Reading Mahler : German culture and jewish identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna

2013 Fisrt Edition in paperback.
Gustav Mahler's music is more popular than ever, yet few are aware of its roots in German literary and cultural history in general, and in fin-de-siècle Viennese culture in particular. Taking as its point of departure the many references to literature, philosophy, and the visual arts that Mahler uses to illustrate the meaning of his music, Reading Mahler helps audiences, critics, and those interested in musical and cultural history understand influences on Mahler's music and thinking that may have been self-evident to middle-class Viennese a hundred years ago but are much more obscure today. It shows that Mahler's oeuvre, despite its reliance on texts and images from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is far more indebted to fin-de-siècle modernism and to an eclectic, proto-avantgardist agenda than has been previously realized. Furthermore, Reading Mahler is the first book to make Mahler's position within German-Jewish culture its analytical center. It also probes Mahler's problematic but often overlooked relationship with the musical and textual legacy of Richard Wagner. By integrating newer approaches in humanistic research - cultural studies, gender studies, and Jewish studies - Reading Mahler exposes the composer's critical view of German cultural history and offers a new understanding of his music.

CONTENIDO:

1. Introduction: Literature, Philosophy, and Images in Mahler's Music
2. Acknowledgments
3. Titan: Symphony of an Anti-Hero
4. Des Knaben Wunderhorn: Rediscovering the "Volk"
5. Nietzsche and the Crisis of German Culture
6. Rembrandt and the Margins of German Culture
7. Goethe against German Culture
8. The Two Faces of German Orientalism
9. Conclusion: Beyond Mahler
10. Notes
11. Works Consulted
12. Index