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.”
Adagio
Gustav Mahler Lyrics
We have lyrics for 'Adagio' by these artists:
Academy of St.Martin-in-the-Fields. Oooohhh Yea I'm that guy Candles lit tonight we'll get high …
Adagio Bár tudnám azt, hogy hol jársz Bár tudnám azt,…
Amici Forever Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento…
Anne-Sophie Mutter/Berliner Philharmoniker/Herbert von Karajan She's bugging me again, run to use the phone Find and…
Arina Domski Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento la voce…
Ashia Karana Taking time to slow down I was lost won’t say I’m…
Boikot Laalara laralaralara lara lara ra! Laalara laralaralara la…
CaYOCO 透きとおった魂を持つ者たちよ 今 ここに しばしの休息を いつも何かが足りない そんな感覺にどらわれ その先の孤獨を知…
Cristian Imparato Nascosto dalla lontananza la mia speranza brilla comunque, p…
Dawen Wang 慢半拍希望 你 能諒解 慢半拍跟你 說 聲歹勢 終於來到台北 剛到這裡難免回想起LA 給我一點時間 學著語言 體會文化的…
Demis Roussos Femmes sublimes et suprêmes Femmes, douceurs, violences ext…
Desire Capaldo Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento una voce…
DJ Quicksilver CAM'RON Miscellaneous Intro"(feat. DJ Kay Slay [Ca…
Era Miscela Cada vez se pasa el tiempo cuanto tienes que esperar? soy un…
Estrella Morente Como la tortolita Que anda por el monte. Asi yo andaba, Mi c…
Fabian Lara Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento…
Helmut Rilling Bach-Ensemble Les vendanges terminées La douce tiédeur de l'automne Pousse…
Il Divo Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento una voce…
Il Divo Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento una voc…
Il Gardino Armonico - ensemble Les vendanges terminées La douce tiédeur de l'automne Pousse…
Jarkko Ahola On kaikkialla lunta Vain kylmää, kylmää lunta On yhtä taivas…
Karel Gott Má pro mě slova skoupá, Já v rozpacích se koupám. Zná jak…
Kovács Kati Nézd, milyen szép az éjjel ránk köszönt csillagfénnyel …
La Leggenda New Trolls Wishing you to be so near to me, finding only…
La Triple Nelson En mi país, que tristeza, la pobreza y el rencor. Dice…
Lara Fabian Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento…
Lara Fabian и Игорь Крутой I don't know where to find you I don't know how…
Laura Bretan I don′t know where to find you I don't know how…
Lucie Bílá Ten kterému se stýská Zná samotu tak z blízka Je jeho denním…
Marek Torzewski Patrz chmury wolno płyną Śnieg cicho sypie zimą Wiatr szemrz…
Maria-Joao Pires Вечность зовет меня с собой Но не хочу идти одной Грозы и…
Mario Frangoulis Dei, poeti, uomini piccoli Tutti qui di passaggio come nuvo…
Mina Adagio Parla piano stasera O gli altri capiranno di noi B…
Monica Zetterlund Låt ögon drömmar vandra Vandra så sakteliga Böj blicken och …
Mutter Anne-Sophie She's bugging me again, run to use the phone Find and…
Nana Mouskouri Adagio Never on Sunday Lyrics Ap'to parathiro mou stelno…
New Trolls Always searching, never finding Your shadows in the dark Alw…
OBK Quiero ser Como el sol Para darte calor Y las noches Nun…
Pál Szécsi Nézd, milyen szép az éjjel, ránk köszönt csillagfénnyel. …
Panflöte & Orchestra Fall asleep now Close your eyes Drift away now And capsize …
Paola Damì Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento una voce…
Paris Jackson Fall asleep now Close your eyes Drift away now And capsize …
Peter Ekberg Pelz Att vara eller inte vara Ja det är frågan Att andas eller…
Philharmonia Orchestra Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento…
Poom No sé dónde encontrarte No sé cómo buscarte Oigo tu voz en…
R.E.M. 난 처음이었죠 이런 기분 다 뺏겨 버렸죠 온통 맘을 난…
Remo Giazotto Im really tired But I cant sleep At tHe night I wish I…
Rinaldo Strade son' cambiate. Faccie son' diverse. Era la mia città.…
Robert Wells feat. Sofia Källgren I don't know where to find you I don't know how…
Safri Duo (Instrumental)…
Sissel Weariness consumes me Longing pursues me Tremulous I fear Al…
St. Martin Oooohhh Yea I'm that guy Candles lit tonight we'll get high …
St. Olaf Orchestra And Choirs Agnus Dei, Qui tollis peccata mundi, Miserere nobis. Agnus …
The Canadian Tenors I don't know where to find you I don't know how…
Thy Shade I was told that freedom is for all I was…
Udo Jürgens Kein Glück war je von Dauer Uns bleibt nur leise Trauer Wir…
Various Artists I don't know where to find you I don't know how…
Vincent Niclo Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento una voc…
Wishing Chair Adagio …
Wizo Das Brot verdorben, die Spiele krank Es funktioniert nicht, …
Гела Гуралиа I don’t know where to find you I don’t know how…
●Lara Fabian Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento…
♥ Lara Fabian I don't know where to find you I don't know how…
♥Lara Fabian Non so dove trovarti Non so come cercarti Ma sento…
We have lyrics for these tracks by Gustav Mahler:
4 Rückert‐Lieder: 3. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
5 Lieder: 2. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
5 Lieder: 3. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
5 Rückertlieder: 3. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
Das Lied Von Der Erde: Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde Schon winkt der Wein im gold′nen Pokale, Doch trinkt noch ni…
Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde Schon winkt der Wein im goldnen Pokale, doch trinkt noch ni…
Der Abschied Die Sonne scheidet hinter dem Gebirge. In alle Täler steigt…
Der Einsame im Herbst Herbstnebel wallen bläulich überm See; vom Reif bezogen ste…
Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen: I. Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht When my darling has her wedding-day, her joyous wedding-day,…
Rückert-Lieder No. 1: Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
Rückert-Lieder: 3. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
Rückert-Lieder: Blicke mir in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
Rückert-Lieder: Blicke Mir Nicht In Die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
Rückert-Lieder: II. Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
Rückertlieder: Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder Meine Augen schlag' ich niede…
Von der Jugend Mitten in dem kleinen Teiche steht ein Pavillon aus grünem …
Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, Fröhliche Hochzeit macht, …
The lyrics are frequently found in the comments by searching or by filtering for lyric videos
More Genres
No Artists Found
More Artists
Load All
No Albums Found
More Albums
Load All
No Tracks Found
Genre not found
Artist not found
Album not found
Search results not found
Song not found
@henboker3
Tomorrow I turn 80. What other piece of music, the Adagietto in Mahler's Fifth, can time travel one back into the beginning of life and forward to the end, which for me, draws near. Thank you for the experience with the blessed Mahler.
@steffcantt24
Wish you a joyful day!
@davidparry8514
happy 80th Larry, you have good taste in music.
@Mspocahontas2011
Larry Thompson happy birthday, wishing a life full of music, travels, laughs and of course a good health, greetings from Paris 🇫🇷.
@vitonacci7779
La più sublime e alta contemplazione del nulla e del tutto che è la nostra piccola, infinita umanità.
@gracierose7937
I wish you many more years to come.
@JoshuaLoganjoshuadlogan
I am 413 years old next month. I was bitten by a lonely female vampire in 1609 in Cork Ireland. I've heard a lot of music in my time, but this is one of the most romantic pieces I've ever heard. I will probably listen to this when I watch a sunrise.
@racdoso
Best comment of the last 100 years! Bravo
@user-cd7uf7to5m
Nice, Joshua... 👍
@Allersberge2008
It's the soundtrack of a wonderful film "Death in Venice" directed by Luscino Visconti, based in a novel from Thomas Mann, written in 1911.