Gustav Mahler

by Jens Malte Fischer; Translated by Stewart Spencer

• ISBN13: 9780300134445
• ISBN10: 0300134444
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2011-08-09
• Publisher: Yale University Press

Summary

A best seller when first published in Germany in 2003, Jens Malte Fischer'sGustav Mahlerhas been lauded by scholars as a landmark work. He draws on important primary resourcessome unavailable to previous biographersand sets in narrative context the extensive correspondence between Mahler and his wife, Alma; Alma Mahler's diaries; and the memoirs of Natalie Bauer-Lechner, a viola player and close friend of Mahler, whose private journals provide insight into the composer's personal and professional lives and his creative process. Fischer explores Mahler's early life, his relationship to literature, his achievements as a conductor in Vienna and New York, his unhappy marriage, and his work with the Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic in his later years. He also illustrates why Mahler is a prime example of artistic idealism worn down by Austrian anti-Semitism and American commercialism.Gustav Mahleris the best-sourced and most balanced biography available about the composer, a nuanced and intriguing portrait of his dramatic life set against the backdrop of early 20th century America and fin de siecle Europe.

Author Biography

Jens Malte Fischer is professor of the history of theater at the University of Munich. He writes regularly for leading German newspapers and periodicals and is the author of several books, including a documentary study of Wagner's anti-Semitism. He lives in Munich, Germany. Stewart Spencer is an acclaimed translator whose work includes biographies of Richard Wagner, Cosima Wagner, and W.A. Mozart, all published by Yale University Press.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	p. ix
What Did Mahler Look Like? An Attempt at a Description	p. 1
Small Steps: Kalischt and Iglau (1860-75)	p. 12
Studies in Vienna (1875-80)	p. 42
The Summer Conductor: Bad Hall (1880)	p. 90
Emotional Ups and Downs in Laibach (1881-2)	p. 99
For the Last Time in the Provinces: Olmutz (1882-3)	p. 108
Presentiment and a New Departure: Kassel (1883-5)	p. 114
The Avid Reader: Mahler and Literature	p. 125
Becoming Mahler: Prague (1885-6)	p. 140
The First Symphony	p. 148
Life's Vicissitudes: Leipzig (1886-8)	p. 157
Notes on Mahler's Songs	p. 168
Lowland Dreams: Budapest (1888-91)	p. 178
The Conductor	p. 191
The Second Symphony	p. 202
Self-Realization: Hamburg (1891-7)	p. 208
Jewishness and Identity	p. 251
The Third Symphony	p. 274
The God of the Southern Climes: Vienna (1897-1901)	p. 282
Mahler's Illnesses: A Pathographical Sketch	p. 321
The Fourth Symphony	p. 333
Vienna in 1900: Alma as a Young Woman (1901-3)	p. 340
The Fifth Symphony	p. 385
'Nothing is lost to you': Faith and Philosophy	p. 392
The Sixth Symphony	p. 409
Opera Reform - Early Years of Marriage - Mahler's Compositional Method (1903-5)	p. 416
The Seventh Symphony	p. 458
The Administrator - Contemporaries - Signs of Crisis (1905-7)	p. 464
The Eighth Symphony	p. 519
Annus Terribilis (1907)	p. 527
Das Lied von der Erde	p. 562
Starting Afresh: New York (1908-11)	p. 568
The Ninth Symphony	p. 611
Crisis and Culmination (1910)	p. 620
The Fragmentary Tenth Symphony	p. 662
'My heart is weary' - The Farewell	p. 666
Mahler and Posterity	p. 691
List of Abbreviations	p. 707
Notes	p. 709
Select Bibliography	p. 734
Index	p. 740
Acknowledgements	p. 765
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