First published Sat, Jul 23, 2011 https://www.irishtimes.com/news/magnificent-music-marital-discord-1.608176
Gustav Mahler
By Jens Malte Fischer
Trans. Stewart Spencer
Yale University Press
740pp £stg 29.99
Imagine you’re a man and you write a letter to your lover, but send it by mistake instead to her husband. This is precisely what Walter Gropius did when he sent a letter to Alma Mahler, only to place it inadvertently in an envelope addressed to her husband, the by-then famous conductor of the New York Philharmonic, Gustav Mahler. The ensuing conflict between the couple occupies a 42-page chapter in the newly published translation by Stewart Spencer of this biography of Mahler, first published in German in 2003. The fly leaf tells us the original German publication was a best-seller, which is a good reflection of just how popular a composer Mahler has become in the classical world.
Gustav Mahler was born in Kalischt, in what was then Austro-Hungary (now Kaliste u Humpolce in the Czech republic) in 1860. He made his reputation as an outstanding conductor, but increasingly put his energy into writing symphonic compositions which were to become among the most recorded and performed music in the symphonic repertoire. He died in 1911. His compositions were rediscovered after the second World War. As he had been Jewish, his work was banned under the Nazi regime, although Mahler had converted to Christianity during his years in Vienna to avoid rampant anti-semitism.
Mahler’s marriage to a beautiful woman twenty years his junior who was also a talented composer lead to a strained marriage. The young Alma Schindler had to suppress her compositional aspirations at the insistence of her husband, something she resented, and her good looks and youthful charms made her a target for predatory males like the already mentioned Walter Gropius.
Structurally, this book is built around the idea of a chronological biography, with a chapter on each of the symphonies slipped in at the relevant point. The biographical detail is exemplary and accessible. The chapters on the symphonies are useful for people looking for programmatic elements in the music, and the biographical details surrounding its composition, but there is no real effort at an examination of any musical argument which Mahler may have been following, and any analysis is quite superficial, which will be a relief to those who are not familiar with musical terminology and jargon. To scholars and musically literate readers it may be a negative point, however.
There is also a chapter devoted to “Jewishness and Identity”. The author’s argument here gets lost in definitions of jewish music over twenty pages before he finally gets to make a point which, had he made it earlier, would have negated the need for the chapter in the first place: “...It is perfectly possible to regard Mahler’s ‘polymaterial’ procedure as a collage technique and as an example of plurality without trespassing on the quagmire of ‘Jewishness in Music’.”p271. Indeed!
There are many plates and photographs, but also many are referred to, yet are not included or referenced; for instance, when Fischer describes the Finnish painter Akseli Gallen-Kallela portrait of Mahler, he writes “Gallen’s portrait shows Mahler face on, his head resting in his right hand, the glow of the fire reflected in his face and in the lenses of his glasses. It is the most impressive likeness of him after Rodin’s” p 558. But where is it to be seen? A footnote here indicating where the curious seeker might find this portrait would not go astray.
Some curious statements in the narrative leap out because of their incongruity; Consider this, for example: “Mahler evidently had a particularly delicate digestive system. Indeed, it could be said that all his organs were more sensitive than those of ordinary mortals” p. 329; to which the only response can be “?”
But there is also quoted a wonderful description by Samuel Chotzinoff of Mahler conducting Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde at his New York Metropolitan Opera House debut: “...For the first time [that] I could remember, I heard distinctly the words Isolde was singing. My eyes turned to Mahler to find a reason. He was ‘riding’ the orchestra with the calculated sureness of a master trainer, at one moment curbing it to a crafty balance between it and the voice on the stage, at another giving it its head as it raced alone. Now at last I knew how Wagner should sound”, p. 571.
The above quibbles aside, this is a superbly crafted book which covers in detail the life of one of the most loved and misinterpreted composers of the period. Misinterpreted? Well, there is a prolonged discussion of the extent to which Mahler considered his music programmatic, and Fischer, writing on claims that there are premonitions of the first World War in the ninth symphony, gives us one of the clearest gems of wisdom I have read on the subject: “Listeners who hear persecution and pogroms in Mahler’s music are right to do so, but like all great music, it depicts the universal rather than the historically specific”, p. 616. His almost final word is sadly pessimistic: “...a knowledge of [Mahler’s] music runs the risk of vanishing with the disappearance of middle-class musical culture and its technologies and techniques, including the ability to read music”, p. 705. Let us hope not.
