Verzameling brieven van de Oostenrijkse componist (1860-1911).

Hundreds of the letters that Gustav Mahler addressed to his parents and siblings survive, yet they have remained virtually unknown. Now, for the first time Mahler scholar Stephen McClatchie presents over 500 of these letters in a clear, lively translation in The Mahler Family Letters . Drawn primarily from the Mahler-Rose Collection at the University of Western Ontario, the volume presents a complete, well-rounded view of the family's correspondence. Spanning the mid 1880s through 1910, the letters record the excitement of a young man with a bourgeoning career as a conductor and provide a glimpse into his day-to-day activities rehearsing and conducting operas and concerts in Budapeast and Hamburg, and composing his first symphonies and songs. On the private side, they document his parents' illnesses and deaths and the struggles of his siblings Alois, Justine, Otto, and Emma. The letters also give Mahler's insightful impressions of contemporaries such as Johannes Brahms, Richard Strauss, and Hans von Bulow, as well as his personal feelings about significant events, such as his first big success--the completion of Carl Maria von Weber's Die drei Pintos in 1889. In the fall of 1894, the character of the letters changes when Justine and Emma come to live with Mahler in Hamburg and then Vienna, removing the need to communicate by letter about quotidian matters. At this point, the letters relay noteworthy events such as Mahler's campaign to be named Director of the Vienna Court Opera, his conducting tours throughout Europe, and his courtship of Alma Schindler. The Mahler Family Letters provides a vital, nuanced source of information about Mahler's life, his personality, and his relationships. McClatchie has generously annotated each letter, contextualizing and clarifying contemporary historical references and Mahler family acquaintances, and created an indispensable resource for all Mahlerists, 19th-century musicologists, and historians of 19th-century Germany and Austria.

Gustav Mahler and Richard Strauss came to know one another as young conductors in Leipzig in 1887. From then until Mahler's death in 1911—the year of the first performance of Der Rosenkavalier—they kept in touch. Mahler himself described their relationship as that of two miners tunneling from opposite directions with the hope of eventually meeting. This first publication of their correspondence, which includes twenty-five previously unknown Strauss letters, offers a portrait of two men who were as antithetical in their musical means and goals as in their temperaments and personalities, but who exercised a strong fascination for one another. These sixty-three letters show both composers advancing in their careers as they battled against adverse conditions in the musical world at the turn of the century. They present Mahler's energetic support of Strauss's Symphonia Domestica, which Mahler conducted in 1904 and, in turn, Strauss's championing of Mahler's music, especially the Second and Third Symphonies. The correspondence is fully annotated and is supplemented with a major essay by Herta Blaukopf. "Unfailingly absorbing. . . . An indispensable addition to the literature on these composers."—Norman Del Mar, Times Literary Supplement

From the composer's lifetime to the present day, Gustav Mahler's music has provoked extreme responses from the public and from experts. Poised between the Romantic tradition he radically renewed and the austere modernism whose exponents he inspired, Mahler was a consummate public persona and yet an impassioned artist who withdrew to his lakeside hut where he composed his vast symphonies and intimate song cycles. His advocates have produced countless studies of the composer's life and work. But they have focused on analysis internal to the compositions, along with their programmatic contexts. In this volume, musicologists and historians turn outward to examine the broader political, social, and literary changes reflected in Mahler's music. Peter Franklin takes up questions of gender, Talia Pecker Berio examines the composer's Jewish identity, and Thomas Peattie, Charles S. Maier, and Karen Painter consider, respectively, contemporary theories of memory, the theatricality of Mahler's art and fin-de-siècle politics, and the impinging confrontation with mass society. The private world of Gustav Mahler, in his songs and late works, is explored by leading Austrian musicologist Peter Revers and a German counterpart, Camilla Bork, and by the American Mahler expert Stephen Hefling. Mahler's symphonies challenged Europeans and Americans to experience music in new ways. Before his decision to move to the United States, the composer knew of the enthusiastic response from America's urban musical audiences. Mahler and His World reproduces reviews of these early performances for the first time, edited by Zoë Lang. The Mahler controversy that polarized Austrians and Germans also unfolds through a series of documents heretofore unavailable in English, edited by Painter and Bettina Varwig, and the terms of the debate are examined by Leon Botstein in the context of the late-twentieth-century Mahler revival.

Johnson considers how Mahler's body of music foregrounds the idea of artifice, construction and musical convention while also presenting itself as act of authentic expression and disclosure. This study of brings together a close reading of the renowned composer's music with wide-ranging cultural and historical interpretation.

'the one-stop guide to Mahler -- a volume of essays covering the widest range of Mahlerian topics, designed both for the academic and serious amateur music-lover... The core of the compendium is its coverage of all the main works, carrying recent research, with plentiful musical examples and other illustrations.' -Andrew Green, Classical Music 08/11/1999'beautifully produced volume... a tribute that surveys the familiar with affectionate new insights... all the articles on Mahler's reception outside Austria, both during his life and after, make for fascinating reading.' -David Nice, BBC Music Magazine October 1999'The Mahler Companion constitutes a distinguished and fitting monument to Mitchell's lifelong devotion to Mahler, and, in mustering so much talent in one volume, there is no doubt that it will deservedly take its place among the most significant publications on the composer.' -Jeremy Barham, Music andamp; LettersA brilliant gathering of international Mahler specialists write about Mahler's music from a variety of standpoints. The global spread of the authors is matched by a series of chapters that document the global spread of the composer's own symphonies and song cycles, while hitherto unexplored areas of research receive attention, both places (such as London and Prague) and people (Mahler's only surviving and highly talented daughter--a sculptor--Anna. In short, a volume that draws on the best resources and most up-to-date information about the composer and will undoubtedly act as the authoritative guide for Mahler enthusiasts for years to come.

Gustav Mahler's music continues to enjoy global prominence, both in live or recorded performance and within broader ranges of critical perception and cultural sensibility. In recognition of such a profile, this volume brings together a unique collection of essays exploring the diverse methods and topics characteristic of recent advances in Mahler scholarship. The book's international group of contributors is actively involved not only in bringing fresh approaches to Mahler research in areas such as analysis, sketch studies and reception history, but also in examining hitherto neglected issues of cultural and biographical interpretation, performance practice and compositional aesthetic, thereby illustrating the developing vitality and scope of this field. Engaging with its subject from reconstructive, documentary, theoretical, analytical, discursive and interpretative viewpoints, this volume provides a wide spectrum of contexts in which continuing debate about Mahler's life and works can flourish. Its varied themes and strategies nevertheless collectively recognize and negotiate the shifting space both between the composer's life and his artistic creativity, and between the musical results of that creativity and the critical-analytical process. The essays in this book accordingly fill certain gaps in the scholarly understanding of the composer, and re-orientate Mahler studies towards some of the central concerns of contemporary musicological thinking.