Gustav Mahler

From Philosopedia

Mahler, Gustav (7 Juy 1860 - 18 May 1911)

A major composer and conductor who was born in Austrian Bohemia of Jewish parentage, Mahler had a distinguished career. As described in Columbia Encyclopedia, Mahler

• followed Bruckner in the Viennese symphonic tradition. He added folk elements to the symphony and expanded it in terms of length, emotional contrast, and orchestral size. He used choral or solo voices in four symphonies; the Second, Third, Fourth, and Eighth; the Eighth is known as the "Symphony of a Thousand" because of the enormous performing forces required. The thinner texture, wide-ranging melodies, and taut, intense emotionalism of Mahler's late works strongly influenced the next generation of Austrian composers, especially Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg.

Terry Sanderson in Gay & Lesbian Humanist (Spring, 1998) praised the 1997 Albert Hall performance of the gigantic "Symphony of a Thousand,"� adding that although it is set to a religious text, Mahler "refused steadfastly to attach himself to any organized religion. He was born a Jew but has been described as a life-long agnostic. At one point he converted to Catholicism, purely for the purpose of obtaining a job that he coveted � director of the Court Opera of Vienna. It was unthinkable for a Jew to hold such a prestigious position, hence the utilitarian conversion to the state religion. After the confirmation service was over, he came out of the church and remarked to a friend: "I've just changed my coat." The Austrians' famous anti-Semitism, however, was not to be quenched by such a token gesture, and he was eventually driven out of the country an anti-Semitic press campaign.�

Mahler, a morbid person by nature, one who brooded upon the inevitability of death, saw Dr. Sigmund Freud briefly. But he never overcame his fears, not even after comforting his daughter with his music. "Madness seizes me, annihilates me," he told friends who said he appealed to the Devil to take possession of his soul. He was never, however, adjudged clinically insane.

Mahler died of a heart attack brought on by a bacterial infection.

(CE; Current Biography}