Introduction

Biographical note

Mahler was born in Kalischt, Bohemia, on July 7, 1860.  At the time, Bohemia (later to form a major component of Czechoslovakia, and later the Czech Republic) was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, then enduring its final crumbling decades, and the region where Mahler spent his youth was strongly associate with the Czech independence movement. However, Mahler also was a Jew, and Jews in the region were associated by ethnic Czechs with Germans.  Mahler famous quote is: "I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world.  Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed." Then add to that the fact that the public considered Mahler to be a gifted conductor with a habit of writing over-long symphonies, while Mahler considered himself to a composer forced to spend most of his year conducting.

Mahler is 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.

Mahler was one of the most important and influential conductors of the period. Although Mahler had originally studied piano and composition, he was not a virtuoso pianist and his student and youthful works were already too forward looking for him to win the conservative judged composition contests of the time.  As a result, Mahler was forced into a conducting career.

Mahler's early career was spent at a serious of regional opera houses (Hall in 1880, Laibach in 1881, Olmutz in 1882, Kassel in 1883, Prague in 1885, Liepzig in 1886-8, Budapest from 1886-8, and Hamburg from 1891-7), a normal career path, until he arrived as head of the Vienna Opera in 1897.  Mahler ended some of the more slovenly performance practices of the past; he removed significant cuts that had been "traditionally" made in performances of Wagner's operas, significantly upgraded the expected level of performance for both vocalists and instrumentalists, expanded the repertoire and introduced many new works.

He also ruled with an iron fist, helping create the image of conductor as dictator.  This was not, however, the result of simple ego, but rather of Mahler's artistic honesty and desire.  When members of the opera orchestra complained that one or another lazy practice was tradition, Mahler's favorite reply was that "[t]radition is laziness." Mahler believed that opera was the highest form of art, not mere entertainment.   A classic example is when Mahler decided to give the Vienna premiere of Charpentier's Louise.   Charpentier came to the dress rehearsal and criticized the sets, the costumes and Mahler's conducting.  Mahler's reaction was to cancel the premier and redo the costumes and set to Charpentier's specifications and studied the score with the composer so that his conducting, too, would be to Charpentier's satisfaction.

Another demonstrative incident during his leadership of the Vienna Opera was his attempts to present Richard Strauss' opera, Salome. Mahler was a basically prudish man, and his wife, Alma Mahler, later stated that he had argued against Strauss setting Wilde's Salome. Strauss, of course, went ahead and composed the piece, submitted it for production by the Vienna Opera, and was informed that the Censorship Board had banned the work due to Strauss' references to Christ and "the representation of events which belong to the realm of sexual pathology..." Rather than agree with the Censor, Mahler instead argued to "...in matters of art only the form and never the content is relevant, or at least should be relevant, from a serious viewpoint. How the subject matter is treated and carried out, not what the subject matter consists of to begin with-that is the only thing that matters. A work of art is to be considered as serious if the artist's dominant objective is to master the subject matter exclusively by artists means and resolve it perfectly to the 'form...'".

Mahler's reign lasted until 1907. He then accepted an offer to conduct the Metropolitan Opera.  He conducted two seasons, and then accepted a two-year contrat from the Philharmonic Society (now the New York Philharmonic.)  Mahler's time in New York was not positive--he had a low opinion of American concertgoers and musicians, did not get along with the New York critics, and fought with the management of both the Met and the Society.  Mahler died in 1911, in poor health and exhausted from his New York battles.

As Mahler was forced to spend most of the year conducting, he was, throughout his career, a summer composer.  He conducted fall through spring, and then retreated to the country to compose.  Mahler thus limited his composing to only two genres--the symphony and lieder.  Mahler's chamber music composition was limited to his student days, and the closest he came to composing an opera was Rubezahl, for which he prepared a libretto in manuscript (in 1880 or 1881), sketched some music (1882), and then abandoned.  He did, however, play a significant role assembling existing material and adding his own connecting material to create a performable version of Weber's Die Drei Pintos, at the request of Weber's family.  Although Mahler had a thirty year long composing career, his complete works could be assembled on fifteen or sixteen CDs.

Mahler also showed great enthusiasm for new works and new composers. Although his own compositions were grounded in late romantic post-Wagnerism, the younger composers in Vienna's composition circle (Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Zemlinsky, etc.) had a great appreciation for his music (Schoenberg, at least, taking a while to do so), and Mahler in turn encouraged their work.

Mahler's music drew heavily on Bach, Beethoven and Wagner (all three having more influence, most likely, than Bruckner, who is most consistently cited as being Mahler's main influence.) The article that follows describes Mahler's music in greater detail.

by GABRIEL ENGEL (From Chord and Discord, vol. 1 no. 1)

Most recently a newspaper critic in a moment of revelation following a performance of Mahler's "Ninth" in New York remarked that it was a great pity so little had been written about the composer's individual treatment of the orchestra. This reviewer suddenly realized, as too few music-lovers do, that the content of a symphony is so inextricably interwoven with the peculiarities of its orchestral idiom that some acquaintance with these determining characteristics is absolutely necessary to any adequate comprehension of the work as a whole.

Even Mahler's closest friends, people of high musical culture, were frequently amazed by the utter strangeness of his attitude toward the art. He would stand outside the grounds of a country fair completely fascinated by the babel of tones issuing simultaneously from human throats, hurdy-gurdies, carousels and a brass band. In the confusion of these many tunes accidentally mingled, he claimed, lay the essence of true polyphony, which is an ensemble of independent voices, each singing in the manner best suited to it.

In the light of this Mahler's symphony orchestra is really a community of independent soloists ideally cast, who perform in some wordless drama of absolute music various roles created for them by a serious composer whose freedom of expression recognizes no limitation save that imposed by the great, utterly human soul of true art. Paradoxical as it may sound, Mahler's scores, thoroughly modern though they be, are as transparent and simple as those of Mozart. There is in his music a total absence of that prevalent vice, the padding of parts to obtain increased fullness or richness of orchestral sound. Where other composers instinctively surround dissonant voices with soothing harmonic accompaniments Mahler resorts to the extreme of ascetic scoring, intentionally laying bare pointedly discordant parts by the exclusion of all others. In melodic polyphony alone lay the heart of music for him; and in order to keep as dose as possible to it he unhesitatingly braved the perils to his popularity involved in the many unpleasant surprises of his "discordant" scores for the average ear. Not that harmony as a basic influence is absent from his music. It is present, but its importance is enormously reduced by the incessant claims of the intricate melodic "web upon the listener's attention. Mahler asks us not to hear vertically, as harmonies are written, but horizontally, as the lines of themes progress.

And these are great themes, suited to the colossal structure of the forms he chose. Great themes, though perhaps not in the same, simple, pure, austere sense characterizing the immortal themes of the classic symphonists of the past; but song-like themes of broad and daring outline, themes unprecedentedly rich in fantasy, and completely free from the restraining shackles of triads grouped according to age-old formulas of melodic construction. Above all Mahler is the "song" symphonist. His most intricate polyphony only reflects to what degree his soul is a "singing" soul, thoroughly saturated with melody. When he conducted an orchestra even the heavy-voiced tuba was compelled to "sing". To obtain enhanced songlike eloquence Mahler almost revolutionized the symphonic idiom of each instrument.

He exploited each instrument not merely for the clearest musical effect of which it was capable, but even more for its most striking emotional accents, thus endowing the orchestral language with a psychological power it had never possessed before. The prodigal profusion of his unexpected usages in instrumentation was the strange feature that amounted in a great measure for the public's misunderstanding of his music.

Solo flutes which the habit of masters had made the vehicles of sweet melodies were now suddenly heard sounding ethereally, totally bereft of expression, as if issuing out of infinite distances. The brilliant little E-flat clarinet, newly abducted by Mahler from the military band, now invaded the proud precincts of the symphony orchestra and was heard to burst forth in mockery, grotesque to the point of scurrility. Owing to the parodistic gifts of this reclaimed instrument not even the gloomy atmosphere of a funeral march would be safe from an interruption of ribald merriment. The spell of most tender moments would be rudely broken by an instrumental sneer. The oboe. no longer the accustomed high-pitched voice of poignantly sweet pathos, was now heard singing comfortably in its natural, middle register. The bassoon, suddenly become most eloquent of repressed pain, would en' out, most convincing in its highest tones. The contrabassoon would have a coarse grotesque remark to make all alone.

The horn (in the treatment of which most authorities agree Mahler was the greatest master of all time) had never had so much to say. To the noble level of expressiveness it had attained in Bruckner's hands Mahler added a new power, enabling it by means of dying echoes to carry smoothly an idea already exploited into a changed musical atmosphere. Sometimes a solo horn would issue with overwhelming effect from a whole chorus of horns among which it had been concealed; or singing in its deepest tones it would lend a passage an air of tragic gloom. In Mahler's resourceful use of the horn every register seemed possessed of a different psychological significance.

Those short, sharp, fanfaresque trumpet 'motives' so characteristic of Wagner and so effectively transplanted by Bruckner into the symphony attain new life with Mahler; but either disappearing gently in a soft cadence, or singing bravely on, they soar with ever increasing intensity and breadth to a powerful dynamic climax, to be finally crowned with the triumphant din of massed brass and percussion. Or where usage had led to the belief that the intensification of a melodic line was the peculiar task of many instruments in unison, Mahler would save the clarity of this line from the covering danger of massed voices by asking a single trumpet to take up the theme with intense passion. Above a sombre rhythm powerfully marked by a chorus of trombones over percussion he would set a solitary trombone to pour out grief in noble, poignant recitative. Never had such significance been given the percussion group as Mahler gave it. His mastery of this section was doubtless a heritage of the fascination with which he had in infant days listened to the martial strains issuing from the Iglau barracks. Often he would even combine various percussion instruments, giving them amazing contrapuntal treatment, much as though they were true solo instruments.

"Tradition is slovenly" was his oft-repeated motto. He rejected every stereotyped means of obtaining a desired effect; and it was often the utter originality of his solution to an instrumental problem which while carrying richer meaning was yet regarded by the misunderstanding listener, fed on conventional combinations, as merely grotesque. In this intensified and clarified musical idiom, however, there was nothing actually revolutionary. It signified nothing more than that the inevitable development of the orchestral language had been sent forward a whole generation by the genius of one man.

His great mastery of the "color" possibilities of each instrument kept Mahler, the absolute symphonist, thoroughly modern in a musical world gone "program" made. With this ability he could afford to stand aside from those who blindly risked the sacrifice of musical content to the sensational effect of trick instrumental combinations. There was no emotion he could not give clear expression without abandoning a pure, "linear" method as essentially legitimate as that of Bach. Through orderly contrapuntal "line" scored in Ills eloquent idiom, he achieved "color", and yet retained that transparent clarity of expression which in the higher orchestral world has become synonymous with the name Mahler.

So striking and vital was the originality of his method that it speedily evoked a "school" of emulators but little concerned with the real content of his symphonies. A generation went by; meanwhile the latest offspring of major music came into existence, the "chamber-symphony," over whose many exclusively solo voices the "lineo-coloristic" method of Mahler holds paternal sway. And above this spirit hovers that of the Wagner of the "Siegfried Idyll", the accidental forerunner of all this "modernism". whispering,"Create something new, children,always something new."

• Tony Duggan's survey from Music on the Web
• Deryck Barker's guide to Mahler recordings 
• My guide to budget recordings, and suggestions for new Mahler listeners
• Recommended recordings from Dave Lampson's Classical.net
• A Century of New Music in Vienna from Beethoven to Webern, a highly deailed timeline/essay by Joe Monzo, tracing the course of Viennese classical music from Beethoven to breakdown of tonality, heavily focussing on Mahler's place in that sequence.

• Recordings of Mahler's Fourth Symphony from:  Boulez (DG) [see also Tony Duggan's review of this recording], Chailly (Decca), Britten (BBC) and Barbirolli (BBC) [for a dissenting view of the latter disc, click here], and a re-released of Reiner's classic recordings, reviewed here, here and here.
• A second recording by Simon Rattle of Mahler's 10th Symphony was released by EMI in May in the UK, and is now available in the U.S.  Another recordings of the 10th is available from Colorado MahlerFest, and that disc is also reviewed on the Classical Music on the Web site.
• Horenstein's recordings of the Fourth Symphony is now available over the Internet from TDWare, in a CD pressing by Chief Records
• Delos has released a recordings by Andrew Litton of Mahler Third.  Rather rave reviews have been posted by Classics Today and Classical Music on the Web.  Overall, Mahler-list feedback on the disc has been overwhelmingly positive, although not quite the 10/10 rating given by Classics Today.  However, the recordings is an engineering masterpiece, and the set is priced as one disc.  Recommended.
• Dutton has released a Barbirolli recordings of the 1st symphony, and Van Bienum's recordings of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony
• The BBC is again attempting to market its vast archive of recordings.  In addition to the above-listed recordings of the Fourth, the label, BBC Legends, has released Horenstein's historic broadcast of Mahler's 8th symphony, Horenstein recordings of Bruckner's 8th and 9th, and Barbirolli releases of Mahler's Third Symphony and a two-CD set of Barbitrolli conducting Mahler's Seventh Symphony and Bruckner's Ninth.  (All are currently on the shelves worldwide, with the exception of the Barbirolli set, which reaches U.S. stores the last week of June.)
• A name you may not be familiar with is Benjamin Zander. Zander is a British conductor based in Boston, MA, who is most known as leader of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra, a semi-pro orchestra with whom he has made impressive recordings of Mahler's 6th, Shostakovich's 5th, and Beethoven's 9th. Zander has recorded Mahler's Ninth with the Philharmonia Orchestra. The recordings is on the Telarc label, and is a remarkable package--a two-CD recordings of the Ninth, a separate full-length lecture CD where Zander guides the listener through the Ninth, and the set includes a full-color copy of Zander's marked score of the opening two pages of the Ninth. Zander's performance has received raves in several publications. Now the really impressive part--the package is priced as one CD!

Back issues can be obtained by writing to Charles Eble, President, Bruckner Society of America, 2150 Dubuque Road, Iowa City, IA  52245-9632.  There is no charge for any issues, whether you request the full run or just 1998's.

I called Mr. Eble, and was sent copies of the back journals. I asked if it would be okay to scan them in and present the text on the internet, and the answer was fine, that wouldn't be a problem. So I've started doing so, and have available at this time the full text of the first four issues, as well as biography of Bruckner that was published in one of the later issues. Also, when you click over to the Chord and Discord index page you may see that other issues/articles are available, should I update the index page more often than this one. ;)

Take a look.--there are many interesting and informative articles, and there is no better way to gain a historical perspective.

Henry-Louis De La Grange is the world's foremost Mahler biographer and scholar.  De La Grange published the first volume of biography of Gustav Mahler in 1973, in English.  Two following volumes were then released in French.  In 1995, Oxford University Press began publishing the full biography, expanded into four volumes, in English.  The first published was Volume II, in 1995, that volume consisting of the French Volume II and the end portion of the English Volume I.  Volume III of the English edition has now been released, with Volume IV to soon follow.  Oxford's plans then call for a revised version of Volume I to be released, finishing the series.  For the impatient, the original Volume I can be found in used bookstores, and through used book search sites on the net, such as www.abebooks.com, www.bookfinder.com, www.powells.com and www.alibris.com.  There is absolutely no way to overstate the value of these volumes to the serious Mahler devotee.  Exhaustive in their research, sylishly and clearly written, extensively footnoted and documented, De La Grange's books are the model for serious musical biography. 

From Oxford's Press release:

When the second volume of Henry-Louis de La Grange's study of Mahler was published in 1995 it was hailed by critics everywhere. "Breathtaking" declared The Economist, and Terry Teachout in The Wall Street Journal called it "a masterly work of cultural history, a portrait of musical Vienna unprecedented in its richness and comprehension."  Now, the much anticipated third volume GUSTAV MAHLER Volume 3:  Vienna: Triumph and Disillusion (1904-1907) ($45.00), in thisfour-volume biography, has been published on May 17, 2000.

Here de La Grange explores Mahler's final years as administrator, producer, and conductor of the Vienna Opera.  It was a time of intense inner struggle, with Mahler's energy and creative powers drained by the competing demands of running the Hofoper and struggling for recognition as a composer.  And they were tragic years as well, especially 1907, Mahler's last year in Vienna, when the death of his daughter and the diagnosis of heart disease forced him to leave the Opera.  Throughout the book, de La Grange offers true-to-life portraits
of Mahler the human being, the family man, and the composer, and he weaves innumerable testimonies and anecdotes that throw new light on the great composer's complex personality.

About the Author:

Henry-Louis de La Grange is internationally renowned as the biographer of Mahler.  He has spent more than 40 years studying Mahler, amassing a vast archive of documents, autographs, and pictures which now form the
nucleus of the Bibliotheque Musicale Gustav Mahler in Paris. 

Edited by Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson
640 pages, 33 text illustrations, 126 music examples, 246mm x 189mm
Imprint:  Clarendon Press
Hardback, 0-19-816376-2
UK Price: £50.00, U.S. Price $60
A full and comprehensive gathering of international Mahler specialists writes about Mahler's music from a variety of standpoints. The global spread of the authors is matched by a series of chapters that document the international reach of the composer's own symphonies and song cycles, while previously unexplored areas of research receive attention, both places (such as London and Prague) and people (Mahler's only surviving and highly talented daughter--a
sculptor--Anna). In short, a volume that draws on the best resources and most up-to-date information about the composer and will undoubtedly act as the authoritative
guide for Mahler enthusiasts for years to come.  [That's all from the publisher's blurb, but happens to be pretty accurate.]

Contents: 
List of Illustrations 
Notes on the Contributors 
Abbreviations 
Andrew Nicholdson: Introduction 

1. Leon Botstein: Gustav Mahler's Vienna 
2. John Williamson: The Earliest Completed Works:   A Voyage towards the First Symphony 
3. Paul Hamburger: Mahler and Des Knaben Wunderhorn 
4. Edward R. Reilly: Todtenfeier and the Second Symphony 
5. Morten Solvik: Mahler and Germany 
6. Henry-Louis de La Grange: Mahler and France 
7. Gérard Pesson: Mahler and Debussy: Transcendance and Emotion 
8. Peter Franklin: A Stranger's Story: Programmes, Politics, and Mahler's Third Symphony 
9. Donald Mitchell: `Swallowing the Programme': Mahler's Fourth Symphony 
10. Mahler's `Kammermusikton' - Donald Mitchell 
11. Donald Mitchell: Eternity or Nothingness? Mahler's Fifth Symphony 
12. Eveline Nikkels: Mahler and Holland 
13. Stephen E. Hefling: The Rückert Lieder 
14. David Matthews: The Sixth Symphony 
15. Peter Revers: The Seventh Symphony 
16. Donald Mitchell: Mahler in Prague (1908) 
17. John Williamson: The Eighth Symphony 
18. Edward R. Reilly: Mahler in America 
19. Stephen E. Hefling: Das Lied von der Erde 
20. Stephen E. Hefling: The Ninth Symphony 
21. Colin Matthews: The Tenth Symphony 
22. David Matthews: Wagner, Lipiner, and the `Purgatorio' 
23. Inna Barsova: Mahler and Russia 
24. Kenji Aoyagi: Mahler and Japan 
25. Andrew Nicholson: Mahler in London in 1892 
26. Donald Mitchell: The Mahler Renaissance in England: Its Origins and Chronology 
27. Wilfrid Mellers: Mahler and the Great Tradition: Then and Now 

Epilogue  Albrecht Joseph, Marina Mahler and Donald Mitchell: Mahler's Smile: A Memoir of his Daughter Anna Mahler (1904-1988) 

Sign the GuestbookView Previous  Posts