Gustav Mahler

late Romanticism

His symphonies push Romanticism to its limits and pave the way for modernism.

💡 Did you know? Mahler stretched the symphony to the gigantic: „A symphony must be like the world. It must embrace everything,“ he said.

Bohemia

Born in Kalischt, raised in Moravian Iglau: a German-speaking Jew in Austria-Hungary.

💡 Did you know? As a German-speaking Jew from Bohemia, Mahler felt „thrice homeless“: an outsider everywhere.

conductor

He was considered perhaps the finest conductor of his age: he composed only in the summer holidays.

💡 Did you know? His composing huts by the Attersee and Wörthersee can still be visited today.

Vienna Court Opera

To get the post, Mahler, a Jew, converted to Catholicism: yet never escaped Vienna's antisemitism.

💡 Did you know? As director of the Vienna Court Opera, Mahler was a feared perfectionist: he reformed opera fundamentally but made many enemies.

nine

The Tenth remained a fragment: Mahler too feared the 'curse of the ninth' after Beethoven.

💡 Did you know? To dodge the numbering, he left 'Das Lied von der Erde' without a number.

Symphony of a Thousand

Its 1910 Munich premiere with over 1,000 performers was Mahler's greatest triumph in his lifetime.

💡 Did you know? The „Symphony of a Thousand“ demands such huge choirs and orchestra that its premiere really did have over 1,000 performers on stage.

Death in Venice

The Adagietto is read as a declaration of love to his wife Alma: Visconti turned it into film music.

💡 Did you know? The tender Adagietto from the 5th Symphony became world-famous through Visconti's film „Death in Venice“.

Alma

A gifted composer herself; after Mahler's death she married Walter Gropius, then Franz Werfel.

💡 Did you know? His wife Alma was a celebrated beauty of Vienna's cultural life: after Mahler's death she was involved with, among others, the architect Gropius and the poet Werfel.

The Song of the Earth

Written after the fateful year 1907: Mahler did not live to hear its premiere.

💡 Did you know? Mahler deliberately did not call „The Song of the Earth“ his „ninth symphony“: out of superstition, since Beethoven, Schubert and Bruckner all died after their ninths.

New York

He conducted at the Metropolitan Opera and led the New York Philharmonic.

💡 Did you know? After leaving Vienna, Mahler conducted the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera.

My time will yet come

Since the 1960s (championed by Leonard Bernstein) his symphonies have been core repertoire.

💡 Did you know? In his lifetime many found his music too long, too loud, too strange.

50

He died of heart disease in Vienna in 1911; he is buried next to his daughter Maria in Grinzing.

💡 Did you know? Mahler died at 50 and indeed right after completing his (now so-numbered) Ninth, just as he had feared.

Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler was an Austrian late-Romantic composer whose vast symphonies sought to embrace the whole world.

💡 Did you know? Out of superstition he avoided numbering a „ninth symphony“: yet died, as feared, soon after completing it.

Adagietto (Symphony No. 5)

Strings and harp only: an intimate, slowly expanding song: Mahler's declaration of love to his wife Alma.

💡 Did you know? The Adagietto became world-famous through Visconti's film ‘Death in Venice’.