Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a Jewish Bohemian-Austrian co… Read Full Bio ↴Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was a Jewish Bohemian-Austrian composer and conductor. Mahler’s lifetime spanned the most crucial period in musical history. Behind him lay the rich, Romantic pastures of Anton Bruckner and Johannes Brahms, and ahead the “alien” musical landscapes of Schoenberg and Boulez and the harrowing emotional terrain of Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten. Such was Gustav Mahler’s all-embracing vision that he earned the respect and admiration of all these composers.
During a conversation with Jean Sibelius, Mahler insisted that his symphonies were “whole worlds” embracing his literary tastes, his neuroses, responses to nature and, most especially, the inexorable cycle of life and death.
His four great song collections – Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Youth’s Magic Horn), Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen (Songs Of A Wayfarer), Kindertotenlieder (Songs On The Death Of Children) and the five Rückert Lieder – all dwell on these very subjects, and also acted as a vital melodic repository for his symphonies.
Right at the end of his life Mahler fused song and symphonic form together in an epic Lieder-symphony entitled Das Lied Von Der Erde (The Song Of The Earth).
Each of Mahler’s nine symphonies (and the unfinished Tenth) requires the highest degree of orchestral virtuosity and sensitivity. He expanded the scale of music to near-bursting point – there are single movements in his works that last longer than an entire symphony by Mozart or Haydn.
He also stretched the traditional system of major and minor keys to its limits, taking music to the very brink of atonality (keylessness). Even 40 years ago, Mahler was still dismissed by many as a “fringe” composer, but now he is widely considered the last great symphonist in the tradition of Beethoven.
Mahler was born on July 7, 1860, in the Bohemian village of Kalischt, to a poor family of Moravian Jews. His father, Bernhard, ran a ramshackle distillery, and regularly thrashed his children and Mahler’s mother, Marie. She bore Bernhard 14 children in all and, despite suffering from a limp since birth and a heart condition, was made to work like a slave.
During a session with the pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the deeply traumatised Mahler recalled running screaming from the house in agony to the strains of a hurdy-gurdy playing outside.
It is somewhat ironic that the physical scars left by his father amounted to little more than a severe bruising, whereas those left by his mother were to plague him to the end of his days. He suffered from a psychosomatic nervous tic in his right leg, which made his movements slightly ungainly, and he inherited his mother’s heart defect, the deciding factor in his death.
Although Mahler’s performance was only average in most of his school subjects, by his early teens he was already marked out as a pianist prodigy. At 13, he gave a sensational public recital that included a virtuoso note-spinner by Sigismond Thalberg, and as a student at the Vienna Conservatory he performed Xaver Scharwenka’s ferociously difficult Piano Concerto No.1, apparently without batting an eyelid.
Mahler’s blazing talent unwittingly contributed to the great Lieder composer Hugo Wolf’s decline. The two shared lodgings as students, and formed a kind of mutual admiration society.
Sadly, by the end of his life, Wolf’s unstinting admiration for Mahler had dissolved into spiteful resentment at the latter’s success. Wolf’s descent into madness was marked by his wild claim that he had been appointed Director of the Vienna Opera and that his first job was to sack Mahler (by now the real director). Following a bungled suicide attempt, he spent the rest of his life in a Vienna lunatic asylum.
For a while, it seemed as though Mahler would make his way in the world as a concert pianist yet, following a series of whirlwind appointments in the provinces, he emerged as a conductor of visionary genius. His pioneering methods of concert preparation and opera production were to set the standard for the rest of the 20th century, exerting a profound influence on conductors from Herbert von Karajan to Leonard Bernstein.
Meticulous down to the last detail, a performance under Mahler was – like his music – all-encompassing. During his tenure at the Vienna Opera (1897-1908), he presided over 52 new productions of established repertoire, and introduced no fewer than 32 new works, including Puccini’s La Bohème and Madama Butterfly. As a result, composing became a part-time activity during the summer months between concert seasons.
Yet, if Mahler was universally hailed as a conductor, his music excited bewilderingly contrasting reactions, ranging from idolatry to near-revulsion. As early as the 1889 premiere of his First Symphony, opinion was already sharply divided.
A report that appeared in the Nemzet newspaper positively glows with enthusiasm: “This symphony is the impassioned work of a youthful, unquenchable talent, barely containing its seemingly inexhaustible ideas within a traditional framework... wild applause broke out at the end of every movement.”
Yet the New Pest Journal was altogether less enthusiastic, suggesting that audiences will “always be pleased to see him [Mahler] with baton in hand, just as long as he’s not conducting one of his own works”.
If the First Symphony caused problems, many of the following eight symphonies left audiences aghast – most particularly the Sixth with its chilling hammer blows of fate from the timpani.
Following the premiere, one critic noted painfully: “Where music falls short, the hammer falls.”
Yet not all was doom and gloom, by any means. The Resurrection Symphony No. 2 won many fervent admirers, while the 1910 Munich premiere of the massive Eighth, the so-called Symphony Of A Thousand, was perhaps the single greatest triumph of Mahler’s career: “There was this extraordinary moment when, with thundering applause all around him, Mahler appeared in front of a thousand performers,” recalled the conductor Bruno Walter in his 1936 biography of the composer. “He mounted the steps of the auditorium towards where the children’s chorus was positioned... and shook every one of them personally by the hand.”
Other successes included an early Berlin performance of the enchanting Fourth Symphony, which Mahler himself conducted. Richard Strauss was so in awe of it that he sent Mahler his complete published works.
Mahler’s Fifth – from which the famous Adagietto comes – took longer to establish itself, but finally enjoyed an ovation in St Petersburg during Mahler’s tour of 1907. In the audience that night was the young Igor Stravinsky, himself on the verge of creating a sensation with the first of his great ballets, The Firebird.
Having conquered Europe, towards the end of his life Mahler was appointed Music Director at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His constant battle with bouts of depression and neurosis had recently placed an appalling strain on his marriage to Alma Mahler (née Schindler), who was 19 years his junior, and he had never recovered from the death of their first daughter, Maria Anna, at the tender age of five.
Yet his new-found acclaim had a positive effect on Mahler almost immediately, and he began living for every hour.
In February 1909, Mahler agreed to revive the New York Philharmonic as a full-time professional outfit, typically insisting on the highest playing standards. On April 1, he conducted its inaugural concert, including a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony that had the critics in raptures. He was immediately signed up as director, and given carte blanche to hire and fire.
Just as it seemed that Mahler might at last be coming to terms with the psychological problems that had plagued him all his life, he was diagnosed with a serious bacterial infection. The combination of his heart condition and the lack of antibiotics in those days meant there was no hope of recovery.
Mahler expressed a wish to die in Vienna and, having only just survived the transatlantic boat crossing, travelled by train to Vienna on a stretcher. Five days later he died, six weeks short of his 51st birthday. His last words, according to his wife Alma, were “Mozart – Mozart!”
He never saw Das Lied Von Der Erde or the Ninth Symphony performed and, despite the fame he had won against all the odds, he reflected despondently: “I am condemned to homelessness thrice over: as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world.”
During a conversation with Jean Sibelius, Mahler insisted that his symphonies were “whole worlds” embracing his literary tastes, his neuroses, responses to nature and, most especially, the inexorable cycle of life and death.
His four great song collections – Des Knaben Wunderhorn (Youth’s Magic Horn), Lieder Eines Fahrenden Gesellen (Songs Of A Wayfarer), Kindertotenlieder (Songs On The Death Of Children) and the five Rückert Lieder – all dwell on these very subjects, and also acted as a vital melodic repository for his symphonies.
Right at the end of his life Mahler fused song and symphonic form together in an epic Lieder-symphony entitled Das Lied Von Der Erde (The Song Of The Earth).
Each of Mahler’s nine symphonies (and the unfinished Tenth) requires the highest degree of orchestral virtuosity and sensitivity. He expanded the scale of music to near-bursting point – there are single movements in his works that last longer than an entire symphony by Mozart or Haydn.
He also stretched the traditional system of major and minor keys to its limits, taking music to the very brink of atonality (keylessness). Even 40 years ago, Mahler was still dismissed by many as a “fringe” composer, but now he is widely considered the last great symphonist in the tradition of Beethoven.
Mahler was born on July 7, 1860, in the Bohemian village of Kalischt, to a poor family of Moravian Jews. His father, Bernhard, ran a ramshackle distillery, and regularly thrashed his children and Mahler’s mother, Marie. She bore Bernhard 14 children in all and, despite suffering from a limp since birth and a heart condition, was made to work like a slave.
During a session with the pioneering psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, the deeply traumatised Mahler recalled running screaming from the house in agony to the strains of a hurdy-gurdy playing outside.
It is somewhat ironic that the physical scars left by his father amounted to little more than a severe bruising, whereas those left by his mother were to plague him to the end of his days. He suffered from a psychosomatic nervous tic in his right leg, which made his movements slightly ungainly, and he inherited his mother’s heart defect, the deciding factor in his death.
Although Mahler’s performance was only average in most of his school subjects, by his early teens he was already marked out as a pianist prodigy. At 13, he gave a sensational public recital that included a virtuoso note-spinner by Sigismond Thalberg, and as a student at the Vienna Conservatory he performed Xaver Scharwenka’s ferociously difficult Piano Concerto No.1, apparently without batting an eyelid.
Mahler’s blazing talent unwittingly contributed to the great Lieder composer Hugo Wolf’s decline. The two shared lodgings as students, and formed a kind of mutual admiration society.
Sadly, by the end of his life, Wolf’s unstinting admiration for Mahler had dissolved into spiteful resentment at the latter’s success. Wolf’s descent into madness was marked by his wild claim that he had been appointed Director of the Vienna Opera and that his first job was to sack Mahler (by now the real director). Following a bungled suicide attempt, he spent the rest of his life in a Vienna lunatic asylum.
For a while, it seemed as though Mahler would make his way in the world as a concert pianist yet, following a series of whirlwind appointments in the provinces, he emerged as a conductor of visionary genius. His pioneering methods of concert preparation and opera production were to set the standard for the rest of the 20th century, exerting a profound influence on conductors from Herbert von Karajan to Leonard Bernstein.
Meticulous down to the last detail, a performance under Mahler was – like his music – all-encompassing. During his tenure at the Vienna Opera (1897-1908), he presided over 52 new productions of established repertoire, and introduced no fewer than 32 new works, including Puccini’s La Bohème and Madama Butterfly. As a result, composing became a part-time activity during the summer months between concert seasons.
Yet, if Mahler was universally hailed as a conductor, his music excited bewilderingly contrasting reactions, ranging from idolatry to near-revulsion. As early as the 1889 premiere of his First Symphony, opinion was already sharply divided.
A report that appeared in the Nemzet newspaper positively glows with enthusiasm: “This symphony is the impassioned work of a youthful, unquenchable talent, barely containing its seemingly inexhaustible ideas within a traditional framework... wild applause broke out at the end of every movement.”
Yet the New Pest Journal was altogether less enthusiastic, suggesting that audiences will “always be pleased to see him [Mahler] with baton in hand, just as long as he’s not conducting one of his own works”.
If the First Symphony caused problems, many of the following eight symphonies left audiences aghast – most particularly the Sixth with its chilling hammer blows of fate from the timpani.
Following the premiere, one critic noted painfully: “Where music falls short, the hammer falls.”
Yet not all was doom and gloom, by any means. The Resurrection Symphony No. 2 won many fervent admirers, while the 1910 Munich premiere of the massive Eighth, the so-called Symphony Of A Thousand, was perhaps the single greatest triumph of Mahler’s career: “There was this extraordinary moment when, with thundering applause all around him, Mahler appeared in front of a thousand performers,” recalled the conductor Bruno Walter in his 1936 biography of the composer. “He mounted the steps of the auditorium towards where the children’s chorus was positioned... and shook every one of them personally by the hand.”
Other successes included an early Berlin performance of the enchanting Fourth Symphony, which Mahler himself conducted. Richard Strauss was so in awe of it that he sent Mahler his complete published works.
Mahler’s Fifth – from which the famous Adagietto comes – took longer to establish itself, but finally enjoyed an ovation in St Petersburg during Mahler’s tour of 1907. In the audience that night was the young Igor Stravinsky, himself on the verge of creating a sensation with the first of his great ballets, The Firebird.
Having conquered Europe, towards the end of his life Mahler was appointed Music Director at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. His constant battle with bouts of depression and neurosis had recently placed an appalling strain on his marriage to Alma Mahler (née Schindler), who was 19 years his junior, and he had never recovered from the death of their first daughter, Maria Anna, at the tender age of five.
Yet his new-found acclaim had a positive effect on Mahler almost immediately, and he began living for every hour.
In February 1909, Mahler agreed to revive the New York Philharmonic as a full-time professional outfit, typically insisting on the highest playing standards. On April 1, he conducted its inaugural concert, including a performance of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony that had the critics in raptures. He was immediately signed up as director, and given carte blanche to hire and fire.
Just as it seemed that Mahler might at last be coming to terms with the psychological problems that had plagued him all his life, he was diagnosed with a serious bacterial infection. The combination of his heart condition and the lack of antibiotics in those days meant there was no hope of recovery.
Mahler expressed a wish to die in Vienna and, having only just survived the transatlantic boat crossing, travelled by train to Vienna on a stretcher. Five days later he died, six weeks short of his 51st birthday. His last words, according to his wife Alma, were “Mozart – Mozart!”
He never saw Das Lied Von Der Erde or the Ninth Symphony performed and, despite the fame he had won against all the odds, he reflected despondently: “I am condemned to homelessness thrice over: as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world.”
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01Symphony No. 1 "Titan": I. Langsam. Schleppend. Wie ein Naturlaut. Im Anfang sehr gemächlich14:28Gustav Mahler
02Symphony No. 1 "Titan": II. Kräftig bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell - Trio. Recht gemächlich8:00Gustav Mahler
06Symphony No. 2 in C minor: I. Allegro maestoso: Mit durchaus ernstem und feierlichem Ausdruck0:01Gustav Mahler
13Symphony No. 2 in C minor: V. "Aufersteh'n, ja aufersteh'n wirst du": Langsam. Misterioso6:39Gustav Mahler
18Symphony No. 3: IV. Sehr langsam. Misterioso. Durchaus "O Mensch! Gib acht!" (contralto solo)8:44Gustav Mahler
19Symphony No. 3: V. Lustig im Tempo und keck im Ausdruck "Bimm bamm / Es sungen drei Engel" (chorus, contralto solo)4:08Gustav Mahler
26Symphony No. 5 in C-sharp Minor: I. Trauermarsch. In gemessenem Schritt. Streng. Wie ein Kondukt12:41Gustav Mahler
36Symphony No. 7: I. Langsam (Adagio). Nicht schleppen - Allegro risoluto, ma non troppo0:01Gustav Mahler
40Symphony No. 7: V. Rondo-Finale. Tempo I (Allegro ordinato) / Tempo II (Allegro moderato ma energico)0:01Gustav Mahler
47Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. I. Poco adagio - Chor und Echo "Waldung, sie schwankt heran"14:16Gustav Mahler
48Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. II. Pater ecstaticus: "Ewiger Wonnebrand"1:35Gustav Mahler
49Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. III. Pater profundis: "Wie Felsenabgrund mir zu Füßen"4:41Gustav Mahler
50Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. IV. Chor der Engel: "Gerettet ist das edle Glied"3:03Gustav Mahler
51Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. V. Die vollendeteren Engel: "Uns bleibt ein Erdenrest"2:58Gustav Mahler
52Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. VI. Doctor Marianus: "Höchste Herrscherin der Welt"8:07Gustav Mahler
53Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. VII. Magna Peccatrix: "Bei der Liebe, die den Füßen"4:54Gustav Mahler
54Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. VIII. Una Poenitentium: "Neige, du Ohnegleiche"5:18Gustav Mahler
55Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. IX. Doctor Marianus: "Blicket auf zum Retterblick"4:46Gustav Mahler
56Symphony No. 8 "Symphony of a Thousand": Part II. X. Chorus mysticus: "Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis"6:43Gustav Mahler
64Symphony No. 9: I. Andante comodo. Plötzlich bedeutend langsamer (Lento) und leise5:42Gustav Mahler
65Mahler: Symphony No.9 in D / 2. Satz - Im Tempo eines gemaechlichen Laendlers.Etwas taeppisch und sehr derb2:48Herbert von Karajan
66Symphony No. 9: II. In Tempo eines gemächlichen Länders. Etwas Täppisch und sehr derb. Poco piu mosso subito (Tempo II)2:44Gustav Mahler
67Symphony No. 9: II. In Tempo eines gemächlichen Länders. Etwas Täppisch und sehr derb. Tempo III1:42Gustav Mahler
68Symphony No. 9: II. In Tempo eines gemächlichen Länders. Etwas Täppisch und sehr derb. A tempo II2:59Gustav Mahler
69Symphony No. 9: II. In Tempo eines gemächlichen Länders. Etwas Täppisch und sehr derb. Tempo I1:37Gustav Mahler
70Symphony No. 9: II. In Tempo eines gemächlichen Länders. Etwas Täppisch und sehr derb. Tempo II1:34Gustav Mahler
71Symphony No. 9: II. In Tempo eines gemächlichen Länders. Etwas Täppisch und sehr derb. Tempo I. subito3:14Gustav Mahler
73Symphony No. 9: III. Rondo Burleske. Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig: L'istesso tempo1:08Gustav Mahler
74Symphony No. 9: III. Rondo Burleske. Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig: Sempre l'istesso tempo1:19Gustav Mahler
75Symphony No. 9: III. Rondo Burleske. Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig: L'istesso tempo1:08Gustav Mahler
77Symphony No. 9: III. Rondo Burleske. Allegro assai. Sehr trotzig: Tempo I. subito1:32Gustav Mahler
80Symphony No. 9: IV. Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend: Plötzlich wieder (wie zu Anfang) und etwas zögernd2:45Gustav Mahler
81Symphony No. 9: IV. Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend: Molto adagio subito2:18Gustav Mahler
82Symphony No. 9: IV. Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend: A tempo (Molto adagio)3:57Gustav Mahler
83Symphony No. 9: IV. Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend: Stets sehr gehalten1:51Gustav Mahler
84Symphony No. 9: IV. Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend: Fließender, doch durchaus nicht eilend1:56Gustav Mahler
85Symphony No. 9: IV. Adagio. Sehr langsam und noch zurückhaltend: Tempo I. Molto adagio5:45Gustav Mahler
134Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit: Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald3:10Gustav Mahler
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Gustav Mahler: Complete Edition
Gustav Mahler Lyrics
5 Lieder: 2. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…