Gustav Mahler
GUSTAV MAHLER is now considered to be one of the most important composers of European music, however, in his time his music was often considered eccentric or mere examples of a Straussian new-German modernism. While he enjoyed a successful career as a powerful and innovative conductor, his status as a banned Jewish composer also stymied his recognition as a major figure. The centenary of his birth in 1960 led to a re-evaluation of his work, which was subsequently lauded for its emotional range and power, imaginative orchestrations, and resonance as a symbol of uncompromising invention and unconventional ideas. His work is now seen as the missing link between late Romanticism and the expressionistic atonality of the Second Viennese School. His music, while written for large orchestras and often with singers, combine the intimacy of chamber music instrumentations with the overwhelming impact of an orchestral “wall of sound” expressing man’s struggle with death and rebirth. His work was informed by great personal tragedy; six of his siblings died in childbirth, an older brother committed suicide, and an older sister went insane. Still another brother was born mentally handicapped and became a criminal. He himself is considered to have suffered from bipolar illness. Daughter Maria’s death at age five was another devastation, which he believed he had precipitated by writing “Kindertotenlieder.” Tormented by marital woes and the infidelities of wife Alma, he was briefly a patient of Sigmund Freud. In 1911 Gustav Mahler died in Vienna due to a long-standing case of infective myocarditis.