Mahler, Gustav
Mahler, Gustav
Mahler, Gustav, great Austrian composer and conductor; b. Kalischt, Bohemia, July 7, 1860; d. Vienna, May 18, 1911. He attended school in Iglau. In 1875 he entered the Vienna Cons., where he studied piano with Julius Epstein, harmony with Robert Fuchs, and composition with Franz Krenn. He also took academic courses in history and philosophy at the Univ. of Vienna (1877–80). In the summer of 1880 he received his first engagement as a conductor, at the operetta theater in the town of Hall in Upper Austria. He subsequently he held posts as theater conductor at Ljubljana (1881), Olmütz (1882), Vienna (1883), and Kassel (1883–85). In 1885 he served as 2nd Kapellmeister to Anton Seidl at the Prague Opera, where he gave several performances of Wagner’s operas. From 1886 to 1888 he was assistant to Arthur Nikisch in Leipzig. In 1888 he received the important appointment of music director of the Royal Opera in Budapest. In 1891 he was engaged as conductor at the Hamburg Opera; during his tenure there, he developed a consummate technique for conducting. In 1897 he received a tentative offer as music director of the Vienna Court Opera, but there was an obstacle to overcome. Mahler was Jewish, and although there was no overt anti-Semitism in the Austrian government, an imperial appointment could not be given to a Jew. Mahler was never orthodox in his religion, and had no difficulty in converting to Catholicism, which was the prevailing faith in Austria. He held this position at the Vienna Court Opera for 10 years; under his guidance, it reached the highest standards of artistic excellence. In 1898 Mahler was engaged to succeed Hans Richter as conductor of the Vienna Phil. Here, as in his direction of opera, he proved a great interpreter, but he also allowed himself considerable freedom in rearranging the orchestration of classical scores when he felt it would redound to greater effect. He also aroused antagonism among the players by his autocratic behavior toward them. He resigned from the Vienna Phil, in 1901; in 1907 he also resigned from the Vienna Court Opera. It was in the latter year that he was diagnosed as suffering from a lesion of the heart. In the meantime, he became immersed in strenuous work as a composer; he confined himself exclusively to composition of symphonic music, sometimes with vocal parts; because of his busy schedule as conductor, he could compose only in the summer months, in a villa on the Worthersee in Carinthia. In 1902 he married Alma Schindler; they had 2 daughters. The younger daughter, Anna Mahler, was briefly married to Ernst Krenek; the elder daughter died at the age of 5. Alma Mahler studied music with Zemlinsky, who was the brother-in-law of Arnold Schoenberg.
Having exhausted his opportunities in Vienna, Mahler accepted the post of principal conductor of the Metropolitan Opera in N.Y in 1907. He made his U.S. debut there on Jan. 1,1908, conducting Tristan und Isolde. In 1909 he was appointed conductor of the N.Y. Phil. His initial appearances at the Metropolitan Opera and with the N.Y. Phil, were generally well received by both audiences and critics, but inevitably he had conflicts with the board of trustees in both organizations, which were mostly commanded by rich women. He resigned from the Metropolitan Opera in 1910. On Feb. 21, 1911, he conducted his last concert with the N.Y. Phil, and then returned to Vienna. The N.Y. newspapers publ, lurid accounts of his struggle for artistic command with the regimen of the women of the governing committee. Alma Mahler was quoted as saying that although in Vienna even the Emperor did not dare to order Mahler about, in N.Y he had to submit to the whims of 10 ignorant women. The newspaper editorials mourned Mahler’s death, but sadly noted that his N.Y. tenure was a failure. As to Mahler’s own compositions, the N.Y. Tribune said bluntly, “We cannot see how any of his music can long survive him.” His syms. were sharply condemned in the press as being too long, too loud, and too discordant. It was not until the second half of the 20th century that Mahler became fully recognized as a composer, the last great Romantic symphonist. Mahler’s syms. were drawn on the grandest scale, and the technical means employed for the realization of his ideas were correspondingly elaborate. The sources of his inspiration were twofold: the lofty concepts of universal art, akin to those of Bruckner, and ultimately stemming from Wagner; and the simple folk melos of the Austrian countryside, in pastoral moods recalling the intimate episodes in Beethoven’s syms. True to his Romantic nature, Mahler attached descriptive titles to his syms.; the 1st was named the Titan; the 2nd, Resurrection; the 3rd, Ein Sommermorgentraum; and the 5th, The Giant.The great 8th became known as “sym. of a thousand” because it required about 1,000 instrumentalists, vocalists, and soloists for performance; however, this sobriquet was the inspiration of Mahler’s agent, not of Mahler himself. Later in life, Mahler tried to disassociate his works from their programmatic titles; he even claimed that he never used them in the first place, contradicting the evidence of the MSS, in which the titles appear in Mahler’s own handwriting. Mahler was not an innovator in his harmonic writing; rather, he brought the Romantic era to a culmination by virtue of the expansiveness of his emotional expression and the grandiose design of his musical structures. Morbid by nature, he brooded upon the inevitability of death; one of his most poignant compositions was the cycle for voice and orch. Kindertotenlieder; he wrote it shortly before the death of his little daughter, and somehow he blamed himself for this seeming anticipation of his personal tragedy. In 1910 he consulted Sigmund Freud in Leiden, Holland, but the treatment was brief and apparently did not help Mahler to resolve his psychological problems. Unquestionably, he suffered from an irrational feeling of guilt. In the 3rd movement of his unfinished 10th Sym., significantly titled Purgatorio, he wrote on the margin, “Madness seizes me, annihilates me,” and appealed to the Devil to take possession of his soul. But he never was clinically insane. His already weakened heart could not withstand the onslaught of a severe bacterial infection of the blood, and he died at the lamentable age of 50.
Mahler’s importance to the evolution of modern music is very great; the early works of Schoenberg and Berg show the influence of Mahler’s concepts. An International Gustav Mahler Soc. was formed in Vienna in 1955, with Bruno Walter as honorary president.
Works
syms.:No. 1, in D, Titan (1883–88; Budapest, Nov. 20, 1889, composer conducting; a rejected movement, entitled Blumine, was reincorporated and perf. at the Aldeburgh Festival, June 18, 1967), No. 2, in C minor, Resurrection, for Soprano, Contralto, Chorus, and Orch. (1887–94; Berlin, Dec. 13,1895, composer conducting), No. 3, in D minor, Ein Sommermorgentraum (1893–96; Krefeld, June 9, 1902, composer conducting), No. 4, in G (1899–1901; Munich, Nov. 25, 1901, composer conducting), No. 5, in C-sharp minor, The Giant (1901–02; Cologne, Oct. 18,1904, composer conducting), No. 6, in A minor (1903–05; Essen, May 27, 1906, composer conducting), No. 7, in E minor (1904–06; Prague, Sept. 19, 1908, composer conducting), No. 8, in E-flat, “Symphony of a Thousand,” for 8 Solo Voices, Adult and Children’s Choruses, and Orch. (1906–07; Munich, Sept. 12,1910, composer conducting), No. 9, in D (1909–10; Vienna, June 26, 1912, Bruno Walter conducting), and No. 10, in F- sharp minor (sketched 1909–10, unfinished; 2 movements, Adagio and Purgatorio, perf. in Vienna, Oct. 12,1924, Franz Schalk conducting; publ, in facsimile, 1924, by Alma Mahler; a performing version, using the sketches then available and leaving the 2 scherzo movements in fragmentary form, was made by D. Cooke; it was broadcast by the BBC, London, Dec. 19, 1960; further sketches were made available, and a full performing version was premiered in London, Aug. 13,1964; a final revision of the score was made in 1972; there are also other performing versions as well). vocal:Das klagende Lied for Soprano, Contralto, Tenor, Chorus, and Orch. (1878–80; ed. by R. Kubik and 1st perf. in Manchester, Oct. 12, 1997; rev. version 1896–98; Vienna, Feb. 17, 1901, composer conducting); Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit, 14 songs for Voice and Piano (1880–91); Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 4 songs with Orch. (1883–85; Berlin, March 16, 1896, composer conducting); 14 Lieder from Das Knaben Wunderhorn for Voice and Orch. (1892–1901); 5 songs, to poems by Rückert (1901–03); Kindertotenlieder, 5 songs, with Piano or Orch., to poems by Rückert (1901–04; Vienna, Jan. 29, 1905, composer conducting); Das Lied von der Erde, sym. for Contralto or Baritone, Tenor, and Orch. (1907–09; Munich, Nov. 20, 1911, Bruno Walter conducting). Mahler destroyed the MSS of several of his early works, among them a piano quintet (perf. in Vienna, July 11,1878, with the composer at the piano) and 3 unfinished operas: Herzog Ernst von Schwaben, to a drama by Uhland; Die Argonauten, from a trilogy by Grillparzer; and Rübezahl, after Grimm’s fairy tales. He also made an arrangement of Weber’s Die drei Pintos (Leipzig, Jan. 20,1888, composer conducting) and Oberon (c. 1907); also arranged Bruckner’s 3rd Sym. for 2 Pianos (1878). Mahler made controversial reorchestrations of syms. by Beethoven, Schumann, and Bruckner, and a version for String Orch. of Beethoven’s String Quartet in C-sharp minor, op.131.
Bibliography
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—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire