Biography about the writer Mahler. Gustav Mahler: biography, interesting facts, videos, creativity

Gustav Mahler, a great composer, opera director and conductor, lived and worked at the turn of the 19th – 20th centuries.
“To write music means to build a new world...” is how Mahler himself characterized his work. His works showed features of romanticism and expressionism, characteristic of an era of social contradictions.

Gustav Mahler- a great composer, opera director and conductor - lived and worked at the turn of the 19th - 20th centuries.

“To write music means to build a new world...” is how Mahler himself characterized his work. His works showed features of romanticism and expressionism, characteristic of an era of social contradictions. Mahler's music often expressed the composer's personal state, his innermost thoughts. In his work, he always sought to raise large-scale philosophical problems. His talent as a conductor was also great. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who listened to the orchestra led by Mahler at the Hamburg Opera, called him a brilliant conductor.

The composer was born on July 7, 1860 into a poor Jewish family. The Mahler family lived in the Czech Republic - in the town Kalishte. Gustav's father - Bernhard Mahler— I changed several professions in my life. In his youth he was a driver, later he learned on his own and served as a tutor. In recent years he saved some money and became the owner of a small pub.

There were many children in the family, but six of Gustav's brothers and sisters died in childhood. One sister died later, already an adult; Otto's older brother shot himself. Another brother, Alois, has gone mad. These tragic circumstances subsequently left their mark on the personality of the composer and on the nature of his work. “Inner demons” always tormented Mahler; his life was never calm.

Gustav grew up as a reserved and focused child. He fell in love with music early, but it was difficult to call him a child prodigy, like many great composers of the past. His success could be attributed more to incredible perseverance and diligence than to natural ability.

From the age of six he played the piano. When Gustav turned fifteen, he was sent to Vienna. On the recommendation of the professor Epstein and the young man entered the conservatory. During his years of study, Mahler revealed himself as a talented pianist. He was also involved in symphonic conducting. But his first symphony, which Mahler wrote for a student competition, was a failure - the orchestra conductor refused to perform it, insulting the author.

While studying at the conservatory, Mahler attended the university and attended lectures on history, psychology, philosophy and the history of music. Mahler graduated from the conservatory in 1878; a year later he graduated from the university.

During his student years, Gustav had to work part-time - his parents could not support him. The young man gave piano lessons and went on tour with the orchestra as conductor. In the period 1878-84. he wrote the first serious works: sketches of operas, orchestral and chamber music. In 1885, his first masterpiece was created - the vocal cycle “Songs of the Wandering Apprentice”.

In the autumn of 1885, Mahler decided to leave Vienna to find a permanent job as a conductor in one of the theaters. He worked in Prague within a year. There he had the opportunity to conduct operas by Gluck, Mozart, and Wagner. The performances he staged aroused universal admiration; Don Juan was a particularly successful work.

Since 1886, Mahler worked in Leipzig- as second conductor of the city theater. Relations with the main director and the opera troupe did not work out, and at the first suitable offer in March 1888, Gustav left Leipzig for Budapest. At that time he had already written the First Symphony. It opened a future cycle of ten symphonies that embodied the most important features of Mahler’s worldview and philosophy.

IN Budapest the young conductor was appointed to the post of director of the Royal Opera House. Over the course of several months, the theater under his leadership staged several successful performances. However, in 1889, Mahler's father died, and Gustav had to leave Budapest.

In 1891 he became the first conductor Hamburg City Theater. There was a lot of work in the theater, and Mahler often clashed with the intendant, B. Pollini. Nevertheless, the Hamburg period was marked by the creation of the Second and Third Symphonies. Mahler worked in this theater until 1897. In Hamburg, Gustav met his first love - Anna Mildenburg. They began dating, were even engaged, but did not get married. Mahler decided that he could not sacrifice art for the sake of family happiness, and broke up with Anna.

At the end of 1895, the long-awaited premiere of the Second Symphony took place in Berlin. Mahler was offered to head the Vienna Court Opera, but his Jewish origin prevented him from taking this position. Mahler had to convert to Catholicism - after which he was appointed conductor of the court theater. Ten years of Gustav Mahler's work in Vienna Opera became an era of unprecedented flowering of the theater.

Wife: Alma Schindler

In 1901, the composer built a villa in Carinthia. He spent every summer there and composed music in solitude. And in 1902, the composer decided to get married. The chosen one was the daughter of the artist Emil Jakob Schindler - Alma Schindler. Soon Mahler's first daughter was born - Maria. The second daughter, who was born in 1904, was named Anna.

Alma Schindler was a gifted woman, she studied music and even tried to write her own works. However, her despotic and capricious husband forbade her this activity, saying that there should only be one composer in the family.

Marriage had a beneficial effect on the composer's life and work. He began to work a lot and successfully. In Carinthia he wrote new works: the Fifth, Sixth, Seventh Symphonies. Mahler also created a cycle for vocals and orchestra, “Songs of Dead Children,” and this work was prophetic. In 1907, his beloved daughter Maria died of diphtheria.

That year, doctors diagnosed Mahler with a serious heart disease. Then he decided to leave the Viennese theater and move to America. He was offered a position as a conductor at the famous Metropolitan Opera.

In December 1907, Mahler left Vienna. In America, he was offered to head the theater, but he refused the position, remaining as a conductor. New York Philharmonic Orchestra. The composer decided to devote the last years of his life to creativity. In winter, Mahler lived in New York, and in the summer he went to Germany - there he wrote music. In 1909, the composer completed the tragic vocal symphony “Song of the Earth,” based on poems by Chinese medieval poets. He soon finished his Ninth Symphony and began work on the Tenth, but completed only the first part of the work. (The first part was later finally completed by the composer E. Kshenek; the remaining four parts, based on Mahler’s sketches, were completed by the English musicologist D. Cook.)

The hard work exhausted Mahler's strength. In 1910, the premiere of the Eighth Symphony took place in Munich, but it brought him only disappointment. The work was a success, but did not cause a public outcry. The war was approaching - in Europe at that time there were completely different moods.

In the winter of 1911, Gustav Mahler fell ill with a severe sore throat. Having not received qualified help from New York doctors, he decided to receive treatment in Paris. French doctors were unable to cure the composer - a sore throat complicated his heart, and he began to slowly fade away. Before his death, Mahler asked to be taken to Vienna - there he died on May 18, 1911. Thousands of people came to see off the great composer.

To perpetuate the memory of the composer and study his works, the International Gustav Mahler Society was created in 1955.

Biography

Childhood

Gustav Mahler's family came from eastern Bohemia and had modest incomes; the composer's grandmother earned money by peddling. Czech Bohemia was then part of the Austrian Empire, the Mahler family belonged to the German-speaking minority, and was also Jewish. Hence the early sense of exile of the future composer, “always an uninvited guest.” Gustav's father, Bernhard Mahler, became a traveling merchant selling liquor, sugar and household goods, his mother came from the family of a small soap manufacturer. Gustav was the second of 14 children (only six reached adulthood). He was born on July 7, 1860 in a modest house in the village of Kaliste.

Soon after Gustav's birth, the family moved to the small industrial town of Jihlava, an island of German culture in South Moravia, where Bernhard Mahler opened a tavern. Here the future composer heard street songs, folk dances, bugle calls and marches of the local military band - sounds that later became part of his musical palette. At the age of four he began to master his grandfather's piano, and at the age of ten he played on stage for the first time. In 1874, his younger brother Ernst died, and the future composer tried to express feelings of grief and loss in the opera “Duke Ernst of Swabia,” which has not reached us.

Music education

Mahler entered the Vienna Conservatory in 1875. His teachers were Julius Epstein (piano), Robert Fuchs (harmony) and Franz Krenn (composition). He also studied with the composer and organist Anton Bruckner, but was not considered his student.

At the conservatory, Mahler became friends with the future composer Hugo Wolf. Wolf, not ready to put up with the strict discipline of the educational institution, was expelled, and the less rebellious Mahler avoided this threat by writing a repentant letter to the director of the conservatory, Helmesberger.

Mahler may have had his first conducting experience in the student orchestra of his alma mater, although in this orchestra he performed primarily as a percussionist.

Mahler received his conservatory diploma in 1878, but failed to achieve the prestigious silver medal. At his father's insistence, he passed the entrance exams to the University of Vienna and attended lectures on literature and philosophy for a year.

Youth

After the death of his parents in 1889, Mahler took care of his younger brothers and sisters; in particular, he took his sisters Justina and Emma to Vienna and married musicians Arnold and Eduard Rose.

In the second half of the 1890s. Mahler experienced the infatuation of his student, the singer Anna von Mildenburg, who under his leadership achieved exceptional success in the Wagnerian repertoire, including on the stage of the Vienna Royal Opera, but married the writer Hermann Bahr.

Family life

During his second season in Vienna, in November 1901, he met Alma Schindler, the adopted daughter of the famous Austrian artist Karl Moll. Alma was not at first happy about meeting him because of “the scandals about him and every young woman who aspired to sing in opera.” After an argument about Alexander Tsemlinsky's ballet (Alma was his student), Alma agreed to meet the next day. This meeting led to a quick marriage. Mahler and Alma married in March 1902; Alma was by then pregnant with her first child, daughter Maria. The second daughter, Anna, was born in 1904.

The couple's friends were surprised by the marriage. Theater director Max Burkhard, an admirer of Alma, called Mahler a “rickety, degenerate Jew” unworthy of a beautiful girl from a good family. On the other hand, the Mahler family considered Alma too flirtatious and unreliable.

Mahler was naturally capricious and authoritarian. Alma received a musical education and even wrote music as an amateur. Mahler demanded that Alma stop studying music, saying that there could only be one composer in the family. Despite regrets about the occupation dear to Alma's heart, their marriage was marked by expressions of intense love and passion.

In the summer of 1907, Mahler, tired of the campaign against him in Vienna, went on holiday with his family to Maria Wörth. Both daughters fell ill there. Maria died of diphtheria at the age of four. Anna recovered and later became a sculptor.

Recent years

In 1907, a short time after the death of his daughter, doctors discovered Mahler had a chronic heart disease. The diagnosis was communicated to the composer, which aggravated his depression. The theme of death runs through many of his latest works. In 1910 he was often ill. On February 20, 1911, he developed a fever and a severe sore throat. His physician, Dr. Joseph Fraenkel, discovered significant purulent plaque on his tonsils and warned Mahler that he should not conduct in this condition. He, however, did not agree, considering the illness not too serious. In fact, the disease took on threatening shape: a sore throat gave complications to the heart, which was already functioning with difficulty. Mahler died out in literally three months. He died on the night of May 18, 1911.

Mahler conductor

Mahler began his career as a conductor in 1880. In 1881 he took up the post of opera conductor in Ljubljana, the following year in Olomouc, then successively in Vienna, Kassel, Prague, Leipzig and Budapest. In 1891 he was appointed chief conductor of the Hamburg Opera.

In 1897 he became director of the Vienna Opera - the most prestigious position in the Austrian Empire for a musician. To be able to take up the post, Mahler, born into a Jewish family but not a believer, formally converted to Catholicism. During his ten years as director, Mahler updated the repertoire of the Vienna Opera and brought it to a leading position in Europe. In 1907, as a result of intrigues, he was replaced as director.

In 1908, he was invited to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera, spent one season there and was replaced by Arturo Toscanini, who was extremely popular in the USA. In 1909, he became chief conductor of the reorganized New York Philharmonic Orchestra, a position he remained in until the end of his life.

Mahler’s conducting talent was rated very highly: “step by step he helps the orchestra conquer the symphony, with the finest finishing of the smallest details he does not lose sight of the whole for a moment,” Guido Adler wrote about Mahler, and Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, who listened to Mahler in 1892 Hamburg Opera, in a private letter, called him a genius.

Mahler - composer

Mahler was a remarkable symphonist, the author of ten symphonies (the last one, the Tenth, was left unfinished by the author). All of them occupy a central place in the world symphonic repertoire. Also widely known is his epic Song of the Earth, a vocal symphony set to the words of medieval Chinese poets. Mahler’s “Songs of the Wandering Apprentice” and “Songs about Dead Children,” as well as the cycle of songs based on folk motifs “The Boy’s Magic Horn,” are widely performed all over the world. A. V. Ossovsky was one of the first critics to highly appreciate Mahler's works and welcomed his performances in Russia.

Three creative periods

Musicologists note three distinct periods of creativity in Mahler's life: a long first period, stretching from work on the "Sad Song" (Das klagende Lied) in 1878-1880 to the completion of work on the collection of songs "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) in 1901, a more intense "middle period" ending with Mahler's departure for New York in 1907, and a brief "late period" of elegiac work until his death in 1911.

The main works of the first period are the first four symphonies, the cycle “Songs of the Wandering Apprentice” (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) and various collections of songs, among which “The Boy’s Magic Horn” (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) stands out. During this period, songs and symphonies are closely related, and symphonic works are programmatic; Mahler initially published detailed programs for the first three symphonies.

The middle period consists of a triptych of purely instrumental symphonies (the fifth, sixth and seventh), songs based on poems by Rückert, and “Songs about Dead Children” (Kindertotenlieder). The chorale Eighth Symphony stands apart, which some musicologists consider as an independent stage between the second and third periods of the composer’s work. By this time, Mahler had already abandoned explicit programs and descriptive titles; he wanted to write “absolute” music that would speak for itself. The songs of this period lost much of their folkloric character and were no longer used in symphonies as explicitly as before.

The works of the brief final period are the Song of the Earth (Das Lied von der Erde), the Ninth and (unfinished) Tenth Symphonies. They express Mahler's personal experiences on the eve of his death. Each of the essays ends quietly, showing that aspirations give way to humility. Derick Cook believes that these works are more loving than a bitter farewell to life; composer Alban Berg called the Ninth Symphony "the most amazing thing Mahler ever wrote." None of these latter works were performed during Mahler's lifetime.

Style

Mahler was one of the last major composers of Romantic music, completing a series that included, among others, Beethoven, Schubert, Liszt, Wagner and Brahms. Many of the characteristic features of Mahler's music come from these predecessors. Thus, from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony the idea came to use soloists and a choir in the symphony genre. From Beethoven and Liszt came the concept of writing music with a “program” (explanatory text), and a departure from the traditional four-movement symphony format. The example of Wagner and Bruckner encouraged Mahler to expand the scope of his symphonic works far beyond previously accepted standards, to include the whole world of emotions.

Early critics argued that Mahler's adoption of many different styles to express different kinds of feelings meant that he lacked his own style; Derick Cook argues that Mahler "paid for the borrowings with the imprint of his own personality on virtually every note", producing music of "outstanding originality". Music critic Harold Schonberg sees the essence of Mahler's music in the theme of struggle, in the tradition of Beethoven. However, according to Schonberg, Beethoven had an "indomitable and triumphant hero" who struggled, while Mahler had "a mental weakling, a complaining teenager who... took advantage of his suffering, wanting the whole world to watch him suffer." However, Schonberg admits, most symphonies contain movements in which Mahler's brilliance as a musician overcomes and overshadows Mahler as a "deep thinker."

The combination of song and symphonic forms in Mahler's music is organic; his songs naturally turn into parts of a symphony, being symphonic from the start. Mahler was convinced that “a symphony should be like the world. It must cover everything." Following this belief, Mahler drew material from many sources for his songs and symphonies: bird calls and cowbells for pictures of nature and countryside, bugle calls, street melodies and village dances for pictures of the forgotten world of childhood. A technique often used by Mahler is “progressive tonality,” the resolution of a symphonic conflict in a key different from the initial one.

Meaning

By the time of the composer's death in 1911, there had been more than 260 performances of his symphonies in Europe, Russia and America. The Fourth Symphony was performed most often, 61 times. During his lifetime, Mahler's works and their performances attracted great interest, but rarely received positive reviews from professionals. A mixture of delight, horror and critical disdain was the constant reaction to Mahler's new symphonies, although the songs were better received. Almost the only unclouded triumph during Mahler’s lifetime was the premiere of the Eighth Symphony in Munich in 1910, billed as the “Symphony of a Thousand.” At the end of the symphony, the ovation continued for half an hour.

Before Mahler's music was banned as "degenerate" during the Nazi era, his symphonies and songs were performed in concert halls in Germany and Austria, and were especially popular in Austria during the Austrofascist era (1934-1938). At this time, the regime, with the help of the composer's widow Alma Mahler and his friend, conductor Bruno Walter, who were on friendly terms with Chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg, promoted Mahler to the role of a national symbol, in parallel with the attitude towards Wagner in Germany.

Mahler's popularity increased as a new, post-war generation of music lovers emerged, unaffected by the old polemics against Romanticism that had affected Mahler's reputation in the interwar years. In the years following his centenary in 1960, Mahler quickly became one of the most performed and recorded composers, and in many ways remains so.

Mahler's followers included Arnold Schoenberg and his students, who together founded the Second Viennese School, and he was influenced by Kurt Weill, Luciano Berio, Benjamin Britten and Dmitri Shostakovich. In a 1989 interview, pianist-conductor Vladimir Ashkenazy said that the connection between Mahler and Shostakovich was "very strong and obvious."

A crater on Mercury is named after Mahler.

Recordings of Mahler as a performer

• "I was walking across the field this morning." (Ging heut" morgen ?bers Feld) from the cycle Songs of the Wandering Apprentice (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen) (with piano accompaniment).
• "I walked joyfully through the green forest." (Ich ging mit Lust durch einen gr?nen Wald) from the cycle The Boy's Magic Horn (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) (with piano accompaniment).
• "Heavenly Life" (Das himmlische Leben) Song from the cycle The Boy's Magic Horn (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) 4th movement from Symphony No. 4 (with piano accompaniment).
• 1st movement (Funeral March) from Symphony No. 5 (transcribed for solo piano).

Works

• Quartet in A minor (1876)
• "Das klagende Lied" ("Sad Song"), cantata (1880); solo, choir and orchestra.
• Three Songs (1880)
• "R?bezahl", opera-fairy tale (1879-83)
• Fourteen Songs with Accompaniment (1882-1885)
• "Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen" ("Songs of the wandering apprentice"), (1885-1886)
• "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" (Humoresken) ("The Boy's Magic Horn"), 12 songs (1892-1901)
  • “Das himmlische Leben” (“Heavenly Life”) - included in Symphony No. 4 (4th movement)
• Rückert Lieder, songs with words by Rückert (1901-1902)
• "Kindertotenlieder" ("Songs about Dead Children"), (1901-1904)
• "Das Lied von der Erde" ("Song of the Earth"), cantata symphony (1908-1909)
• Suite from the orchestral works of Johann Sebastian Bach (1909)
• 10 symphonies (10th unfinished)

Recordings of Mahler's works

Among the conductors who left recordings of all of Gustav Mahler's symphonies (including or excluding the "Song of the Earth" and the unfinished Symphony No. 10) are Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, Gary Bertini, Pierre Boulez, Eliahu Inbal, Rafael Kubelik, James Levine, Lorin Maazel, Vaclav Neumann, Seiji Ozawa, Simon Rattle, Evgeny Svetlanov, Leif Segerstam, Giuseppe Sinopoli, Klaus Tennstedt, Michael Tilson Thomas, Bernard Haitink, Devin Zinman, Ricardo Chailly, Gerald Schwarz, Georg Solti, Christoph Eschenbach.

Important recordings of individual Gustav Mahler symphonies were also carried out by conductors Karel Ancherl (No. 1, 5, 9), John Barbirolli (No. 2-7, 9), Rudolf Barshai (No. 5; No. 10 in his own edition), Edo de Waart (No. 8 ), Hiroshi Wakasugi (No. 1, 8), Bruno Walter (No. 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, “Song of the Earth”), Anthony Wit (No. 2-6, 8), Valery Gergiev (No. 1-8 ), Alan Gilbert (No. 9), Michael Gielen (No. 8), Jascha Gorenstein (No. 1-4, 6-9, "Song of the Earth"), James De Priest (No. 5), Carlo Maria Giulini (No. 1, 9, "Song of the Earth"), Colin Davis (No. 8, "Song of the Earth"), Gustavo Dudamel (No. 5), Kurt Sanderling (No. 1, 9, 10), Eugen Jochum ("Song of the Earth"), Gilbert Kaplan (No. 2, Adagietto from No. 5), Herbert von Karajan (No. 4-6, 9, "Song of the Earth"),

MAHLER, GUSTAV (Mahler, Gustav) (1860–1911), Austrian composer and conductor. Born on July 7, 1860 in Kaliste (Czech Republic), the second of 14 children in the family of Maria Hermann and Bernhard Mahler, a Jewish distiller. Soon after Gustav's birth, the family moved to the small industrial town of Jihlava, an island of German culture in South Moravia (now the Czech Republic).

As a child, Mahler showed extraordinary musical talent and studied with local teachers. Then his father took him to Vienna. At the age of 15, Mahler entered the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied with J. Epstein (piano), R. Fuchs (harmony) and F. Krenn (composition). He also attended lecture courses on the history of music and philosophy at the University of Vienna and met A. Bruckner, who was then working at the university. Mahler's first significant work, the cantata Lamentation Song (Das klagende Lied, 1880), did not receive the Beethoven Prize at the Conservatory, after which the disappointed author decided to devote himself to conducting - first in a small operetta theater near Linz (May-June 1880), then in Ljubljana ( Slovenia, 1881–1882), Olomouc (Moravia, 1883) and Kassel (Germany, 1883–1885). At the age of 25, Mahler was invited as a conductor to the Prague Opera, where he staged operas by Mozart and Wagner and performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony with great success. However, as a result of a conflict with the chief conductor, A. Seidl, Mahler was forced to leave Vienna and from 1886 to 1888 served as assistant to the chief conductor A. Nikisch at the Leipzig Opera. The unrequited love experienced by the musician at this time gave rise to two major works - the vocal-symphonic cycle Songs of the Wandering Apprentice (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 1883) and the First Symphony (1888).

Middle period.

Following the triumphant success in Leipzig of the premiere of K. M. Weber's completed opera The Three Pintos (Die drei Pintos), Mahler performed it several more times during 1888 in theaters in Germany and Austria. These triumphs, however, did not solve the conductor's personal problems. After a quarrel with Nikisch, he left Leipzig and became director of the Royal Opera in Budapest. Here he conducted the Hungarian premieres of Wagner's Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, and staged one of the first verist operas, Mascagni's Die Rural Honour. His interpretation of Mozart's Don Giovanni evoked an enthusiastic response from I. Brahms.

In 1891, Mahler had to leave Budapest because the new director of the Royal Theater did not want to collaborate with a foreign conductor. By this time, Mahler had already composed three notebooks of songs with piano accompaniment; Nine songs based on texts from the German folk poetry anthology The Boy's Magic Horn (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) formed a vocal cycle of the same name. Mahler's next place of employment was the Hamburg City Opera House, where he served as first conductor (1891–1897). Now he had an ensemble of first-class singers at his disposal, and he had the opportunity to communicate with the greatest musicians of his time. Mahler's patron was H. von Bülow, who, on the eve of his death (1894), handed over the leadership of the Hamburg subscription concerts to Mahler. During the Hamburg period, Mahler completed the orchestral edition of The Boy's Magic Horn and the Second and Third Symphonies.

In Hamburg, Mahler experienced a passion for Anna von Mildenburg, a singer (dramatic soprano) from Vienna; At the same time, his long-term friendship with violinist Nathalie Bauer-Lechner began: they spent months of summer holidays together, and Nathalie kept a diary, one of the most reliable sources of information about Mahler’s life and way of thinking. In 1897, he converted to Catholicism; one of the reasons for his conversion was the desire to obtain a position as director and conductor of the Court Opera in Vienna. The ten years that Mahler spent in this post are considered by many musicologists to be the golden age of the Vienna Opera: the conductor selected and trained an ensemble of magnificent performers, while preferring singer-actors to bel canto virtuosos. Mahler's artistic fanaticism, his stubborn character, his disregard for certain performing traditions, his desire to pursue a meaningful repertoire policy, as well as the unusual tempos he chose and the harsh comments he made during rehearsals, created many enemies for Mahler in Vienna, the city where music was viewed as an object of pleasure rather than sacrificial service. In 1903, Mahler invited a new collaborator to the theater - the Viennese artist A. Roller; together they created a number of productions in which they applied new stylistic and technical techniques that had developed at the turn of the century in European theatrical art. The biggest achievements along this path were Tristan and Isolde (1903), Fidelio (1904), Das Rheingold and Don Giovanni (1905), as well as a cycle of Mozart’s best operas, prepared in 1906 for the 150th anniversary of the composer’s birth.

In 1901, Mahler married Alma Schindler, the daughter of a famous Viennese landscape painter. Alma Mahler was eighteen years younger than her husband, studied music, even tried to compose, generally felt like a creative person and did not at all strive to diligently fulfill the duties of a housewife, mother and wife, as Mahler wanted. However, thanks to Alma, the composer’s social circle expanded: in particular, he became close friends with playwright G. Hauptmann and composers A. Zemlinsky and A. Schoenberg. In his small “composer's cottage”, hidden in the forest on the shores of Lake Wörthersee, Mahler completed the Fourth Symphony and created four more symphonies, as well as a second vocal cycle on poems from the Boy's Magic Horn (Seven Songs of the Last Years, Sieben Lieder aus letzter Zeit) and tragic vocal cycle based on poems by Rückert Songs about Dead Children (Kindertotenlieder).

By 1902, Mahler's work as a composer was widely recognized, largely thanks to the support of R. Strauss, who arranged the first complete performance of the Third Symphony, which was a great success. In addition, Strauss included the Second and Sixth Symphonies, as well as Mahler's songs, in the programs of the annual festival of the All-German Musical Union, which he headed. Mahler was often invited to conduct his own works, and this led to a conflict between the composer and the administration of the Vienna Opera, who believed that Mahler was neglecting his duties as artistic director.

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Recent years.

1907 turned out to be a very difficult year for Mahler. He left the Vienna Opera, saying that his work here was not appreciated; his youngest daughter died of diphtheria, and he himself learned that he was suffering from serious heart disease. Mahler took the place of chief conductor of the New York Metropolitan Opera, but his health did not allow him to engage in conducting activities. In 1908, a new manager appeared at the Metropolitan Opera - the Italian impresario G. Gatti-Casazza, who brought his conductor - the famous A. Toscanini. Mahler accepted the invitation to the post of chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, which at that time was in urgent need of reorganization. Thanks to Mahler, the number of concerts soon increased from 18 to 46 (of which 11 were on tour), not only well-known masterpieces began to appear in the programs, but also new scores by American, English, French, German and Slavic authors. In the 1910/1911 season, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra gave 65 concerts, but Mahler, who was feeling unwell and tired of the struggle for artistic values ​​with the leadership of the Philharmonic, left for Europe in April 1911. He stayed in Paris to undergo treatment, then returned to Vienna. Mahler died in Vienna on May 18, 1911.

Music by Mahler. Six months before his death, Mahler experienced the greatest triumph on his thorny path as a composer: the premiere of his grandiose Eighth Symphony took place in Munich, which requires about a thousand participants for its performance - orchestra members, solo singers and choristers. During the summer months of 1909–1911, which Mahler spent in Toblach (South Tyrol, now Italy), he composed the Song of the Earth for soloists and orchestra (Das Lied von der Erde), the Ninth Symphony, and also worked on the Tenth Symphony (which remained unfinished) .

During Mahler's lifetime, his music was often underappreciated. Mahler's symphonies were called "symphonic medleys", they were condemned for stylistic eclecticism, abuse of "reminiscences" from other authors and quotations from Austrian folk songs. Mahler's high compositional technique was not denied, but he was accused of trying to hide his creative inadequacy with countless sound effects and the use of grandiose orchestral (and sometimes choral) compositions. His works sometimes repulsed and shocked listeners with the tension of internal paradoxes and antinomies, such as “tragedy - farce”, “pathos - irony”, “nostalgia - parody”, “refinement - vulgarity”, “primitive - sophistication”, “fiery mysticism - cynicism” . The German philosopher and music critic TADORNO was the first to show that various kinds of breakdowns, distortions, and deviations in Mahler are never arbitrary, even if they do not obey the usual laws of musical logic. Adorno was also the first to note the distinctiveness of the general “tone” of Mahler’s music, which makes it unlike any other and immediately recognizable. He drew attention to the “novel-like” nature of development in Mahler’s symphonies, the dramaturgy and dimensions of which are determined more often by the course of certain musical events than by a pre-established scheme.

Among Mahler's discoveries in the field of form is his almost complete avoidance of exact reprise; the use of refined variational forms in which the general pattern of the theme is preserved, while its intervallic composition changes; the use of diverse and subtle polyphonic techniques, which sometimes gives rise to very bold harmonic combinations; in later works there is a tendency towards “total thematicism” (later theoretically substantiated by Schoenberg), i.e. to saturate not only the main but also secondary voices with thematic elements. Mahler never claimed to invent a new musical language, but he created music so complex (a striking example is the finale of the Sixth Symphony) that even Schoenberg and his school are inferior to him in this sense.

It has been noted that Mahler’s harmony itself is less chromatic, less “modern” than, for example, that of R. Strauss. The fourth sequences on the verge of atonality that open Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony have an analogue in Mahler's Seventh Symphony, but such phenomena for Mahler are the exception, not the rule. His works are full of polyphony, which becomes increasingly complex in his later opuses, and the consonances formed as a result of the combination of polyphonic lines can often seem random, not subject to the laws of harmony. At the same time, Mahler's rhythm is basically quite simple, with obvious preference given to the meter and rhythm typical of the march and ländler. The composer's passion for trumpet signals, and in general for military brass music, is easily explained by childhood memories of military parades in his native Jihlava. According to Mahler, “the process of composing is reminiscent of a child’s game, in which new buildings are built each time from the same cubes. But these cubes themselves lie in the mind since childhood, for only this is the time of collecting and accumulation.”

Mahler's orchestral writing was particularly controversial. He introduced new instruments into the symphony orchestra, such as the guitar, mandolin, celesta, and cow bell. He used traditional instruments in uncharacteristic registers and achieved new sound effects with unusual combinations of orchestral voices. The texture of his music is very changeable, and the massive tutti of the entire orchestra can suddenly be replaced by the lonely voice of the solo instrument.

Although during the 1930s and 1940s the composer's music was promoted by such conductors as B. Walter, O. Klemperer and D. Mitropoulos, the real discovery of Mahler began only in the 1960s, when the complete cycles of his symphonies were recorded by L. Bernstein, J. Solti, R. Kubelik and B. Haitink. By the 1970s, Mahler's works were firmly established in the repertoire and began to be performed throughout the world.

A man in whom the most serious and pure artistic will of our time was embodied.
T. Mann

The great Austrian composer G. Mahler said that for him “writing a symphony means using all available technology to build a new world. All my life I have written music about only one thing: how can I be happy if another being is suffering somewhere else.” With such ethical maximalism, “building the world” in music, achieving a harmonious whole becomes a complex, barely solvable problem. Mahler, in essence, completes the tradition of philosophical classical-romantic symphonism (L. Beethoven - F. Schubert - J. Brahms - P. Tchaikovsky - A. Bruckner), striving to answer the eternal questions of existence and determine the place of man in the world.

At the turn of the century, the understanding of human individuality as the highest value and “container” of the entire universe was experiencing a particularly deep crisis. Mahler felt it keenly; and any of his symphonies is a titanic attempt to find harmony, an intense and each time unique process of searching for truth. Mahler's creative quests led to a violation of established ideas about beauty, to seeming formlessness, incoherence, and eclecticism; the composer built his monumental concepts as if from the most heterogeneous “shards” of a disintegrated world. These searches were the key to preserving the purity of the human spirit in one of the most difficult eras of history. “I am a musician who wanders in the desolate night of modern musical craft without a guiding star and is in danger of doubting everything or going astray,” wrote Mahler.

Mahler was born into a poor Jewish family in the Czech Republic. His musical abilities manifested themselves early (at the age of 10 he gave his first public concert as a pianist). At the age of fifteen, Mahler entered the Vienna Conservatory, took composition lessons from the greatest Austrian symphonist Bruckner, and then attended courses in history and philosophy at the University of Vienna. Soon the first works appeared: sketches of operas, orchestral and chamber music. From the age of 20, Mahler's life was inextricably linked with his work as a conductor. First - the opera houses of small towns, but soon - the largest musical centers in Europe: Prague (1885), Leipzig (1886-88), Budapest (1888-91), Hamburg (1891-97). Conducting, to which Mahler devoted himself no less enthusiastically than to composing music, absorbed almost all of his time, and the composer worked on major works in the summer, free from theatrical duties. Very often the idea of ​​a symphony was born from a song. Mahler is the author of several vocal cycles, the first of which is “Songs of a Wandering Apprentice,” written in his own words, makes one recall F. Schubert, his bright joy of communicating with nature and the sorrow of a lonely, suffering wanderer. From these songs grew the First Symphony (1888), in which pristine purity is obscured by the grotesque tragedy of life; the way to overcome darkness is to restore unity with nature.

In the following symphonies, the composer is already cramped within the framework of the classical four-part cycle, and he expands it, and attracts the poetic word (F. Klopstock, F. Nietzsche) as the “carrier of the musical idea”. The Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies are associated with the song cycle "The Boy's Magic Horn". The Second Symphony, about the beginning of which Mahler said that here he “buries the hero of the First Symphony,” ends with the affirmation of the religious idea of ​​​​resurrection. In the Third, the way out is found in joining the eternal life of nature, understood as the spontaneous, cosmic creativity of vital forces. “I am always very offended by the fact that most people, when talking about “nature,” always think about flowers, birds, forest aroma, etc. No one knows the God Dionysus, the great Pan.”

In 1897, Mahler became the chief conductor of the Vienna Court Opera House, 10 years of work in which became an era in the history of opera performance; in the person of Mahler, a brilliant musician-conductor and director-director of the performance were combined. “For me, the greatest happiness is not that I have achieved an outwardly brilliant position, but that I have now found my homeland, my homeland" Among the creative successes of Mahler the director are operas by R. Wagner, K. V. Gluck, W. A. ​​Mozart, L. Beethoven, B. Smetana, P. Tchaikovsky (“The Queen of Spades”, “Eugene Onegin”, “Iolanta”) . In general, Tchaikovsky (like Dostoevsky) was in some ways close to the nervous-impulsive, explosive temperament of the Austrian composer. Mahler was also a major symphony conductor, touring in many countries (he visited Russia three times). The symphonies created in Vienna marked a new stage in his creative path. The fourth, in which the world is seen through children's eyes, surprised listeners with a balance that was not previously characteristic of Mahler, a stylized, neoclassical appearance and, it seemed, the cloudless idyllicity of the music. But this idyll is imaginary: the text of the song underlying the symphony reveals the meaning of the entire work - these are only the dreams of a child about heavenly life; and among the melodies in the spirit of Haydn and Mozart, something dissonant and broken sounds.

In the next three symphonies (in which Mahler does not use poetic texts), the coloring as a whole becomes darker - especially in the Sixth, called “Tragic”. The figurative source of these symphonies was the cycle “Songs about Dead Children” (on the poem by F. Rückert). At this stage of creativity, the composer seems to be no longer able to find a solution to the contradictions in life itself, in nature or religion; he sees it in the harmony of classical art (the finales of the Fifth and Seventh are written in the style of the classics of the 18th century and sharply contrast with the previous parts).

Mahler spent the last years of his life (1907-11) in America (only when he was seriously ill did he return to Europe for treatment). Uncompromisingness in the fight against routine at the Vienna Opera complicated Mahler's position and led to real persecution. He accepts an invitation to the post of conductor of the Metropolitan Opera (New York), and soon becomes conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.

In the works of these years, the thought of death is combined with a passionate desire to capture all the earthly beauty. In the Eighth Symphony - “a symphony of a thousand participants” (enlarged orchestra, 3 choirs, soloists) - Mahler tried in his own way to implement the idea of ​​Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony: achieving joy in universal unity. “Imagine that the universe begins to sound and ring. It is no longer human voices that sing, but circling suns and planets,” the composer wrote. The symphony uses the final scene of “Faust” by J. V. Goethe. Like the finale of a Beethoven symphony, this scene is the apotheosis of affirmation, the achievement of an absolute ideal in classical art. For Mahler, following Goethe, the highest ideal, fully achievable only in unearthly life, is “the eternally feminine, that which, according to the composer, attracts us with mystical force, that every creation (maybe even stones) with unconditional confidence feels like the center of his being.” Mahler constantly felt a spiritual kinship with Goethe.

Throughout Mahler’s entire career, the song cycle and the symphony went hand in hand and finally fused together in the cantata symphony “Song of the Earth” (1908). Embodying the eternal theme of life and death, Mahler turned this time to Chinese poetry of the 8th century. Expressive flashes of drama, chamber-transparent (akin to the finest Chinese painting) lyricism and quiet dissolution, departure into eternity, reverent listening into silence, waiting - these are the features of the style of the late Mahler. The Ninth and unfinished Tenth symphonies became the “epilogue” of all creativity, the farewell.

Songs.
Three songs for tenor and piano, dedicated to J. Poizl. Words by G. Mahler. 1890 (Brno, September 30, 1934)
1. “In the Spring” / “Im Lenz”
2. “Winter Song” / “Winterlied”
3. “May dance among the greenery” / “Maitanz im Grünen”
Fourteen songs and romances, for voice and piano.
1880-1890
1. “Spring morning” / “Frühlingsmorgen”. Words by R. Leander (Prague, April 18, 1886)
2. “Memory” / “Erinnerung”. Words by R. Leander (Budapest, November 13, 1889)
3. “Hans and Greta” / “Hans und Grethe”. Words by G. Mahler (Prague, April 18, 1886)
4. “Serenade from Don Juan” / “Serenade aus Don Juan”. Words by Tirso de Molina translated by L. Brauenfels (Leipzig, October 1887?)
5. “Fantasy from Don Juan” / “Phantasie aus Don Juan”. Words by Tirso de Molina translated by L. Brauenfels (Leipzig, October 1887?)
6. “To make obedient children obedient” / “Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen.” Words from "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Munich, season 1899/1900)
7. “I walked cheerfully” / “Ich ging mit Lust.” Words from "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Stuttgart, November 13, 1907?)
8. “Get out!” Away!" / „Aus! Aus!“. Words from "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Hamburg, April 29, 1892)
9. “The power of imagination” / “Starke Einbildungskraft”. Words from "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Stuttgart, November 13, 1907?)
10. “At Strasbourg in the fortress” / “Zu Strassburg auf der Schanz”. Words from "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Helsingfors, November 1906?)
11. “Changing of the guard in summer” / “Ablösung im Sommer”. Words from "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Berlin, season 1904/05)
12. “To part, to separate” / “Scheiden und Meiden”. Words from "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Budapest, November 13, 1889)
13. “Don’t see each other again!” / “Nicht wiedersehen!” Words from "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Hamburg, April 29, 1892)
14. “Self-love” / “Selbstgefühl”. Words from "The Boy's Magic Horn" (Hamburg, February 15, 1900)
“Songs of the Wandering Apprentice” / “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen”, for voice and piano/orchestra. Words by G. Mahler. 1884?-1896 (Berlin, March 16, 1896)
1. “When they celebrate my sweetheart’s wedding” / “Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht”
2. “I was walking this morning” / “Ging heut’ Morgens übers Feld”
3. “A dagger like a burning flame” / “Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer”
4. “Blue Eyes” / “Die zwei blauen Augen”
Twelve songs from The Boy's Magic Horn, for voice and piano/orchestra. 1892-1898
1. “Night Song of the Guardian” / “Der Schildwache Nachtlied”. 1892 (Berlin, December 12, 1892)
2. “Lost Labor” / “Verlor’ne Müh”. 1892 (Berlin, December 12, 1892)
3. “Consolation in Misfortune” / “Trost im Unglück”. 1892 (Hamburg, October 27, 1893)
4. “Who came up with this song?” / “Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht?”. 1892 (Hamburg, October 27, 1893)
5. “Earthly Life” / “Das irdische Leben”. 1892-1893 (Vienna, 14 January 1900)
6. “The Sermon of Anthony of Padua to the Fishes” / “Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt”. 1893 (Vienna, January 29, 1905)
7. “Rhenish Tale” / “Rheinlegendchen”. 1893 (Hamburg, October 27, 1893)
8. “Song of the Prisoner in the Tower” / “Lied des Verfolgten im Turm”. 1898 (Vienna, January 29, 1905)
9. “Where the wonderful trumpets sound” / “Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen.” 1898 (Vienna, 14 January 1900)
10. “Praise of an expert” / “Lob des hohen Verstandes”. 1896 (Vienna, 18 January 1906, for voice and piano)
11. “Three angels sang” / “Es sungen drei Engel”. 1895 (Krefeld, 9 June 1902, as the V movement of the Third Symphony)
12. “Primordial Light” / “Urlicht”. 1892-1893 (Berlin, December 13, 1895, as IV movement of the Second Symphony)
“Heavenly Life” / “Das himmlische Leben”, for voice and piano/orchestra. Lyrics from "The Boy's Magic Horn." 1892 (Hamburg, 27 October 1893) (later used as the finale of the Fourth Symphony)
“Zorya” / “Revelge”, for voice and piano/orchestra. Lyrics from "The Boy's Magic Horn." 1899 (Vienna, January 29, 1905)
“The Little Drummer Boy” / “Der Tamboursg’sell”, for voice and piano/orchestra. Lyrics from "The Boy's Magic Horn." 1901 (Vienna, January 29, 1905)
Songs to lyrics by F. Rückert, for voice and piano/orchestra.
1901-1902
1. “Don’t look into my songs” / “Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder”. 1901 (Vienna, January 29, 1905)
2. “I inhaled the delicate aroma” / “Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft.” 1901 (Vienna, January 29, 1905)
3. “I am lost to the world” / “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen”. 1901 (Vienna, January 29, 1905)
4. “At Midnight” / “Um Mitternacht”. 1901 (Vienna, January 29, 1905)
5. “If you love for beauty” / “Liebst du um Schönheit”. 1902 (Vienna, February 8, 1907)
“Songs about Dead Children” / “Kindertotenlieder”, for voice and piano/orchestra. Words by F. Rückert. 1901-1904 (Vienna, January 29
1905)
1. “Now the sun will rise again, so bright” / “Nun will die Sonn’ so hell aufgeh’n.” 1901
2. “Now I see why the flame is so dark” / “Nun seh’ ich wohl, warum so dunkle Flammen.” 1904
3. “If your mother” / “Wenn dein Mütterlein”. 1901
4. “It often seems to me that they just came out” / “Oft denk’ ich, sie sind nur ausgegangen.” 1901
5. “In such weather, when the rain is noisy” / “In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus.” 1904

Lost Works.
“Ernst, Duke of Swabia” / “Herzog Ernst von Schwaben”, opera (not finished). 1875?
Piano quarter, A minor (only the I movement and a fragment of the scherzo have survived; the I movement is performed as an independent composition). 1876-1878? (New York, February 12, 1964) download
“The Argonauts” / “Die Argonauten”, opera (not finished). 1880
“Rübezahl” / “Rübezahl”, opera (not finished, libretto preserved). 1879-1883
Prelude with choir. 1883 (Kassel, November 2, 1883)
“The Trumpeter from Säkkingen” / “Der Trompeter von Säkkingen”, music for tableaux based on the poem by J.W. von Scheffel. 1883 (Kassel, June 23
1884)
“Folk Song” / “Das Volkslied”. Words by S.G.Mosenthal. 1885 (Kassel, April 20, 1885)

Arrangements of works by other composers.
L. van Beethoven. Quartet op.95, F minor. Arranged for string orchestra. 1898? (Vienna, January 15, 1899)
A. Brukner. Third Symphony, D minor. Arranged for piano 4 hands. 1878-1879
K.M. von Weber. “The Three Pintos” / “Die drei Pintos”, opera. 1887 (Leipzig, January 20, 1888) (Mahler completed Weber’s opera on the basis of surviving working materials - libretto and sketches of seven numbers, using material from other works of Weber, almost or not at all known - songs and works for choir; Mahler completed several numbers independently .)
K.M. von Weber. "Euryanthe" / "Euryanthe", opera. 1903-1904 (Vienna, January 19, 1904) (Mahler made his own edition of Euryanthe, making changes to the libretto and score of the opera.)
W.A.Mozart. "The Marriage of Figaro" / "Die Hochzeit des Figaro" ("Le nozze di Figaro"), opera. 1905-1906 (Vienna, March 30, 1906) (Mahler composed recitatives for Max Kahlbeck's new German translation of Mozart's opera.)
F. Schubert. Quartet D810, A minor (“Death and the Maiden”). Arranged for string orchestra. (Hamburg, November 19, 1894, part II only)
Suite from orchestral works by J. S. Bach. 1909 (New York, November 10, 1910)