Gustav Mahler: v. 1

Gustav Mahler: v. 1 by Henry-Louis de La Grange. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780575016729.

Gustav Mahler has been called a musical prophet of doom. The passionate brooding which pervades his nine symphonies, his choral and vocal works, has led others to hail him as the artist who best articulated the inner conflicts and struggles of his neurotic and driven age. Henry-Louis de La Grange, in this huge biography, looks at the tempestuous life of this man whose impact on music--as conductor and composer--was extraordinary. There is nothing written about Mahler, no page that he himself ever wrote, no sketch of music that he ever made that M. de La Grange hasnt studied. He is as systematic a biographer as Mahler was conductor and creator of music. The result is the only definitive biography of Mahler ever written. Born in 1860, one of fourteen children of a modest Jewish innkeeper in Kalischt, Bohemia, Mahler studied at the Vienna Conservatory. Afterwards, came years of deprivation and disappointment as he served as conductor to small provincial orchestras. He moved from Kassel to Prague to Leipzig, then worked his way up in 1888 to an important post in Budapest and then in 1891 to a position in Hamburg. The book culminates in Mahlers triumphant period as the director of the Vienna Opera House. The present volume culminates in Mahlers triumphant period as the director of the Vienna Opera House. The present volume takes up to meeting with Alma Mahler. Throughout, Mahler is revealed as an often difficult man, full of complexities and contradictions, insecurities and surprises. Always in sharp focus is the picture of Mahler, the perfectionist, tirelessly pursuing his art, often ignoring family and friends, relentlessly battling anyone who stood in the way of his music. Performers stormed off the stage during rehearsals with the "tyrant." Audiences walked out on the "revolutionary" interpretation of the classics. And anti-Semitic critics denounced him as that "Jewish conductor." The whole turbulent cultural ferment of the era is reflected in this book and the author has provided extraordinary thumbnail sketches of some of the giants of the time: Bruckner, Brahams, Strauss, and the conductor Bruno Walter, among others.