Mahler E-Book

Michael Steen

• Herausgeber: Icon Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: The Great Composers
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 60

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was like to be alive and working as a musician at that time.Mahler's brilliance as a conductor has never been in doubt. Tyrannical and difficult, he immeasurably improved standards of musical performance, and was partly responsible for revolutionising how operas are presented. But it is only relatively recently that his genius as a composer has come to the fore. His epic symphonies and the song symphony Das Lied von der Erde only really began to be enthusiastically appreciated after the Second World War, by audiences who could relate to the complicated and angst-ridden world they evoke.Michael Steen traces the twists and turns of Mahler's life, lived out in the decaying Habsburg Empire with its constant rumbles of anti-Semitism. After a hard childhood, Mahler went to study in Vienna. Despite the disadvantage of his Jewish birth, he eventually secured top conducting positions, first in Hamburg, then in Vienna and New York. In the spare time of the career of a conductor as great and extensive as Toscanini himself, he succeeded in composing ten symphonies of immense range and reach. He also had an exceptional number of successful love affairs, although his marriage to Alma Schindler, 'the most beautiful girl in Vienna', and nearly twenty years younger than him, did not work out well. His struggles during the great years at the Imperial Opera, the climax of his conducting achievement, were compounded by the anti-Semitism prevalent in the prosperous, but superficial, fin-de-siècle Vienna.

Leseprobe

Published by Icon Books Ltd,

Omnibus Business Centre, 39–41 North Road, London N7 9DP email: [email protected]

ISBN: 978-1-84831-808-3

Text copyright © 2003, 2010 Michael Steen

The author has asserted his moral rights.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael Steen OBE was born in Dublin. He studied at the Royal College of Music, was the organ scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, and has been the chairman of the RCM Society and of the Friends of the V&A Museum, the Treasurer of The Open University, and a trustee of Anvil Arts and of The Gerald Coke Handel Foundation.

Also by the Michael Steen:

The Lives and Times of the Great Composers (ebook and paperback)

Great Operas: A Guide to 25 of the World’s Finest Musical Experiences (ebook and paperback)

Enchantress of Nations: Pauline Viardot, Soprano, Muse and Lover (hardback).

He is currently engaged in a project to publish one hundred ebooks in the series A Short Guide to a Great Opera. Around forty of these have already been published' and further details on these are given at the back of this book.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

MAHLER’S EARLY YEARS

CONDUCTOR

MAHLER’S METHOD

ANTI - SEMITISM IN VIENNA

AT THE VIENNA IMPERIAL OPERA

MARRIAGE TO ALMA

NEW YORK

THE BREAKDOWN WITH ALMA

THE END

SEQUEL

Notes

Other Books in the Series

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to our ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.

Extracted from his book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, Michael Steen explores the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was like to be alive and working as a musician at that time.

Mahler's brilliance as a conductor has never been in doubt. Tyrannical and difficult, he immeasurably improved standards of musical performance, and was partly responsible for revolutionising how operas are presented. But it is only relatively recently that his genius as a composer has come to the fore. His epic symphonies and the song symphony Das Lied von der Erde only really began to be enthusiastically appreciated after the Second World War, by audiences who could relate to the complicated and angst-ridden world they evoke.

Michael Steen traces the twists and turns of Mahler's life, lived out in the decaying Habsburg Empire with its constant rumbles of anti-Semitism. After a hard childhood, Mahler went to study in Vienna. Despite the disadvantage of his Jewish birth, he eventually secured top conducting positions, first in Hamburg, then in Vienna and New York. In the spare time of the career of a conductor as great and extensive as Toscanini himself, he succeeded in composing ten symphonies of immense range and reach. He also had an exceptional number of successful love affairs, although his marriage to Alma Schindler, ‘the most beautiful girl in Vienna’, and nearly twenty years younger than him, did not work out well. His struggles during the great years at the Imperial Opera, the climax of his conducting achievement, were compounded by the anti-Semitism prevalent in the prosperous, but superficial, fin-de-siècle Vienna.

MAHLER

BRIDGING THE 19TH and 20th centuries, there were two composers, one from Moravia, the other from Bavaria, who, each in their own way, took forward the Wagnerian Romantic tradition. Both often used a very large canvas, and a very large orchestra: the title of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’, speaks for itself; and, in the tone poem EinHeldenleben, Strauss requires eight horns, five trumpets and quadruple woodwind. Both composers could also produce music of exquisite delicacy. In this chapter, we shall describe the turbulent life of Mahler, and in the next, that of Richard Strauss.1

After a hard childhood, Mahler went to study in Vienna. Despite the disadvantage of his Jewish birth, he eventually secured top conducting positions, first in Hamburg, then in Vienna and New York. ‘In the spare time of the career of a conductor as great and extensive as Toscanini himself ’, he succeeded in composing ten symphonies ‘of immense range and reach’.2 He also seems to have had an exceptional number of successful love affairs, although his marriage to Alma Schindler, ‘the most beautiful girl in Vienna’,3 and nearly twenty years younger than him, did not work out well. His struggles during the great years at the Imperial Opera, the climax of his conducting achievement, were compounded by the anti-Semitism prevalent in the prosperous, but superficial, fin-de-siècle Vienna.

Mahler died before his 51st birthday, after an unsatisfactory period in both his professional life in New York and his marriage. However, just over eight months before his death in May 1911, he experienced the thrill of hearing the first performance of his Eighth Symphony. This was only a very short time after Arnold Schoenberg began to compose music of a very different order. Just before Mahler returned to New York for the last time, he attended an exhibition of Schoenberg’s experimental paintings.4 It was now, after all, the 20th century.

MAHLER’S EARLY YEARS

Gustav Mahler was born on 7 July 1860, in the village of Kalit on the Bohemian side of the Moravian border, not too far from the farm where, five years before, Smetana’s father had decided to settle. The word kalit means a trap for hunting wild animals;5 the village is in the middle of the countryside, and is tiny. It is over twenty miles from the large market town of Jihlava, which was then called Iglau.

Mahler’s father, Bernard, was the sole German in the village. He went from door to door in a barouche, selling mainly liquor. His market can only have comprised the 500 inhabitants of Kalit, a few other villages and the larger Humpolec, over four miles away. It was a tough life; and discrimination against the Jews made it particularly difficult. Perhaps as a result of this hardship, Bernard was violent. He would beat up and abuse his frail and limping wife,* the daughter of a prosperous soap manufacturer.

However, there was reason to be hopeful about the future. Recently, there had been a considerable easing of the restrictions on the Jews, which had been severe. Since the early 17th century, Jews could only enter Iglau for the market through one gate, on payment of a poll tax; they could not spend the night there. Since the early 18th century, the number of Jews allowed to live in the whole of Moravia was restricted, by decree, to 5,106 families. A father could bequeath his right of residence to his eldest son, who alone was allowed to get married. The rest of the males had to leave the country, and many left for Poland and Hungary. When a family had only daughters, the line was considered extinct. This law applied until 1848, when Bernard was 21.