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Image:mahler.jpg|right|framed|Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler (July 7, 1860–May 18, 1911)
was a Bohemian-Austrian composer and
conducting|conductor.

Mahler was best known in his time as one of the
leading conductors of his day, but is now
remembered as an important neoromanticism
(music)|post-romantic composer, particularly for
his symphonies and his symphonic song cycle, Das
Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), which
was the peak of his vocal writing. At a length of
approximately 95 minutes, his Symphony No. 3
(Mahler)|third symphony is one of the longest
symphony|symphonies ever performed; it is
currently the longest of all symphonies in the
general symphonic repertoire.

==Biography==

Gustav Mahler was born into a Jewish family in
Kaliště|Kalischt, Bohemia. His parents moved to
Jihlava, Moravia, Austro-Hungarian Empire where
Mahler spent his childhood, in the first year of
his life. Having noticed the boy's talent at an
early age, his parents arranged piano lessons for
him when he was six years old. In 1875, Mahler,
then fifteen, was admitted to the Vienna
Conservatoire where he studied piano under Julius
Epstein. Three years later, Mahler attended Vienna
University, where Anton Bruckner was lecturing.
While at the university, he worked as a music
teacher and made his first major attempt at
composition with Das klagende Lied; the opera,
which he later turned into a cantata, was entered
in a competition, in which he was ultimately
unsuccessful.

In 1880, Mahler began his work as a conductor with
a job at a summer theatre at Bad Hall; in the
years that followed, he took posts at successively
larger opera houses: Ljubljana in 1881, Olomouc in
1882, Kassel in 1884, Prague in 1885, Leipzig in
1886 and Budapest in 1888. In 1887, he took over
conducting Richard Wagner's Der Ring des
Nibelungen|Ring cycle from an ill Arthur Nikisch,
firmly establishing his reputation among critics
and the public alike. The year after he completed
Carl Maria von Weber's unfinished opera Die drei
Pintos, the success of which brought Mahler
significant fame and income. His first long-term
post came at the Hamburg State Opera|Hamburg Opera
in 1891, where he stayed until 1897. While there,
he took summer vacations at Steinbach-am-Attersee
in Upper Austria, during which he concentrated on
composition, completing his Symphony No. 1
(Mahler)|first symphony and most of the song cycle
Lieder aus "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (The Youth's
Magic Horn), set to a collection of Des Knaben
Wunderhorn|folk poems of the same name.

Image:mahler_4.jpg|right|framed|Mahler conducting

In 1897, Mahler, then thirty-seven, was offered
and accepted the directorship of the Vienna State
Opera|Vienna Opera, the most prestigious musical
position in the Austrian Empire. He brought in his
ten years there his fiery disposition, noted
perfectionism, and inflexible will. While the
works of the France|French composer Jules Massenet
were in style when Mahler took over the Opera, by
the time his time at the Opera was over, he had
taught the public to revere the works of Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, and
Christoph Willibald Gluck. He ran the Opera for
nine months of the year, spending the rest
composing, mainly at Maiernigg, where he had a
small cottage on the Wörthersee. There he
composed his fourth through eighth
symphony|symphonies, the Rückert Lieder based
on poems by Friedrich Rückert, the
Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of
Children), and the last lied of the Lieder aus
"Des Knaben Wunderhorn", entitled Der
Tambourg'sell.

Shortly before his appointment to the Opera,
Mahler converted from Judaism to Roman
Catholic|Roman Catholicism, mainly due to his
fears of anti-semitism, which was rampant in the
city. Mahler became one of a generation of Jewish
intellectuals who had lost their religious
identity and taken root in the Austro-German
culture they felt they were bound to be a part of.
As the composer himself said, "I am thrice
homeless: as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an
Austrian among Germany|Germans, and as a Jew
throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder,
never welcome"

In 1902, Mahler married Alma Schindler
(1879–1964), with whom he had two daughters,
Anna Mahler|Anna (1904–1988), who later
became a sculptor, and Maria Anna,
(1902–1907) who died of either scarlet fever
or diphtheria at the age of only five.

Mahler's stubborn obstinance in musical matters
created several powerful enemies; he was also
coming under increasingly virulent anti-semitic
attacks, in 1907 becoming almost unbearable. His
own music, which he had attempted to introduce
while in Vienna, was also not very well received
on the whole; while his Symphony No. 4
(Mahler)|fourth symphony was well received by
some, it was not until the performance of his
Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)|eighth in 1910 that he had
any true public success with his music. (The
pieces he wrote after that were not performed
during his lifetime.) The death of his younger
daughter left him grief-stricken; that same year
he discovered he had heart disease
(endocarditis|infective endocarditis). His
eventual resignation from the Opera, in part
forced by a largely anti-semitic press, was hardly
unexpected. That year he received an offer to
conduct the Metropolitan Opera in New York. He
conducted a season there in 1908, only to be set
aside in favor of Arturo Toscanini. The next year,
he became the conductor of the newly formed New
York Philharmonic Orchestra. He hoped to earn
enough to be able to retire at the age of fifty to
devote his efforts entirely to composing. At this
time, he completed his Das Lied von der Erde (The
Song of the Earth), and his Symphony No. 9
(Mahler)|ninth symphony, which would be his last
completed work.

In the middle of a long concert season with the
Philharmonic, during his last visit to America in
February 1911, he fell seriously ill with a
streptococcus infection and was taken to Paris,
where a new serum had just recently been
developed. However, Mahler's health took a turn
for the worse, and was taken back to Vienna at his
request. He died there from his infection on May
18, 1911 at the age of 50, leaving his tenth
symphony incomplete. He was buried, at his
request, beside his daughter, in the Grinzinger
Cemetery outside Vienna.

==Music==

Mahler was the last in a line of Viennese
symphonists extending from the First Viennese
School of Joseph Haydn, Wolfgang Amadeus
Mozart|Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven|Beethoven and
Franz Schubert to Anton Bruckner|Bruckner and
Johannes Brahms; he also incorporated the ideas of
Romantic music|Romantic composers like Robert
Schumann and Felix Mendelssohn. The major
influence on his work, however, was that of
Richard Wagner, who was, as Mahler said, after
Beethoven, the only composer to truly have
"development" (see Sonata form and History of
sonata form) in his music.

The spirit of the lied (German language|German for
song) constantly rests in his work. He followed
Schubert and Schumann in developing the song
cycle, but rather than write piano accompaniment,
he orchestrated it instead. Lieder eines fahrenden
Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) is a set of four
songs written as a rejected lover wandering alone
along the earth; Mahler wrote the text himself,
inspired by his unhappy love affair with a singer
while conducting at Kassel.

Often, his works involved the spirit of Austrian
song and dance. Keenly aware of the colourations
of the orchestra, the composer filled his
symphonies with flowing melody|melodies and
expressive harmony|harmonies, achieving bright
tonal qualities using the clarity of his melodic
lines. Among his other innovations are expressive
use of combinations of instruments in both large
and small scale, increased use of percussion, as
well as combining voice and chorus in the symphony
form, and extreme voice leading in his
counterpoint. His orchestral style was based on
counterpoint; two melodies would each start off
the other seemingly simultaneously. Choosing
clarity over a mass orgy of sound, he never left
the principle of tonality, as composers following
him, in particular, those of the Second Viennese
School of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton
Webern, would later do.

Mahler combined the ideas of Romanticism,
including the use of program music, and the use of
song melodies in symphonic works, with the
resources which the development of the
orchestra|symphony orchestra had made possible.
The result was to extend, and eventually break,
the understanding of symphonic form, as he
searched for ways to expand his music. He stated
that a symphony should be an "entire world". As a
result, he met with difficulties in presenting his
works, and would continually revise the details of
his orchestration until he was satisfied with the
effect.

His symphonies are generally divided into three
periods. The first, dominated by his reading of
the Des Knaben Wunderhorn|Wunderhorn poems, and
incorporating characteristic melodies from his
song settings of them, includes his first four
symphonies. His second period, including the next
three symphonies, focuses on increasing severity
of expression, including the Symphony No. 6
(Mahler)|Tragic symphony, whose hammer blows
shocked Viennese audiences and inspired other
composers. His last period is marked by increasing
polyphony and includes his Symphony No. 8
(Mahler)|eighth, Symphony No. 9 (Mahler)|ninth,
and unfinished Symphony No. 10 (Mahler)|tenth
symphonies, as well as Das Lied von der Erde (The
Song of the Earth).

Mahler was obsessed by Beethoven's legacy; he
declared that all of his symphonies were "ninths",
having the same impact and scale as Beethoven's
famous Symphony No. 9 (Beethoven)|Choral symphony.
(Incidentally, Mahler was a firm believer in the
curse of the ninth and was terrified of writing a
ninth numbered symphony, so much that he referred
to Das Lied von der Erde as a song cycle rather
than number it as a symphony; the work can be
considered to be both a song cycle and a symphony.
However, Mahler still died after writing his ninth
numbered symphony, leaving his tenth unfinished to
be completed from his sketches and designs in the
1970s.)

Few composers can be said to have freely
intermixed their work and their life so
completely; in the manuscript of the tenth
Symphony, there are notations to his wife Alma
(who was, at the time, having an affair with
Walter Gropius, her future husband after Mahler's
death) as well as other autobiographical
references. He was deeply spiritual and described
his music in terms of nature very often. This
resulted in his music being viewed as extremely
emotional for a long time after his death. In
addition to restlessly searching for ways of
extending symphonic expression, he was also an
ardent craftsman, which shows both in his
meticulous working methods and careful planning,
and in his studies of previous composers.

==Legacy==

Mahler's music had a pivotal role in what followed
after his life. His compositions had a tremendous
impact on Schoenberg, Berg and Webern immediately,
as well as conductors Bruno Walter and Otto
Klemperer, both of who worked with the composer,
were helped by him in their careers, and who would
eventually take his music to United
States|America, where it would influence Hollywood
film composition. His music also influenced
Richard Strauss, the early symphonies of Havergal
Brian, and the music of Erich Wolfgang Korngold,
Kurt Weill, Dmitri Shostakovich, Alfred Schnittke,
as well as Benjamin Britten in quite different
ways.

As a conductor, his innovative methods and
techniques survive to the present. He was famous
for saying that "tradition is sloppiness", and
requiring extensive rehearsals of works. This led
to tensions between Mahler and his orchestras,
even as those tensions produced finer performances
than had been previously thought possible.

Mahler's difficulties in getting his works
accepted led him to say "my time will come"; that
time came in the mid 20th century. Advocated by
both those who had known him (prominently among
them the composers Alexander von Zemlinsky and
Arnold Schoenberg), and by a generation of
conductors including the American composer and
conductor Leonard Bernstein, his works won over an
audience hungry for the next wave of musical
exploration. Soon, complete Mahler symphony cycles
were recorded and his works became the defining
pieces for many conductors.

In the late 20th century|twentieth century, new
musicological methods led to the extensive editing
of his scores, leading to various attempts to
complete the tenth symphony and improved version
of the others. Well-known interpreters of Mahler's
work today include Claudio Abbado, Pierre Boulez,
Riccardo Chailly, Bernard Haitink, Jascha
Horenstein, Zubin Mehta, Simon Rattle|Sir Simon
Rattle, Markus Stenz, Michael Tilson Thomas and
Benjamin Zander; Mahler's music continues to
attract interest today.

==Works==

===Symphonies===

* Symphony No. 1 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 1 in D
major, "Titan" (1884–1888)
* Symphony No. 2 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 2 in C
minor, "Resurrection" (1888–1894)
* Symphony No. 3 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 3 in D
minor (1895–1896)
* Symphony No. 4 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 4 in G
major (1899–1901)
* Symphony No. 5 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 5 in
C-sharp minor (1901–1902)
** Note: While the symphony begins in the
advertised c-sharp minor, it should be noted that
the composer himself wrote, in a letter to his
publisher: "it is difficult to speak of a key for
the whole symphony, and to avoid misunderstandings
the key should best be omitted."
* Symphony No. 6 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 6 in A
minor, "Tragic" (1903–1904)
* Symphony No. 7 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 7 in E
minor, "Song of the Night" (1904–1905)
* Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 8 in E-flat
major, "Symphony of a Thousand" (1906)
** Note: The subtitles for the seventh and eight
symphonies were not by Mahler. The composer, in
fact, strongly objected to the subtitle for the
eighth symphony.
* Symphony No. 9 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 9 in D
major (1909–1910)
* Symphony No. 10 (Mahler)|Symphony No. 10 in
F-sharp minor (1910–1911), incomplete
** Various completions by:
*** Adagio and Purgatorio prepared for performance
by Ernst Krenek (1924)
*** Deryck Cooke (1960, 1964, 1976, 1989)
*** Joseph Wheeler (musicologist)|Joseph Wheeler
(1948–1965)
*** Clinton Carpenter (1966)
*** Remo Mazzetti, Jr. (1989)
*** Rudolf Barshai (2000)
*** The duo of Nicola Samale and Giuseppe Mazzucca
(2002)
** Note: several prominent Mahler conductors
refused to perform the completed tenth symphony
for various reasons, most notably Bruno Walter and
Leonard Bernstein.

===Vocal works===

* Das klagende Lied, (1880)
* Drei Lieder, three songs for tenor and piano,
(1880)
* Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit,
fourteen songs with piano accompaniment,
(1880–1890)
* Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a
Wayfarer), for voice with piano or orchestral
accompaniment, (1883–1885)
* Lieder aus "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (The Youth's
Magic Horn), for voice and orchestra,
(1888–1896, two others 1899 and 1901)
* Rückert Lieder, for voice with piano or
orchestral accompaniment, (1901–1902)
* Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of
Children), for voice and orchestra,
(1901–1904)
* Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth),
song cycle-symphony (1907–1909)
** Note: this work can be classified as both a
symphony and a song cycle. Mahler avoided
numbering it as a symphony due to his
superstitious fear of the curse of the ninth.

==External Links==

* http://www.gustav-mahler.org/english/
International Gustav Mahler Society
* http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/profiles/mahler.shtml
Gustav Mahler Profile on BBC
*
http://www.classical-composers.org/cgi-bin/ccd.cgi
?comp=mahler Gustav Mahler Profile on the
Classical Composers Database
* http://www.mahlerarchives.net/ The Mahler
Archives

==References==

* Machlis, J. and Forney, K. (1999). The Enjoyment
of Music: An Introduction to Perceptive Listening
(Chronological Version) (8th ed.). New York:
Norton. ISBN 0393972992.
* Sadie, S. (Ed.). (1988). The Grove Concise
Dictionary of Music. London: Oxford University
Press. ISBN 0333432363.

==See Also==
*: