Gustav Mahler 1860 - 1911
The genius of some composers is recognised during their lifetimes. Others -
particularly those who take music into new directions, may not be recognised until after
their deaths. Though Mahler won honour and respect in his lifetime for his gifts as a
conductor, his work as a composer did not find true recognition until the latter half of
the century. Though his romantic spirit and the child-like fairytale quality of many of
his imaginings speak clearly to us and may touch our hearts, the philosophical strivings
and the sheer density and length of his compositions may deter us.
He is often regarded as a Viennese composer, since it was in Vienna that he first
attracted attention. In fact, he was both a Slav and a Jew. He was the second of twelve
children and his parents owned a distillery. When he was aged four he was given a
concertina and soon learned to play military marches on it. At age six he learned to play
simple tunes on a piano in the house of his mother's parents. Impressed by his talents,
his parents arranged for his to have music lessons locally.
In 1875, Mahler's father took his son to Vienna to ask Julius Epstein whether the boy
would profit from a musical career. On Epstein's recommendation, young Mahler entered the
Vienna Conservatoire, where he soon showed his ability and won several prizes. He
completed his studies at the Conservatoire in 1878 with prizes for piano and composition.
He now needed to earn a living and he accepted a post as conductor in Hallé where he
conducted operettas and musical comedies. Finding the hack-work frustrating, he returned
to Vienna, where he tried to make a living by teaching music, meanwhile working on an
opera, The Argonauts, which he never completed. In 1881, he was again conducting
hack-work, this time in Ljubljana, where he stayed for one season. Conducting in other
provincial theatres followed, in Olmutz and Cassel, where at last he had the opportunity
to conduct real operas.
In 1883 he went to the Wagner Festival at Bayreuth and heard Parsifal which made a
lasting impression on him.
By 1885, he was offered a month's trial engagement as conductor at Leipzig. This
resulted in an offer of a contract to conduct a season there as assistant conductor to the
great Arthur Nikisch. Until this began, he had to find other work and was engaged as
assistant conductor in Prague, where he conducted Mozart (Don Giovanni), Wagner (Die
Meistersinger, Rheingold and Walkure) and Beethoven (Fidelio) as well as the Choral
Symphony. It was during this period that he wrote Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen and
began work on his first symphony.
When Mahler returned to Leipzig he conducted a great repertoire of operatic works. By
1888, he felt he had sufficient experience to seek a post as first conductor and was
offered a ten year contract at the Budapest Opera House. On arrival, he found a state of
chaos. Dwindling audiences had led the management to engage international stars, believing
their reputations would attract bigger audiences. The productions were under-rehearsed and
frequently sung in a variety of different languages, resulting in a continual
haemorrhaging of audiences. Mahler made drastic revisions to the theatre's policy. He got
rid of the foreign visiting stars and formed the native singers into an ensemble resident
company, performing the repertoire entirely in the Hungarian language. While this had
great appeal to the Budapest audience and brought them back into the theatre, it must have
been difficult for Mahler, who could not speak Hungarian.
By the end of his first year, he produced Walkure in Hungarian and followed it in early
1889 with Rheingold. He turned what had been a third rate company into a first class one,
and his performance of Don Giovanni roused Brahms to ecstasy.
Mahler's iconoclastic ways with the company made him several powerful enemies. His
first symphony had its first performance in Budapest in 1889, but it was not a success. In
1891, changes to the Opera House management made it clear to Mahler that he was no longer
welcome as resident conductor and he asked to be released from his contract. He was not
unemployed for long. In April 1891 he took up post as first conductor in Hamburg, where
his performances included Verdi's Falstaff, Smetana's Dalibor and The Bartered Bride and
Tchaikovsky's Yevgeni Onegin. Tchaikovsky himself was present at a performance of Onegin
and gave Mahler high praise.
In 1892, the Hamburg company visited London and performed at Covent Garden, offering a
complete Ring cycle, Tristan und Isolde and Fidelio. While working in Hamburg, Mahler
wrote the song-cycle, Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the second (Resurrection) Symphony, the
last movement of which (a choral movement depicting the Resurrection following the Final
Judgement) is a setting of verses by Klopstock and was inspired by the funeral service for
the German conductor, Hans Von Bulow, who had conducted the first performance of several
of Wagner's operas.
In 1897 he was appointed first conductor at the Vienna state opera, partly on the
recommendation of Brahms, who still remembered being impressed with his work in Budapest a
decade previously. Mahler made his Viennese debut with Wagner's Lohengrin and remained in
Vienna for the next ten years.
This was to be the most productive period of his life and in many ways the happiest. It
was certainly the greatest period in the history of the Vienna Opera. Mahler
revolutionised performance, production and even audience behaviour, as thoroughly as he
had revolutionised Budapest. His insistence on having his own way made him many enemies,
and the fact that he was Jewish did not help him in a city whose leading citizens tended
to be anti-Semitic.
In 1902 he married Alma Maria Schindler, daughter of a Viennese painter, who bore him
two daughters, and he took a house at Maiernigg where the family spent their summer
holidays. It was at Maiernigg that her wrote his Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth
Symphonies, completing the orchestration when he was back in Vienna in the winter.
During his tremendously productive period at the turn of the century, Mahler wrote the
song cycle, Kindertotenlieder (songs on the death of children) and was horrified when soon
afterwards, his elder daughter died. Mahler felt that by writing Kindertotenlieder he had
tempted fate in some way, and was therefore responsible for the child's death. This was
followed by the discovery that he himself suffered from acute angina, and had to give up
exhausting physical activity.
This led him to write the powerfully pessimistic Seventh Symphony, in the last movement
of which the hero receives two crushing hammer-blows, and the Symphony ends with a slow,
infinitely sad decrescendo. Again fearing that he was tempting providence, he re-scored
the second hammer-blow effect to minimise its impact. Giving consideration to his health
problems, he resolved that he must make as much money as possible by conducting for the
next two years, and then devote his life to composing.
He now felt unable to cope with the constant backstage intrigues at the Vienna Opera,
and accepted an offer from New York to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera House there. On
arrival, he found that he was to share the post of first conductor with Arturo Toscanini.
Both men were phenomenally talented conductors, but both were difficult to get on with,
and completely unwilling to compromise. Their stormy relationship left scars on both men.
Toscanini never conducted any of Mahler's music and was said to have told friends,
'Mahler's music is only fit for toilet paper!'
He completed his Eighth Symphony (the massive Symphony of a Thousand) in 1908
and began to work on another, but, bearing in mind that Beethoven, Schubert, Bruckner and
Dvorak had all died soon after completing their ninth symphonies. He felt once more he was
tempting providence, and so called the new work Das Lied von der Erde. It is an
orchestral setting of Chinese poems, sung by mezzo-soprano and tenor.
By 1909, he had conquered this fear, and began work on what he called his Ninth
Symphony. He succeeded in completing it and was working on what he called his
successor, his Tenth, when he died on May 18th 1911, leaving only sketches (though
substantial ones) of his intentions. He was buried beside his daughter at Grinzing, in the
suburbs of Vienna.
Though Mahler was almost an exact contemporary of Toscanini, he seems farther away in
time to us, because he died before gramophone recording was properly established.
Toscanini's conducting career continued until his retirement in 1953, and he left us many
recordings of his work. He therefore seems our contemporary in a way that Mahler was not.
Mahler's finest interpreter was probably his friend and disciple, the conductor Bruno
Walter (1876 - 1962), though it is unfortunate that during Walter's lifetime, the
gramophone companies did not regard Mahler's music as sufficiently commercial to justify
financing a complete cycle under Walter's baton. However, Walter lived into the age of
stereo recording, and he has left us invaluable records of the First, Second, Fourth,
Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies, as well as a magical recording of Das Lied von
der Erde with Kathleen Ferrier and Julius Patzak as incomparable soloists, under
Walter's tuition.
Principal Works
Choral:
- Das Klagende Lied (1881, revised 1899)
- Several of the Symphonies are also choral works
Symphonies:
- No. 1 in D 1808 (The Titan)
- No. 2 in C Minor 1894 (Resurrection) with soprano, contralto and chorus
- No. 3 in D Minor 1896 with contralto, chorus and children's choir
- No. 4 in G 1900 with soprano soloist
- No. 5 in C Sharp Minor 1902, revised in 1911
- No. 6 in A Minor 1905
- No. 7 (Song of the night) 1905
- No. 8 1906 (Symphony of a Thousand) three sopranos, two altos, tenor, baritone, bass,
chorus and children's choirs
- No. 9 1910
Song Cycles:
- 1886 - Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen
- 1888 to 1899 - Des Knaben Wunderhorn
- 1901 to 1904 - Kindertotenlieder
- 1908 - Das Lied von der Erde
--Ted Valentine |
Mahler 
n Austrian
conductor and composer of symphonies and lieder cycles whose most notable works include
Das Lied von der Erde (1909) and Symphony no. 9 (1909). Mahler was known for the length,
depth, and painful emotions of his works. He loved nature and life and, based on early
childhood experiences, feared death (family deaths, a suicide, and a brutal rape he
witnessed). This duality appears in almost all his compositions, especially in the
Kindertotenlieder ("Songs on the Deaths of Children"), which are actually about
the loss of an innocent view of life. Mahler's orchestral music is clear, complex, and
full of musical imagery, from the heavenly to the banal (the family lived near a military
barracks, so march tunes sometimes appear; an argument was associated with the sound of a
hurdy-gurdy outside the window). The "program" in the incredible symphonies is
therefore that of personal tragedy and hope projected onto a universal scale. The traumas
of the 20th century are expressed in the Symphony no. 9 (especially the
"Adagio"); the elusiveness of beauty and its loss among harshness and modern
tragedies are the subjects of the first and fifth symphonies. Mahler discovered the verbal
expression of this auditory imagery in poems translated from the Chinese of the T'ang
dynasty; Das Lied von der Erde ("The Song of the Earth") was the musical result,
expressing the transience of all things in a mixture of warmth and severe beauty. 