs").[31] Mahler's first orchestral song cycle,
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, composed at Kassel, was based on his own verses,
although the first poem, "Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht" ("When my love becomes a
bride") closely follows the text of a Wunderhorn poem.[28] The melodies for the
second and fourth songs of the cycle were incorporated into the First Symphony,
which Mahler finished in 1888, at the height of his relationship with Marion von
Weber. The intensity of Mahler's feelings are reflected in the music, which
originally was written as a five-movement symphonic poem with a descriptive
programme. One of these movements, the "Blumine," later discarded, was based on a
passage from his earlier work Der Trompeter von S�ckingen.[25][27] After completing
the symphony, Mahler composed a 20-minute symphonic poem, Totenfeier "Funeral
Rites", which later became the first movement of his Second Symphony.[32]

There has been frequent speculation about lost or destroyed works from Mahler's
early years.[33] The Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg believed that the First
Symphony was too mature to be a first symphonic work, and must have had
predecessors. In 1938, Mengelberg revealed the existence of the so-called "Dresden
archive," a series of manuscripts in the possession of the widowed Marion von
Weber.[34] According to the Mahler historian Donald Mitchell, it was highly likely
that important Mahler manuscripts of early symphonic works had been held in
Dresden;[34] this archive, if it existed, was almost certainly destroyed in the
bombing of Dresden in 1945.[27]

Budapest and Hamburg, 1888�97[edit]

Royal Opera, Budapest[edit]
On arriving in Budapest in October 1888, Mahler encountered a cultural conflict
between conservative Hungarian nationalists who favoured a policy of Magyarisation,
and progressives who wanted to maintain and develop the country's Austro-German
cultural traditions. In the opera house a dominant conservative caucus, led by the
music director S�ndor Erkel, had maintained a limited repertory of historical and
folklore opera. By the time that Mahler began his duties, the progressive camp had
gained ascendancy following the appointment of the liberal-minded Ferenc von
Beniczky as intendant.[35] Aware of the delicate situation, Mahler moved
cautiously; he delayed his first appearance on the conductor's stand until January
1889, when he conducted Hungarian-language performances of Das Rheingold and Die
Walk�re to initial public acclaim.[36] However, his early successes faded when
plans to stage the remainder of the Ring cycle and other German operas were
frustrated by a renascent conservative faction which favoured a more traditional
"Hungarian" programme.[36] In search of non-German operas to extend the repertory,
Mahler visited in spring 1890 Italy where among the works he discovered was Pietro
Mascagni's recent sensation Cavalleria rusticana (Budapest premiere on 26 December
1890).[35]

On 18 February 1889, Bernhard Mahler died; this was followed later in the year by
the deaths both of Mahler's sister Leopoldine (27 September) and his mother (11
October).[35] From October 1889 Mahler took charge of his four younger brothers and
sisters (Alois, Otto, Justine, and Emma). They were installed in a rented flat in
Vienna. Mahler himself suffered poor health, with attacks of haemorrhoids and
migraine and a recurrent septic throat.[37] Shortly after these family and health
setbacks the premiere of the First Symphony, in Budapest on 20 November 1889, was a
disappointment. The critic August Beer's lengthy newspaper review indicates that
enthusiasm after the early movements degenerated into "audible opposition" after
the Finale.[38] Mahler was particularly distressed by the negative comments from
his Vienna Conservatory contemporary, Viktor von Herzfeld, who had remarked that
Mahler, like many conductors before him, had proved not to be a composer.[35][39]

In 1891, Hungary's move to the political right was reflected in the opera house
when Beniczky on 1 February was replaced as intendant by Count G�za Zichy, a
conservative aristocrat determined to assume artistic control over Mahler's head.
[35] However, Mahler had foreseen that and had secretly been negotiating with
Bernhard Pollini, the director of the Stadttheater Hamburg since summer and autumn
of 1890, and a contract was finally signed in secrecy on 15 January 1891. Mahler
more or less "forced" himself to be sacked from his Budapest post, and he succeeded
on 14 March 1891. By his departure he received a large sum of indemnity.[40] One of
his final Budapest triumph was a performance of Don Giovanni (16. Sept. 1890) which
won him praise from Brahms, who was present at the performances on 16 December
1890.[41] During his Budapest years Mahler's compositional output had been limited
to a few songs from the Wunderhorn song settings that became Volumes II and III of
Lieder und Ges�nge, and amendments to the First Symphony.[36]

Stadttheater Hamburg[edit]
A small lakeside building showing a single window in a white wall below a sloping
red roof
The Komponierh�uschen (composition hut) in Steinbach am Attersee
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 Tannh�user and Siegfried.[42] Another triumph was the German
premiere of Tchaikovsky's 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."[43] Mahler's demanding rehearsal
schedules led to predictable resentment from the singers and orchestra with whom,
according to music writer Peter Franklin, the conductor "inspired hatred and
respect in almost equal measure."[42] He found support, however, from Hans von
B�low, who was in Hamburg as director of the city's subscription concerts. B�low,
who had spurned Mahler's approaches in Kassel, had come to admire the younger man's
conducting style, and on B�low's death in 1894 Mahler took over the direction of
the concerts.[36]

A balding man with a pointed beard, in formal dress clothes and holding a cigar in
his left hand
Hans von B�low, an admirer of Mahler's conducting
In the summer of 1892 Mahler took the Hamburg singers to London to participate in a
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."[44] However, Mahler refused further
such invitations as he was anxious to reserve his summers for composing.[36] In
1893 he acquired a retreat at Steinbach, on the banks of 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
Third Symphonies there.[42]

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".[42]
[45] 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."[46] That same year Mahler's
private life had been disrupted by the suicide of his younger brother Otto[47] 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,
amongst other he introduced: Verdi's Falstaff, Humperdinck's H�nsel und Gretel, and
works by Smetana.[36] However, he was forced to resign his post with the
subscription concerts after poor financial returns and an ill-received
interpretation of his re-scored Beethoven's Ninth Symphony.[42] 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.[48] He overcame the bar that existed
against the appointment of a Jew to this post by what may have been a pragmatic
conversion to Roman Catholicism in February 1897.[49] Despite this event, Mahler
has been described as a lifelong agnostic.[50]

Vienna, 1897�1907[edit]
Hofoper director[edit]
Further information: Repertory of the Vienna Court Opera under Gustav Mahler
An imposing, heavily ornamented building in a city location, with numerous
horsedrawn vehicles and pedestrians passing. There are visible tramlines in the
street.
The Vienna Hofoper (now Staatsoper), pictured in 1898 during Mahler's conductorship
As he waited for the 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, an internationally renowned interpreter of
Wagner and the conductor of the original Ring cycle at Bayreuth in 1876.[51]
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.[52]

Vienna, the imperial 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."[53] 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 and Mozart's Die
Zauberfl�te.[54] Shortly after the Zauberfl�te 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.[55] 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."[56]

A series of line drawings of a man in exaggerated poses, holding a conductor's

baton
Mahler's conducting style, 1901, caricatured in the humor magazine Fliegende
Bl�tter
On 8 October Mahler was formally appointed to succeed Jahn as the Hofoper's
director.[57][n 3] His first production in his new office was Smetana's Czech
nationalist 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."[58] 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."[59] 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."[60] During Mahler's tenure a total of 33 new
operas were introduced to the Hofoper; a further 55 were new or totally revamped
productions.[61] However, a proposal to stage Richard Strauss's controversial opera
Salome in 1905 was rejected by the Viennese censors.[62]

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.
[63][n 4] The collaboration between Mahler and Roller created more than 20
celebrated productions of, among other operas, Beethoven's Fidelio, Gluck's
Iphig�nie en Aulide and Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro.[61][65] In the Figaro
production, Mahler offended some purists by adding and composing a short recitative
scene to Act III.[66]

A dark plaque with white lettering in which the composer's name is shown in extra
large characters on the left, the main message in smaller characters on the right
Plaque on Mahler's Vienna apartment, 2 Auenbruggerstrasse. "Gustav Mahler lived and
composed in this house from 1898 to 1909"
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.
[67] 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.
[68] 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.[69] 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.[65] In May 1907 he began discussions with Heinrich
Conried, director of the New York Metropolitan Opera, and on 21 June signed a
contract, on very favourable terms, for four seasons' conducting in New York.[69]
At the end of the summer he submitted his resignation to the Hofoper, and on 15
October 1907 conducted Fidelio, his 645th and final performance there. During his
ten years in Vienna, Mahler had brought new life to the opera house and cleared its
debts,[70] but had won few friends�it was said that he treated his musicians in the
way a lion tamer treated his animals.[71] His departing message to the company,
which he pinned to a notice board, was later torn down and scattered over the
floor.[72] After conducting the Hofoper orchestra in a farewell concert performance
of his Second Symphony on 24 November, Mahler left Vienna for New York in early
December.[73][74]

Philharmonic concerts[edit]

Silhouette by Otto B�hler

When Richter resigned as head of the Vienna Philharmonic subscription concerts in
September 1898,[n 5] the concerts committee had unanimously chosen Mahler as his
successor.[76] The appointment was not universally welcomed; the anti-Semitic press
wondered if, as a non-German, Mahler would be capable of defending German music.
[77] 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.[54] 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. The Paris concerts were poorly attended and lost
money�Mahler had to borrow the orchestra's fare home from the Rothschilds.[78][79]
In April 1901, dogged by a recurrence of ill-health and wearied by more complaints
from the orchestra, Mahler relinquished the Philharmonic concerts conductorship.
[65] 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.[78]

Mature composer[edit]
A small grey hut, surrounded by woods, with an open door to which is affixed a
picture of the composer
Mahler's second composing hut, at Maiernigg (near Klagenfurt), on the shores of the
W�rthersee in Carinthia
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 Fourth Symphony, which he completed in 1900.[80]
By this time he had abandoned the composing hut at Steinbach and had acquired
another, at Maiernigg on the shores of the W�rthersee in Carinthia, where he later
built a villa.[81] In this new venue Mahler embarked upon what is generally
considered as his "middle" or post-Wunderhorn compositional period.[82] Between
1901 and 1904 he wrote ten settings of poems by Friedrich R�ckert, five of which
were collected as R�ckert-Lieder.[n 6] The other five formed the song cycle
Kindertotenlieder ("Songs on the Death of Children"). The trilogy of orchestral
symphonies, the Fifth, the Sixth and the Seventh were composed at Maiernigg between
1901 and 1905, and the Eighth Symphony written there in 1906, in eight weeks of
furious activity.[65][84]

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 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 R�ckert-Lieder, and Kindertotenlieder, were introduced in Vienna on 29
January 1905.[54][65]

Marriage, family, tragedy[edit]

Head and shoulders photo portrait of an attractive dark-haired young woman looking
left with a thoughtful expression
Alma Schindler, who married Mahler in 1902 (from 1902, possibly earlier)
During his second season in Vienna, Mahler acquired a spacious modern apartment on
the Auenbruggerstrasse and built a summer villa on land he had acquired next to his
new composing studio at Maiernigg.[54] In November 1901, he met Alma Schindler, the
stepdaughter of painter Carl Moll, at a social gathering that included the theatre
director Max Burckhard.[85] 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."[86]
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.[85] 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,[87] a daughter Maria Anna, who was born on 3 November 1902. A second
daughter, Anna, was born in 1904.[65]

1902 portrait by Emil Orlik

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.[88] On the other hand, Mahler's family considered Alma
to be flirtatious, unreliable, and too fond of seeing young men fall for her
charms.[89] 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."[90] 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. She wrote in her diary: "How
hard it is to be so mercilessly deprived of ... things closest to one's heart."[91]
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.[n 7]

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.[94] 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.[95] The illness was, however, a
further depressing factor; at the end of the summer the villa at Maiernigg was
closed, and never revisited.[96]

Last years, 1908�11[edit]

New York[edit]
A tall, imposing stone building in an almost empty city street with tramcar
passing. A tower in the background is the only other highrise building.
Metropolitan Opera House (39th Street), New York, at around the time of Mahler's
conductorship, 1908�09
Mahler made his New York debut at the Metropolitan Opera on 1 January 1908, when he
conducted Wagner's Tristan und Isolde in the cut version still standard in New
York, though long since superseded in Vienna.[94] In a busy first season Mahler's
performances were widely praised, especially his Fidelio on 20 March 1908, in which
he insisted on using replicas being made of Roller's Vienna sets.[97] On his return
to Austria for the summer of 1908, Mahler established himself in the third and last
of his composing studios, in the pine forests close to Toblach in Tyrol. Here,
using a text by Hans Bethge based on ancient Chinese poems, he composed Das Lied
von der Erde ("The Song of the Earth").[94] Despite the symphonic nature of the
work, Mahler refused to number it, hoping thereby to escape the "curse of the Ninth
Symphony" that he believed had affected fellow-composers Beethoven, Schubert and
Bruckner.[73] On 19 September 1908 the premiere of the Seventh Symphony, in Prague,
was deemed by Alma Mahler a critical rather than a popular success.[98]

For its 1908�09 season the Metropolitan management brought in the Italian conductor
Arturo Toscanini to share duties with Mahler, who made only 19 appearances in the
entire season. One of these was a much-praised performance of Smetana's The
Bartered Bride on 19 February 1909.[99] In the early part of the season Mahler
conducted three concerts with the New York Symphony Orchestra.[100] This renewed
experience of orchestral conducting inspired him to resign his position with the
opera house and accept the conductorship of the re-formed New York Philharmonic. He
continued to make occasional guest appearances at the Met, his last performance
being Tchaikovsky's The Queen of Spades on 5 March 1910.[101]

Back in Europe for the summer of 1909, Mahler worked on his Ninth Symphony and made
a conducting tour of the Netherlands.[94] The 1909�10 New York Philharmonic season
was long and taxing; Mahler rehearsed and conducted 46 concerts, but his programmes
were often too demanding for popular tastes. His own First Symphony, given its
American debut on 16 December 1909, was one of the pieces that failed with critics
and public, and the season ended with heavy financial losses.[102] The highlight of
Mahler's 1910 summer was the first performance of the Eighth Symphony at Munich on
12 September, the last of his works to be premiered in his lifetime. The occasion
was a triumph�"easily Mahler's biggest lifetime success," according to biographer
Robert Carr[103]�but it was overshadowed by the composer's discovery, before the
event, that Alma had begun an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius.
Greatly distressed, Mahler sought advice from Sigmund Freud, and appeared to gain
some comfort from his meeting with the psychoanalyst. One of Freud's observations
was that much damage had been done by Mahler's insisting that Alma give up her
composing. Mahler accepted this, and started to positively encourage her to write
music, even editing, orchestrating and promoting some of her works. Alma agreed to
remain with Mahler, although the relationship with Gropius continued
surreptitiously. In a gesture of love, Mahler dedicated his Eighth Symphony to her.
[65][94]

Illness and death[edit]

A tall stone column bearing the words "Gustav Mahler", surrounded by a low green
hedge, with a floral bloom in the foreground
Mahler's grave in the Grinzing cemetery, Vienna
In spite of the emotional distractions, during the summer of 1910 Mahler worked on
his Tenth Symphony, completing the Adagio and drafting four more movements.[104]
[105] He and Alma returned to New York in late October 1910,[106] 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 �l�giaque. This was Mahler's last
concert.[107][108][109] After weeks confined to bed he was diagnosed with bacterial
endocarditis, a disease to which sufferers from defective heart valves were
particularly prone and 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.
[110] On 8 April the Mahler family and a permanent nurse left New York on board SS
Amerika bound for Europe. They reached Paris ten days later, where Mahler entered a
clinic at Neuilly, but there was no improvement; on 11 May he was taken by train to
the L�w sanatorium in Vienna, where he developed pneumonia and entered a coma.[111]
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.[112]

On 22 May 1911 Mahler was buried in the Grinzing cemetery (de), as he had
requested, under a tombstone 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."[113] 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.[114] 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."[115] 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.[116]

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.[117] In 1940 she published a memoir of her years with Mahler,
entitled Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters. This account was criticised by later
biographers as incomplete, selective and self-serving, and for providing a
distorted picture of Mahler's life.[118][n 8] The composer's daughter Anna Mahler
became a well-known sculptor; she died in 1988.[120] 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.[121]
Music[edit]
For a complete listing of Mahler's works, see List of compositions by Gustav
Mahler.
Three creative periods[edit]
Three staves of printed music showing the vocal line and the piano accompaniment
of the first few bars
The opening of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, published 1897 in a version for
voice and piano
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.[122]

The main works of the first period are the first four symphonies, the Lieder eines
fahrenden Gesellen song cycle and various song collections in which the Wunderhorn
songs predominate.[31] In this period songs and symphonies are closely related and
the symphonic works are programmatic. Mahler initially gave the first three
symphonies full descriptive programmes, all of which he later repudiated.[123] He
devised, but did not publish, titles for each of the movements for the Fourth
Symphony; from these titles the German music critic Paul Bekker conjectured a
programme in which Death appears in the Scherzo "in the friendly, legendary guise
of the fiddler tempting his flock to follow him out of this world."[124]

The middle period comprises a triptych of purely instrumental symphonies (the

Fifth, Sixth and Seventh), the "R�ckert" songs and the "Kindertotenlieder," two
final Wunderhorn settings and, in some reckonings, Mahler's last great affirmative
statement, the choral Eighth Symphony.[82] Cooke believes that the Eighth stands on
its own, between the middle and final periods.[125] Mahler had by now abandoned all
explicit programmes and descriptive titles; he wanted to write "absolute" music
that spoke for itself.[126] Cooke refers to "a new granite-like hardness of
orchestration" in the middle-period symphonies,[82] while the songs have lost most
of their folk character, and cease to fertilise the symphonies as explicitly as
before.[127]

The three works of the brief final period�"Das Lied von der Erde," the Ninth and
(incomplete) Tenth Symphonies�are expressions of personal experience, as Mahler
faced death.[128] Each of the pieces ends quietly, signifying that aspiration has
now given way to resignation.[129] Cooke considers these works to be a loving
(rather than a bitter) farewell to life;[130] the composer Alban Berg called the
Ninth "the most marvellous thing that Mahler ever wrote."[128] None of these final
works were performed in Mahler's lifetime.[131]

Antecedents and influences[edit]

Mahler was a "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.[132] He was one of the last
major composers of a line which includes, among others, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt,
Wagner, Bruckner and Brahms.[22][133] From these antecedents Mahler drew many of
the features that were to characterise his music. Thus, from 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) 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.[132][133]

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."[134] 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."[135] Yet, Schonberg concedes, most of the symphonies contain sections
in which Mahler the "deep thinker" is transcended by the splendour of Mahler the
musician.[129]

Genre[edit]
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.[n 9] Donald Mitchell writes that this interaction is the backcloth against
which all Mahler's music can be considered.[136] 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.[137] 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.[138] Another Wunderhorn setting from 1892, Urlicht ("Primal Light"), is
used as the Second Symphony's fourth (penultimate) movement.[139]

In Mahler's middle and late periods, the song-symphony relationship is less direct.
[127] 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 Fifth Symphony, the last
Kindertotenlieder song and the Sixth Symphony finale.[140][141] 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."[127]

Style[edit]
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."[142] To Sibelius, Mahler expressed the belief that "The
symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything."[143] 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.[144] 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."[145]
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."[146] 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 l�ndler and the waltz.[132] Musicologist Vladim�r Karbusick� 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.[147] The Czech composer-
journalist Max Brod has also identified Jewish tunes and rhythms in Mahler's music.
[148]

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,"[146] 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."[149] 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.[146] 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.[126] The Sixth Symphony, unusually for Mahler, begins and ends in the same
key, A minor, signifying that in this case the conflict is unresolved.[150]

Reception[edit]
Early responses, 1889�1911[edit]
Caricature of Mahler surrounded by comical musical instruments, including a motor
horn which he is operating by the use of his feet
A satirical comment on Mahler's Sixth Symphony. The caption translates: "My God,
I've forgotten the motor horn! Now I shall have to write another symphony."
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).[151] 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."[152] The Second Symphony was
received more positively, one critic calling it "the most masterly work of its kind
since Mendelssohn."[153] 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;[154] 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."[155]

A mix of enthusiasm, consternation and critical contempt became the normal response
to new Mahler symphonies, although the songs were better received.[156] After his
Fourth and Fifth Symphonies failed to gain general public approval, Mahler was
convinced that his Sixth would finally succeed.[157] 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.[158] Viennese
critic Heinrich Reinhardt dismissed the symphony as "Brass, lots of brass,
incredibly much brass! Even more brass, nothing but brass!"[159] 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."[n 10] At its conclusion, applause and celebrations
reportedly lasted for half an hour.[103]

Relative neglect, 1911�50[edit]

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.[151] 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.[161] 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.[160] In Britain the Hall� 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 young Benjamin Britten found the performance "execrable"
but was nevertheless impressed by the music.[162] British critics during this
period largely treated Mahler with condescension and faint praise. Thus Dyneley
Hussey, writing in 1934, thought the "children's songs" were delightful, but that
the symphonies should be let go.[163] Composer-conductor Julius Harrison described
Mahler's symphonies as "interesting at times, but laboriously put together" and as
lacking creative spark.[164] Bernard Shaw, in his role as music critic, thought
that the musical audiences of the 1930s would find Mahler (and Bruckner)
"expensively second-rate."[165]

Before Mahler's music was banned as "degenerate" during the Nazi era, the
symphonies and songs were played in the concert halls of Germany and Austria, often
conducted by Bruno Walter or Mahler's younger assistant Otto Klemperer,[151] and
also by Willem Mengelberg. In Austria, Mahler's work experienced a brief
renaissance between 1934 and 1938, a period known today as 'Austrofascism', when
the authoritarian regime with the help of Alma Mahler and Bruno Walter, who were
both on friendly terms with the new chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, sought to make
Mahler into a national icon (with a status comparable to that of Wagner in
Germany).[166] Mahler's music was performed during the Nazi era in Berlin in early
1941 and in Amsterdam during the German occupation of the Netherlands by Jewish
orchestras and for Jewish audiences alone; works performed included the Second
Symphony (Berlin), the First and Fourth Symphonies, and the Songs of a Wayfarer
(Amsterdam).[167]

Modern revival[edit]
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 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.[168] 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!"[169]

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.[170] Robert Carr's simpler explanation
for the 1950s Mahler revival is that "it was the 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."[151] 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.[151]
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."[171]

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!"[172] 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.[173]

Later influence[edit]
Donald Mitchell writes that Mahler's influence on succeeding generations of
composers is "a complete subject in itself."[174] Mahler's first disciples included
Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils Alban Berg and Anton Webern, who together founded
the Second Viennese School.[175] Mahler's music influenced the trio's move from
progressive tonalism to atonality (music without a key); although Mahler rejected
atonality, he became a fierce defender of the bold originality of Schoenberg's
work. At the premiere of the latter's First String Quartet in February 1907, Mahler
reportedly was held back from physically attacking the hecklers.[176] Schoenberg's
Serenade, Op. 24 (1923), Berg's Three Pieces for Orchestra (1915) and Webern's Six
Pieces (1928) all carry echoes of Mahler's Seventh Symphony.[177]

Among other composers whose work carries the influence of Mahler, Mitchell lists
America's Aaron Copland, the German song and stage composer Kurt Weill,[178]
Italy's Luciano Berio, Russia's Dmitri Shostakovich and England's Benjamin Britten.
[174] The American composers Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber were also
influenced by Mahler's work.[179] In a 1989 interview the pianist-conductor
Vladimir Ashkenazy said that the connection between Mahler and Shostakovich was
"very strong and obvious"; their music represented "the individual versus the vices
of the world."[180] Mitchell highlights Britten's "marvellously keen, spare and
independent writing for the wind in ... the first movement of the Cello Symphony of
1963 [which] clearly belongs to that order of dazzling transparency and
instrumental emancipation which Mahler did so much to establish." Mitchell
concludes with the statement: "Even were his own music not to survive, Mahler would
still enjoy a substantial immortality in the music of these pre-eminent successors
who have embraced his art and assimilated his techniques."[174]

List of compositions[edit]
For a complete listing of Mahler's works, see List of compositions by Gustav
Mahler.
Notes[edit]
Jump up ^ The music of Der Trompeter von S�kkingen has been mostly lost. A movement
entitled "Blumine" was included in the first, five-movement version of Mahler's
First Symphony.[23]
Jump up ^ Mahler may have been aware of this collection earlier, since he had based
the first of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen poems on a Wunderhorn text.[28]
Jump up ^ Some sources, e.g., Paul Banks writing in Sadie, p. 509, give the
appointment date as 8 September 1897. According to La Grange the decree appointing
Mahler to the directorship was dated 8 October and signed by the Lord Chamberlain
on behalf of the Emperor on 15 October.
Jump up ^ Alma Schindler, Mahler's future wife, claimed to have introduced Mahler
to Roller at her stepfather's house in January 1902. However, there is some
evidence that Roller had worked on designs for the Hofoper as early as January
1901.[64]
Jump up ^ The subscription concerts were an annual programme of orchestral
concerts, performed by the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra which comprised the elite
instrumentalists from the Hofoper. Mahler was therefore well known to the players
before he began his duties as the concerts conductor.[75]
Jump up ^ One of the R�ckert poems, "Liebst du um Sch�nheit", was left
unorchestrated until this was carried out by a Leipzig musician, Max Puttmann. The
song is usually performed alongside the others.[83]
Jump up ^ See, for example, the letters to Alma sent from Munich in 1910, the last
of which begins: "My beloved, madly beloved Almschili! Believe me, I am sick with
love!"[92] Biographer Robert Carr, however, notes the extent to which Alma Mahler
edited and selected the letters which she published in her book Memories and
Letters, initially published in 1940.[93]
Jump up ^ The term "Alma Problem" has been used to refer to the difficulties that
Alma's distortions have created for subsequent historians. Jonathan Carr writes:
"[B]it by bit, more about Alma has emerged to cast still graver doubt on her
published work ... Letters from Mahler to her have come to light in a more complete
form than she chose to reveal. It is now plain that Alma did not just make chance
mistakes and see things 'through her own eyes.' She doctored the record."[119]
Jump up ^ Mitchell differentiates between "song" and "song-cycle"; he also
disparages the term "song-symphonist," which he calls "a horrid clich� that belongs
to the dubious history of Mahler's critics."[127]
Jump up ^ The title "Symphony of a Thousand" was not acknowledged by Mahler. Robert
Carr indicates that, at its Munich premiere, there were fewer than 1000 performers
present.[103] At the American premiere under Leopold Stokowski in 1916, however,
there were 1,068 performers, including 950 choristers.[160]
References[edit]
Citations[edit]
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, pp. 15�16
Jump up ^ Cooke, p. 7
^ Jump up to: a b c Sadie, p. 505
Jump up ^ http://www.classicfm.com/discover/music/composers-mothers/mahler-mother/
^ Jump up to: a b c Blaukopf, pp. 18�19
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Franklin, (1. Background, childhood education 1860�80).
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 8�9
^ Jump up to: a b c Blaukopf, pp. 20�22
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, pp. 25�26
Jump up ^ Sadie, p. 506
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. I pp. 33�38
^ Jump up to: a b Blaukopf, pp. 30�31
^ Jump up to: a b Blaukopf, pp. 33�35
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, pp. 39�40
^ Jump up to: a b Carr, pp. 23�24
Jump up ^ Cooke, p. 22
Jump up ^ Sadie, p. 527
^ Jump up to: a b Carr, pp. 24�28
^ Jump up to: a b Carr, pp. 30�31
^ Jump up to: a b Franklin, (2. Early conducting career, 1880�83).
^ Jump up to: a b Carr, pp. 32�34
^ Jump up to: a b c Carr, pp. 35�40
^ Jump up to: a b c Sadie, p. 507
Jump up ^ Franklin, (3. Kassel, 1883�85).
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Franklin, (4. Prague 1885�86 and Leipzig 1886�88).
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 43
^ Jump up to: a b c d Carr, pp. 44�47
^ Jump up to: a b Blaukopf, pp. 61�62
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 49
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 50
^ Jump up to: a b Cooke, pp. 27�30
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 48�49
Jump up ^ Franklin, (10. Das klagende Lied, early songs, First symphony).
^ Jump up to: a b Mitchell, Vol II pp. 51�53
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Franklin, (5. Budapest 1888�91).
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Sadie, pp. 508�09
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 52
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. II p. 154
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 53�54
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 56
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, p. 83
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Franklin, (6. Hamburg 1891�97).
Jump up ^ Steen, p. 750
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 59
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. II p. 158
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, p. 119
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 51
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 81�82
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 83�84
Jump up ^ Warren Allen Smith, pp. 76�77
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 p. 20
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 20�21
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol 2 p. 5
^ Jump up to: a b c d Franklin (7. Vienna 1897�1907)
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol 2 pp. 32�36
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol 2 pp. 49�51
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol 2 p. 54
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol 2 pp. 65�67
Jump up ^ Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europ�ers, quoted
in Fischer, 2011, p. 50
Jump up ^ Stefan Zweig, Die Welt von Gestern. Erinnerungen eines Europ�ers, quoted
in Fischer 2011, p. 58.
^ Jump up to: a b La Grange, Vol. 3 pp. 941�44
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 3 pp. 249�52
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 515�16, 560�61
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 138�39
^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g Sadie, pp. 510�11
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. II pp. 419�22
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 130�31, 630�31
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 632�34.
^ Jump up to: a b Carr, pp. 150�51
Jump up ^ Schonberg, p. 140
Jump up ^ Snowball, p. 246
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, pp. 217�19
^ Jump up to: a b Sadie, pp. 512�13
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 154�55
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, pp. 150�51
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol 2 p. 116
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 p. 117
^ Jump up to: a b Carr, pp. 87�94
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 263�64
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 233
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, p. 137
^ Jump up to: a b c Cooke, pp. 71�94
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 129
Jump up ^ Carr, p.148
^ Jump up to: a b La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 418�20
Jump up ^ A. Mahler, pp. 3�5
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 487�89
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 p. 432
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 p. 442
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 108
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 143�44
Jump up ^ A. Mahler, pp. 334�38
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 107
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Franklin (8. Europe and New York, 1907�11)
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 152�54
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, p. 217
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 163
Jump up ^ A Mahler, p. 143
Jump up ^ Anon. 1909.
Jump up ^ Anon. 1908.
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, pp. 225�26
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 172�73
^ Jump up to: a b c Carr, p. 207
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, p. 254
Jump up ^ Cooke, pp. 118�19
Jump up ^ Bert van der Waal van Dijk. "Chronology � Year 1910". gustav-mahler.eu.
Jump up ^ "The Philharmonic Concert � An Interesting Programme of Music
Representing Italy". The Sun. New York. 22 February 1911. p. 7. Retrieved 16
September 2013.
Jump up ^ Lebrecht, p. 217
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, p. 233
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 214
Jump up ^ Fischer, Jens Malte; Translated by Stewart Spencer (April 2013). Gustav
Mahler. Yale University Press. p. 683. ISBN 9780300194111.
Jump up ^ Fischer, Jens Malte; Translated by Stewart Spencer (April 2013). Gustav
Mahler. Yale University Press. p. 684. ISBN 9780300194111.
Jump up ^ Mahler, Alma. Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters. p. 197.
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 2�3
Jump up ^ Anon. 1911.
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. II pp. 413�15
Jump up ^ Steen, pp. 764�65
Jump up ^ Carr, pp. 106�10, 114
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 106
Jump up ^ Mitchell (The Mahler Companion), p. 580
Jump up ^ "International Gustav Mahler Society, Vienna (Historical Notes: click on
"The Society" and "History")". The International Gustav Mahler Society. Retrieved 4
April 2010.
Jump up ^ Cooke, pp. 27, 71, 103
Jump up ^ Cooke, p. 34
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 757�59
Jump up ^ Cooke, p. 93
^ Jump up to: a b La Grange, Vol. 2 p. 805
^ Jump up to: a b c d Mitchell, Vol. II, p. 32
^ Jump up to: a b Sadie, pp. 524�25
^ Jump up to: a b Schonberg, p. 143
Jump up ^ Cooke, p. 103
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, p. 240
^ Jump up to: a b c Franklin (9. Musical style)
^ Jump up to: a b Cooke, pp. 10�11
Jump up ^ Cooke, pp. 13�14
Jump up ^ Schonberg, p. 138
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. II p. 47
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. II p. 309
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 p. 743
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol II p. 136
Jump up ^ Sadie, p. 519
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. II pp. 36�41
Jump up ^ Cooke, p. 43
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. II p. 286
Jump up ^ Cooke, pp. 16�17
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 p. 179
^ Jump up to: a b c Cooke, p. 14
Jump up ^ Barham, Karbusick�, pp. 196�201
Jump up ^ Blaukopf, p. 140
Jump up ^ Deryck Cooke, RLPO notes 29 May 1964
Jump up ^ Cooke, pp. 83�87
^ Jump up to: a b c d e Carr, pp. 221�24
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 p. 99, p. 140
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 2 pp. 141�42
Jump up ^ La Grange: Vol. 2 pp. 148�55, 307�09
Jump up ^ La Grange Vol. 3 pp. 68�69
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 3 pp. 107�08
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 3 p. 405
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol. 3 pp. 412�13
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol 3 p. 536
^ Jump up to: a b Ander Smith, p. 91
Jump up ^ Copland, pp. 149�50
Jump up ^ Kennedy, Michael (13 January 2010). "Mahler's mass following". The
Spectator. London. Retrieved 6 May 2016.
Jump up ^ Hussey, pp. 455�56
Jump up ^ Harrison, p. 237
Jump up ^ Shaw, p. 753
Jump up ^ Niekerk pp. 216�17, 271
Jump up ^ Niekerk pp. 216, 271.
Jump up ^ Schiff, David (4 November 2001). "Music: The Man who Mainstreamed
Mahler". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
Jump up ^ Fischer, Jens Malte (April 2013). Gustav Mahler (1st English ed.). Yale
UP. p. 692.
Jump up ^ Cooke, pp. 3�4
Jump up ^ Schonberg, p. 137
Jump up ^ A. Mahler, pp. 220�21
Jump up ^ Steen. p. 742
^ Jump up to: a b c Mitchell, Vol. II pp. 373�74
Jump up ^ Schonberg, pp. 256�58
Jump up ^ La Grange, Vol 3 pp. 608�09
Jump up ^ Carr, p. 105
Jump up ^ Mitchell, Vol. II p. 261
Jump up ^ Lebrecht, p. 5 excerpt
Jump up ^ Kozinn, 1989
Sources[edit]
Anon. (1908). "Gustav Mahler Conducts" (PDF). The New York Times (30 November
1908). Retrieved 21 March 2010.
Anon. (1909). "Bartered Bride at Metropolitan" (PDF). The New York Times (20
February). 20 February 1909. Retrieved 20 June 2009.
Anon. (1911). "Gustav Mahler Dies in Vienna" (PDF). The New York Times (19 May).
Retrieved 21 March 2010.
Karbusick�, Vladim�r (cs) (2005). "Gustav Mahler's Musical Jewishness". In Barham,
Jeremy. Perspectives on Gustav Mahler. Aldershot, England: Ashgate Publishing
Limited. ISBN 978-0-7546-0709-0.
Blaukopf, Kurt (1974). Gustav Mahler. Harmondsworth, UK: Futura Publications Ltd.
ISBN 0-86007-034-4..
Carr, Jonathan (1998). Mahler: A Biography. Woodstock, NY: The Overlook Press. ISBN
0-87951-802-2.
Cooke, Deryck (1980). Gustav Mahler: An Introduction to his Music. London, England:
Faber Music. ISBN 0-571-10087-2.
Cooke, Deryck (1964). Mahler and the Eighth Symphony (performance notes 29 May
1964). Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Society.
Copland, Aaron (2004). Richard Kostelanetz, ed. Aaron Copland, a reader: Selected
writings, 1923�72. London, England: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-93940-9.
Fischer, Jens Malte (trans. Stewart Spencer) (2011). Gustav Mahler. New Haven,
Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-13444-5.
Franklin, Peter. "Mahler, Gustav (sections 1-10)". Oxford Music Online. Oxford
University Press. Retrieved 6 May 2016. (subscription required)
Harrison, Julius (1934). "The Orchestra and Orchestral Music". In Bacharach, A.L.
The Musical Companion. London, England: Victor Gollancz. pp. 127�282.
Hussey, Dyneley (1934). "Vocal Music in the 20th Century". In Bacharach, A.L. The
Musical Companion. London, England: Victor Gollancz. pp. 454�66.
"International Gustav Mahler Society, Vienna". The International Gustav Mahler
Society. Retrieved 4 April 2010.
Kennedy, Michael (13 January 2010). "Mahler's mass following". The Spectator.
London, Enhland. Retrieved 26 March 2010.
Kozinn, Allan (3 February 1989). "Ashkenazy Mining A Mahler Vein". The New York
Times. Retrieved 6 April 2010.
La Grange, Henry-Louis de (1995). Gustav Mahler Volume 2: Vienna: The Years of
Challenge (1897�1904). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-315159-6.
La Grange, Henry-Louis de (2000). Gustav Mahler Volume 3: Vienna: Triumph and
Disillusion (1904�1907). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-
315160-X.
Lebrecht, Norman (2011). Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed the
World. London, England: Faber and Faber Ltdb. ISBN 978-0-571-26079-9.
Mahler, Almav (1968). Gustav Mahler: Memories and letters. London, England: John
Murrayv.
Mitchell, Donald (1995). Gustav Mahler Volume 1: The Early Years. Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-20214-7.
Mitchell, Donald (1975). Gustav Mahler Volume II: The Wunderhorn Years: Chronicles
and Commentaries. London, England: Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-10674-9.
Mitchell, Donald; Nicholson, Andrew (1999). The Mahler Companion. Oxford, England:
Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-816376-2.
Niekerk, Carl (2010). Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-
si�cle Vienna. Rochester, NY: Camden House. ISBN 978-1-57113-467-7.
Sadie, Stanley (1980). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. 11. London,
England: Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-23111-2.
Schiff, David (4 November 2001). "Music: The Man who Mainstreamed Mahler". The New
York Times. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
Schonberg, Harold (1970). The Lives of the Great Composers. II. London, England:
Futura Publications. ISBN 0-86007-723-3.
Shaw, George Bernard (1981). Shaw's Music, Volume III 1893�1950. London, England:
The Bodley Head. ISBN 0-370-30333-4.
Smith, Warren Allen (2002). Celebrities in hell. Fort Lee, NJ: Barricade Books.
ISBN 978-0-55783752-6.
Smith, William Ander (1990). The Mystery of Leopold Stokowski. Cranbury, N.J.:
Associated University Presses Ltd. ISBN 0-8386-3362-5.
Snowman, Daniel (2009). The Gilded Stage: A Social History of Opera. London,
England: Atlantic Books. ISBN 978-1-84354-466-1.
Steen, Michael (2003). The Lives & Times of the Great Composers. London, England:
Icon Books. ISBN 978-1-84046-679-9.
External links[edit]
Book icon
Book: Gustav Mahler
Wikiquote has quotations related to: Gustav Mahler
Media related to Gustav Mahler at Wikimedia Commons
Gustav Mahler at Encyclop�dia Britannica
Works by or about Gustav Mahler at Internet Archive
Gustav-Mahler.eu
[show] v t e
Gustav Mahler
[show] v t e
Modernist composers
[show] v t e
Vienna Staatsoper Directors
[show] v t e
New York Philharmonic Music Directors
Audio a.svgClassical music portal Audio a.svgMusic portal P vip.svgBiography portal
Authority control
WorldCat Identities VIAF: 61732497 LCCN: n80067106 ISNI: 0000 0001 2135 8915 GND:
118576291 SELIBR: 211728 SUDOC: 027001830 BNF: cb13896959d (data) BIBSYS: 90058308
MusicBrainz: 8d610e51-64b4-4654-b8df-064b0fb7a9d9 NLA: 35322466 NDL: 00448526 NKC:
jn19990009922 ICCU: IT\ICCU\CFIV\045821 BNE: XX1012260 IATH: w6js9nx3
Categories: Gustav Mahler1860 births1911 deaths19th-century classical
composers19th-century conductors (music)20th-century classical composers20th-
century conductors (music)Analysands of Sigmund FreudAustrian agnosticsAustrian
classical composersAustrian conductors (music)Austrian JewsAustrian male classical
composersAustrian Roman CatholicsAustrian Romantic composersConductors of the
Metropolitan OperaConverts to Roman Catholicism from JudaismDeaths from
sepsisJewish agnosticsJewish classical composersJewish classical musiciansMusic
directors of the New York PhilharmonicPeople from Pelhrimov DistrictPeople from the
Kingdom of BohemiaUniversity of Vienna alumniUniversity of Music and Performing
Arts, Vienna alumni
Navigation menu
Not logged inTalkContributionsCreate accountLog inArticleTalkReadEditView
historySearch

Search Wikipedia
Go
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
In other projects
Wikimedia Commons
Wikiquote
Languages
????????
Afrikaans
Alemannisch
????
???????
Aragon�s
Asturianu
Aymar aru
Az?rbaycanca
B�n-l�m-g�
?????????
??????????
?????????? (???????????)?
Bislama
?????????
Boarisch
Bosanski
Brezhoneg
??????
Catal�
Ce�tina
Chamoru
Cymraeg
Dansk
Deutsch
Eesti
????????
Espa�ol
Esperanto
Euskara
?????
Fiji Hindi
Fran�ais
Gaeilge
Galego
???
???????
Hrvatski
Ido
Ilokano
Bahasa Indonesia
Interlingua
�slenska
Italiano
?????
Basa Jawa
???????
???????
Kiswahili
Latina
Latvie�u
L�tzebuergesch
Lietuviu
Limburgs
Magyar
??????????
Malagasy
??????
?????
?????????
????
????????
Bahasa Melayu
Nederlands
???
???????
Norsk
Norsk nynorsk
Occitan
O?zbekcha/???????
??????
??????
Picard
Piemont�is
Plattd��tsch
Polski
Portugu�s
Rom�na
Runa Simi
??????????
???????
?????????
Scots
Seeltersk
Simple English
Slovencina
Sloven�cina
?????
?????? / srpski
Srpskohrvatski / ??????????????
Suomi
Svenska
?????
???????/tatar�a
???
T�rk�e
??????????
????
Ti?ng Vi?t
Volap�k
Winaray
??????
??
Zazaki
�emaite�ka
??
Kab?y?
Edit links
This page was last edited on 5 December 2017, at 17:13.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;
additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and
Privacy Policy. Wikipedia� is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation,
Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policyAbout WikipediaDisclaimersContact WikipediaDevelopersCookie
statementMobile viewEnable previews
Wikimedia Foundation Powered by MediaWiki