introduction texts
Gustav Mahler
1860-1879
Gustav
Mahler was born July 7th 1860 in Kali"te,
in Bohemia, close to the border with Moravia. He was the second of the
fourteen children of Bernhard Mahler and Maria Hermann, Jewish tradesmen
who lived on the proceeds of an inn and a distillery. Shortly after
Gustav was born the Mahlers moved to Jihlava (Iglau), which offered
better economic opportunities. From his early childhood Gustav studied
the piano. When he was ten years old he gave his first piano recital in
Jihlava. In 1875 he met Julius Epstein, who immediately recognized the
young man"s musical talents and accepted him as a student at the
Vienna Music Conservatory. In 1877 he met Hugo Wolf, and attended some
classes of Anton Bruckner with whom he became closely related during his
student period. In 1878 he finished his studies at the Conservatory. The
Quintet for strings and piano, with which he won his diploma, has been
lost; the unfinished opera Herzog Ernst von Schwaben, based on
the libretto of J. Steiner, and composed in the same period, has also
been lost. In the same year he enrolled at the University of Vienna and
in 1878-79 he began composing his cantata Das klagende Lied.
1880-1896
In
1880 he finished Das klagende Lied, and entered it the next year
in the competition for the Beethoven Prize. The composition was rejected
by a committee that included Eduard Hanslick and the composer Johannes
Brahms, who later became a champion of Mahler as a conductor. Mahler
began his conducting career in the small spa of Bad Hall; he then moved
to Ljubljana and then to Olomouc, where in 1883 he very successfully
conducted Bizet"s Carmen. This success won him the position of
second conductor in Kassel. He wrote the incidental music for
Scheffel"s drama Der Trompeter von S"ckingen and he composed
the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, as well as the sketches of
the First Symphony. In 1886 he worked in Leipzig as second Kapellmeister
under Arthur Nikisch, whom he temporarily replaced in 1887. In Leipzig
he lived in the house of Carl von Weber, a grandson of Carl Maria von
Weber, whose unfinished opera Die drei Pintos was successfully
completed by Mahler. During that time he also started working on songs
based on the German folk poetry called Des Knaben Wunderhorn. In
1888 he was nominated director of the Opera Theater of Budapest. In
1889 both his parents died and he assumed the role of the elder of the
Mahler family, then comprising three sisters and two brothers. In the
same year the First Symphony was performed in Budapest - a fiasco. In
1891 he started to work as conductor of the Opera in Hamburg, where he
conducted Wagner"s Der Ring des Nibelungen. In
the summer of 1892 he conducted a successful performance with the
Hamburg Theater in London; later he conducted a successful Der Ring
des Nibelungen at Covent Garden in London. From 1893 up to 1986 he
passed the summer periods in Steinbach am Attersee; he had a composing
hut built there, which enabled him to work without being disturbed; here
he finished the Second and the Third Symphonies, in 1894 and in 1896,
respectively.
1897-1907
In
1897 he was confirmed as director of the Court Opera in Vienna, which
began the ten-year period that was the most fruitful of Mahler's
creative life and the most intensive for his cultural contacts in the
Secessionist period of Vienna. In 1901 in Munich he premi"red his
Fourth Symphony, finished in 1900 - a crushing failure. He and his
sister Justine designed and built a chalet on the shore of the W"rthersee,
in the Austrian province of Carinthia, village of Maiernigg; he had
built a composing hut in the forest up the hill from the villa. There,
during the summers from 1901 to 1907, Mahler composed the Fifth, Sixth,
Seventh and Eighth Symphonies, the Rückertlieder and the Kindertotenlieder.
He married Alma Schindler in 1902, and premi"red the Third Symphony in
Krefeld, Germany - a resounding success. 1907 was a bleak year for
Mahler - tired of the political and anti-Semitic intrigues in Vienna,
he resigned from his position as Director, Court Opera in Vienna; his
elder daughter Maria Anna died; and his heart condition - a defective
mitral valve - was diagnosed. In December of the same year he left
Vienna for the United States where he had been invited to conduct the
Metropolitan Opera in New York at an attractive salary and with no
administrative responsibilities.
1907-1911
During the last years of his life Mahler worked in the winter periods in New York. Following his successes at the Metropolitan Opera he was nominated first conductor of the New York Philharmonic in 1909. In the United States the First, the Second and the Third Symphonies were successfully performed, but remained controversial. Mahler spent the summers in Europe, in his summer residence in Altschluderbach (near Dobbiaco/Toblach, then Austria, now Italy). There he composed his last complete works - Das Lied von der Erde in 1908, and the Ninth Symphony in 1909-1910. During his stays in Europe Mahler made trips to Prague in 1908 (world premi"re of the Seventh Symphony), to The Hague and to Amsterdam in 1909 (Seventh Symphony), and to Paris in 1910 (Second Symphony). In the summer of 1910 he began work on his Tenth Symphony, completing a full sketch of the five-movement work and almost half of the orchestration. However, the full orchestration was interrupted by the marriage crisis with Alma, and because of the strenuous preparations for the world premi"re of the Eighth Symphony in Munich - his greatest success. After that event, Mahler returned to the United States, prepared for a full season of concerts; however in April of 1911 he contracted a serious streptococcus infection. This infection lodged in his defective heart mitral valve and he became seriously ill. His condition was diagnosed accurately in New York, but with doubtful prognosis, so he went to Paris to consult specialist in blood diseases, but they could not help him. He then returned to Vienna where he died on May 18, and was buried in the cemetery of Grinzing.
from Musica e Dossier, IV 32, 1989, translated by Maria Korporal, revised by Stan Ruttenberg (president Colorado MahlerFest)
Inspiration - Gerrit Van Oord
Marianne Korporal alias Mahlerianne - Ricardo de Mambro Santos
Mahler, Cantor of the "Crisis" - Giorgio Boari Ortolani
Gustav Mahler - biography
Maria Korporal - biography