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.”
Feierlich und gemessen%2C ohne zu schleppen
Gustav Mahler Lyrics
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 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
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@DagobertoEspinoza
Gracias por subirlo.
A mediados de la década de 1880, el prestigio de Gustav Mahler como director iba en franco aumento, y como compositor, podía mostrar un trabajo temprano, considerado su primera obra maestra, una cantata, terminada a los veinte años. De modo que podía presentarse al mundo como un compositor de genio que por el momento se ganaba la vida como director de variadas agrupaciones orquestales de gran parte de Europa. A la par, su extrema severidad, rectitud y capacidad de trabajo comenzaban a hacerse célebres, así como las habituales sesiones de ensayos interminables.
Así pues, luego de cumplir dos exitosas temporadas como director del Teatro Alemán de Praga entre 1884 y 1886, Mahler consideró que la ciudad le había quedado chica y que ya era hora de buscar nuevos caminos. Su próximo destino fue Leipzig, donde un golpe de "suerte" –la repentina enfermedad del anciano director titular– lo colocó en una posición privilegiada. Las representaciones de El anillo del nibelungo de Wagner, bajo su batuta, consiguieron un éxito colosal. A partir de entonces, su reputación en Leipzig quedó asegurada.
Al poco tiempo, trabó conocimiento con un nieto de Carl Maria von Weber, personaje que logró interesar a Mahler para trabajar en los bocetos de una ópera cómica que su abuelo había dejado inacabados. La tarea era enorme, de modo que las sesiones de trabajo se multiplicaron, buen número de ellas en casa del nieto, quien tenía por esposa a una bella mujer, de nombre Marion. El joven Gustav, de 27 años, no tardó en quedar prendado de ella.
Es extendida la opinión de que la relación no fue correspondida, pero algunos testimonios aseguran que Marion también cayó bajo el hechizo del aclamado director. Al final del día primó la sensatez y según cuenta Alma Mahler en sus memorias, para Gustav "fue un alivio que el tren partiera sin que apareciera la mujer que iba a huir en su compañía". Con todo, el affaire tuvo una virtud: Mahler volvió a la composición y fruto de ello fue su Primera Sinfonía.
http://labellezadeescuchar.blogspot.com/2015/03/mahler-sinfonia-no-1-mov-3.html
@jordanwartell-composer
2:41 Some of the most beautiful music Mahler has ever written.
@jonhmm160
I also love that part. But its not the same in other recordings, it truly shines in this one.
@michaelshore2609
the whole movement is awesome but how about the timestopping twinkly snowglobe at 5:35? heavenly!
@laurodetebas585
My POV 😊
@pauliberg3492
I listen to this piece of music with GUSTAVO DUDAMEL every morning of my life , it is like my early morning coffee , the way he conducts , the way he makes music live , the way he breathes life into the music-- it is magnificent .
@brigittequerre8319
G. Dudamel: merveilleux chef d'orchestre....le voir diriger est un "privilège"..Sa fougue, son amour des musiciens , sa gentillesse sont la marque d'un très grand!...Il rappelle un autre chef exceptionnel: Sergiu Celibidace...
@thierry.g5279
Magie de Mahler dans ce mouvement, commencer par Frère Jacques transformé en marche funèbre, puis glisser doucement vers de la musique populaire. Un convoi en milieu rural qui se termine en rencontre presque joyeuse ? Excellente interprétation de Gustavo Dudamel !
@MrJohnverkerk
Dudamel rewards his players with the ecstasy on his face, his smiles, his every move. They reward him in turn with ethereal beauty.
@elliottshide3929
Love it when there are ads throughout the video. Makes for a great listening experience.
@captain_bretzel
You mean to you don't like it when a classical piece over 130 years old performed by a group of outstanding music professionals is interrupted by a bombastic advertisement for an energy drink??? 😁