Saturated with lachrymose melodies, dirgelike rhythms and the ghastly, fatal oompahs of sad waltzes, the songs and symphonies of Gustav Mahler prophetically mourn the victims of twentieth-century catastrophes the composer died too soon to witness, or perhaps even imagine. At least that’s how his work sounds today, converging in our ears with music about various horrors written by composers he inspired: Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein. Because of their achievements, and the Mahleresque tones of composers as different as Arnold Schoenberg and Franz Schmidt, Anton Webern and Kurt Weill, Luciano Berio and George Crumb, Mahler seems like a far more central figure than he was during his lifetime, when French composers dismissed him as German, Germans considered him to be Viennese and the Viennese either admired or detested him for being a Jew.
After his death, Alma Mahler described her husband as a “Christgläubiger Jude,” a Jew who believed in Christ. Henry-Louis de La Grange’s inability to discern the many shades of this statement and other racial and religious characterizations of Mahler undermines his monumental biography of the composer, of which the fourth and final volume, A New Life Cut Short, has finally appeared in English. Its 1,758 pages chronicle less than three and a half years of Mahler’s fifty-year life, from his arrival in New York City in December 1907 to his death in Vienna in May 1911.
03/07/2009...2:20 am
Mahler’s Body
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2 Comments
31/07/2009 at 9:04 pm
Thank-you David Schiff,
Just posting to show my appreciation, that at least someone else may be on the same wavelength as I am concerning Mahler and his music.
“After his death, Alma Mahler described her husband as a “Christgläubiger Jude,” a Jew who believed in Christ.”
Indeed, and a possible thread may consider the question as to whether this conviction had anything to do with Mahler’s intensely driven desire to get his works out there, knowing his time was short, that he was probably from quite early on in his youth, aware that he was different from others and would likely always remain so, a loner, an individualist, someone who was a keen observer of others, an original type. There aren’t many of them around us in daily life. Most are frankly composites of what they have decided to pick up and retain, others are stuck and may or may not get out of that. Those like Mahler have a vision and a mission.
“… Gustav Mahler prophetically mourn the victims of twentieth-century catastrophes the composer died too soon to witness, or perhaps even imagine. At least that’s how his work sounds today,” etc.
With their incredible expressions of personal integrity, each Mahler composition raises issues beyond beauty and form, beyond the mere desire to get and maintain the audience’s attention, to entertain or otherwise. I am glad to see that others regard him as prophetic. But there is also another theme running through Mahler of which I am certain he was personally convinced, that however it would be conceived, there is a future life beyond death. He was after all, preoccupied with death, as integrally connected with life and therefore the meaning, or not, of death is wrestled with more in his work than in any other music I know of.
I will be one of those who eventually acquires a copy of A New Life Cut Short. Only hard core Mahlerites would know, but one thing I’d like to find out is how many others out there have the same kind of affinity for the unfinished Tenth that I have had all my life. The Ninth is fabulous, but I have accepted his Tenth as not only real, especially the completed first and third movements, but transcendental as in attempting to answer some of the questions and complaints posed in the Ninth. The Tenth is about resignation to death and its aftermath. The last movement shows a sight of life in the next dimension.
Hope others join more Mahler blogs!
27/08/2009 at 3:30 pm
This is remotely related to Mahler, but, have you read about the concierge who listens to Mahler and Mozart and reads Proust and Tolstoy in her spare time? Only a character in The Elegance of the Hedgehog, wildly popular in France and Europe. Just would like your view on the book.