Mahler and His World

From the composer's lifetime to the present day, Gustav Mahler's music has provoked extreme responses from the public and from experts. Poised between the Romantic tradition he radically renewed and the austere modernism whose exponents he inspired, Mahler was a consummate public persona and yet an impassioned artist who withdrew to his lakeside hut where he composed his vast symphonies and intimate song cycles. His advocates have produced countless studies of the composer's life and work. But they have focused on analysis internal to the compositions, along with their programmatic contexts.

In this volume, musicologists and historians turn outward to examine the broader political, social, and literary changes reflected in Mahler's music. Peter Franklin takes up questions of gender, Talia Pecker Berio examines the composer's Jewish identity, and Thomas Peattie, Charles S. Maier, and Karen Painter consider, respectively, contemporary theories of memory, the theatricality of Mahler's art and fin-de-siècle politics, and the impinging confrontation with mass society. The private world of Gustav Mahler, in his songs and late works, is explored by leading Austrian musicologist Peter Revers and a German counterpart, Camilla Bork, and by the American Mahler expert Stephen Hefling.

Mahler's symphonies challenged Europeans and Americans to experience music in new ways. Before his decision to move to the United States, the composer knew of the enthusiastic response from America's urban musical audiences. Mahler and His World reproduces reviews of these early performances for the first time, edited by Zoë Lang. The Mahler controversy that polarized Austrians and Germans also unfolds through a series of documents heretofore unavailable in English, edited by Painter and Bettina Varwig, and the terms of the debate are examined by Leon Botstein in the context of the late-twentieth-century Mahler revival.

CONTENIDO:

Preface and Acknowledgments
Part I: Context and ideologies
Whose Gustav Mahler? Reception, Interpretation, and History by Leon Botstein
Mahler's Theater: The Performative and the Political in Central Europe, 1890-1910 by Charles S. Maier
Mahler's Jewish Parable by Talia Pecker Berio
A Soldier's Sweetheart's Mother's Tale? Mahler's Gendered Musical Discourse by Peter Franklin
The Aesthetics of Mass Culture: Mahler's Eighth Symphony and Its Legacy by Karen Painter

Part II: Analysis and Aesthetics
Musical Lyricism as Self-Exploration: Reflections on Mahler's "Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen" by Camilla Bork and translated by Irene Zedlacher
". . . the heart-wrenching sound of farewell": Mahler, Riickert, and the Kindertotenlieder by Peter Revers and translated by Irene Zedlacher
In Search of Lost Time: Memory and Mahler's Broken Pastoral by Thomas Peattie
Aspects of Mahler's Late Style by Stephen E. Hefling
PART III: MAHLER'S AMERICAN DEBUT: The Reception of the Fourth and Fifth Symphonies, 1904-1906 by EZöe Lang
Introduction
Mahler's Fourth Symphony in New York
"Gustav Mahler-His Personality and His New Symphony" Richar Aldrich
"First Concert of Symphony Orchestra . . . Mahler Heard" (New York Times) "What Did It All Mean?. . ." (The Musical Courier)
The American Premiere of Mahler's Fifth Symphony 239
Program Notes, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Emma L. Roedter
Boston Symphony Orchestra
"Gustav Mahler: The Composer . . . Boston First Hears . . ." August Spanuth
Program Notes, Boston Symphony Orchestra Philip Hale
"A Symphony by Mahler for the First Time" Henry Taylor Parker
East Coast Tour
"Mahler's Fifth Symphony. . . " (Philadelphia Evening Bulletin)
"A New Symphony by Gustav Mahler. . . " Richard Aldrich
"Fifth Symphony Played . . . " (New York Times) "Variations" Leonard Leibling
Part IV: Mahler's german-language critics edited and translated by Karen Painter and Bettina Varwig
Introduction
Mahler As Conductor
"Gustav Mahler and the Vienna Court Opera" Elsa Bienenfeld
"Gustav Mahler as Organizer" Emil Gutmann
"Mahler as Director" Hermann Bahr
The First Symphony
"A First Symphony" Max Graf
"Theater & Art Reviews: Second Philharmonic Concert" Eduard Hanslick
"Viennese Musical Letter" Theodor Helm
"Feuilleton: Philharmonic Concert" Robert Hirschfeld
The Fifth Symphony
"Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 5" Ernst Otto Nodnagel
"Fourteenth Philharmonic Concert" Max Loewengard
"Feuilleton: Gustav Mahler and His Symphony" Max Kalbeck
"Feuilleton: Mahler's 'Fifth"' Gustav Schönaich
The Seventh Symphony
"Mahler's 'Seventh Symphony"' Felix Adler
"Gustav Mahler's 'Seventh"' Richard Batka
"Mahler's Seventh Symphony" Elsa Bienenfeld
"Feuilleton: Mahler's Seventh Symphony" Julius Korngold
Das Lied von der Erde
"Feuilleton: Das Lied von der Erde" Richard Specht
"Gustav Mahler: Las Lied von der Erde" Rudolf Louis
"Fourth Philharmonic Concert: Das Lied von der Erde" Ferdinand Pfohl
Obituaries
"Gustav Mahler" Robert Hirschfeld
"Gustav Mahler" Paul Bekker
"Gustav Mahler" Adolf Weissman
"Gustav Mahler" Paul Zschorlich
The Mahler Amsterdam Festival, 1920
"The Mahler Festival in Amsterdam" Oskar Bie
"A Musician's journey to Holland" Paul Stefan
"The Mahler Festival in Amsterdam" Guido Adler
"A Second Letter from Amsterdam" Oskar Bie
Notes on Contributors