Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911) was an Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. [1] In his lifetime he was known chiefly for directing the Vienna Court Opera and later the New York Philharmonic, while the nine symphonies and song cycles he composed in the intervals between seasons were slow to gain acceptance and only established themselves in the standard repertoire in the second half of the twentieth century. [2]
Early life and training
Mahler was born on 7 July 1860 at Kaliště in Bohemia, then part of the Austrian Empire, into a German-speaking Jewish family, and grew up in the nearby town of Iglau. [1] He showed early musical ability, and at fifteen he entered the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied piano, harmony and composition; he also attended lectures at the University of Vienna. The folk songs, military bands and dance music he heard in provincial Moravia left audible traces throughout his later work.
Conducting career
Mahler began conducting in small provincial theatres in 1880 and advanced rapidly through appointments at Ljubljana, Olomouc, Kassel, Prague, Leipzig and Budapest, reaching the Hamburg Stadttheater in 1891. [2] In 1897 he was appointed director of the Vienna Court Opera, the most prestigious musical post in the empire, converting to Catholicism shortly before the appointment in a city where an unconverted Jew would not have been given it.
His decade in Vienna was marked by exacting standards of preparation, reform of orchestral and staging practice and a celebrated collaboration with the designer Alfred Roller. Friction with the administration and the press led to his resignation in 1907, after which he worked in New York with the Metropolitan Opera and then as conductor of the New York Philharmonic.
Composition
Composing largely during summer breaks, Mahler completed nine symphonies and left a tenth unfinished. The works expanded the scale of the form, drawing in folk tunes, marches, chorales, birdsong and military fanfares alongside passages of chamber-like delicacy, and several call for vocal soloists and chorus. [1]
He also wrote major orchestral song cycles, among them Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, settings from Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the Rückert-Lieder and the Kindertotenlieder. In 1908 and 1909 he composed Das Lied von der Erde, a symphony for two voices and orchestra on Chinese poems in German translation, and the Ninth Symphony; neither was performed in his lifetime. [3]
The Eighth Symphony, requiring vast choral and orchestral forces and nicknamed the "Symphony of a Thousand," was premiered in Munich in 1910 and gave him the single greatest public success of his career as a composer. [4]
Personal life and death
In 1902 Mahler married Alma Schindler, a composer in her own right; they had two daughters, the elder of whom died of illness in 1907. In the same year he was diagnosed with a defective heart valve. [1] He fell seriously ill in New York early in 1911, returned to Europe, and died in Vienna on 18 May 1911 at the age of fifty.
Legacy
Mahler's music was performed only intermittently in the decades after his death and was banned in Nazi Germany and the territories it occupied. A sustained revival from the 1960s, promoted by conductors including Leonard Bernstein and supported by the spread of recording, made his symphonies among the most frequently performed in the concert hall. [2] His handling of orchestral texture and his fracturing of symphonic continuity influenced Schoenberg, Berg and Webern and much later twentieth-century music.
