Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife - Hardcover

Mahler, Gustav

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0801443407 ISBN 13: 9780801443404

Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2004

Synopsis

"Gustav Mahler and Alma Maria Schindler were married in... 1902. The bride was twenty-one and a half years old, her groom a few months short of forty-two. Apart from their substantial age difference, it seems to have been the very disparity of their intellectual and social backgrounds that drew them together. Mahler was attracted to Alma by her beauty, her alert mind and emotional intensity. Though aware that he possessed by far the broader outlook, he trusted in Alma's ability and willingness to learn from him."―from the Introduction

"Once the stiffness of unfamiliarity has been softened by a few months of marriage, Mahler's style of correspondence with Alma is generally simple, direct, and astonishingly down-to-earth. In a manner akin to that of his musical style, he spikes his language with witticisms and double-entendres, colloquialisms and quotations from librettos and classical works of literature."―from the Preface

This profusely illustrated collection of Gustav Mahler's letters to his wife Alma is more comprehensive than any previous edition; it contains 350 letters, 188 of them until now unpublished. Since 1995, when the German edition of this book was first published, two events have served to expand its horizons: the publication in 1997 of the complete text of Alma's early diaries, dating from January 1898 to March 1902, and the publication in 2003 of a catalogue of all Mahler letters acquired from the Moldenhauer Archives. With the aid of this new material, the editors were also able to revise the dates assigned to many of the letters. Commentaries and annotations throughout the book have been corrected and expanded annotations included. The editors' introduction provides a biographical context for the correspondence that follows.

About this title

About the Author

Henry-Louis de La Grange is President of the Gustav Mahler Musical Library, Paris, and the author of a four-volume biography of Mahler. Günther Weiss has published books and essays on, among others, Bartók, Pfitzner, Reger, and Strauss. Knud Martner, a Danish music researcher, is the editor of Selected Letters of Gustav Mahler. Antony Beaumont is the author of Zemlinsky and coeditor with Susanne Rode-Breymann and translator of Alma Mahler-Werfel's Diaries 1898-1902 (both from Cornell).

Review

"Gustav Mahler's letters to his wife have two distinct kinds of interest: as evidence in the story of a difficult and often unhappy marriage, and as a detailed, hour-by-hour account of the professional life of a great musician.... Mahler wrote nothing but music and letters: no essay, memoir, treatise or manifesto. From the music itself we can deduce much about his feelings for Beethoven or Wagner or Bach; but the letters, and the memoirs of others, are all we have to turn to for his explicit opinions on music.... The material in this book gives a large and deep picture of Mahler's personality. Just as his music is marked by shifts of register and scale, so his letters to Alma are engagingly many-voiced.... The fervent letters of the last year, many of them containing poems, are a record of the emotional distress bordering on madness that led Mahler to his consultation with Freud in August 1910. They are almost too painful and private to read."

(Alan Hollinghurst, The Guardian, October 30, 2004)

"The Mahler literature is huge, and many of Mahler's letters have already appeared in print. But what has come fully to light during the last decade adds greatly to our understanding of Mahler and his marriage.... This book allows us not only to fill in some gaps but to gain a vivid and telling portrayal of Mahler's personality in his voice."

(Hugh Wood, Times Literary Supplement, November 12, 2004)

"The letters... offer correctives to Alma's distortions and a fascinating glimpse into the grueling life of a renowned guest conductor, regularly subjected to overnight train rides, second-rate hotels, and exhausting rehearsals. The letters also reveal Mahler's complex character. He was impatient and arrogant but also generous, forgiving, and solicitous of his friends and colleagues."

(Tess Lewis, The Wall Street Journal, December 15, 2004)

"At first a little formal, Mahler's writing loosens up after a few months of marriage; soon he leavens his language with witticisms, clever quotes, double entendres, and slang. One hears the same tone in his later correspondence for example, as he writes in 1910 about his session with Freud. By contrast, Alma, always aware of posterity looking over her shoulder, seems eager to appear the consort of a demigod. Generously illustrated, well indexed, and conscientiously translated, this long-awaited volume will be devoured by Mahlerites and will be a valuable reader for others. Highly recommended."

(M. Meckna, Texas Christian University, Choice, April 2005)

"If you listen to Mahler's nine symphonies it is obvious the man was an artist in touch with oceans of raw emotion. It is enlightening, however, to square these tracts of musical genius with the fragile 'Gustl' revealed in these lettersTired, loving, ill, worried, romantic, neurotic, petty, angry, disenchanted: all the signs of a functional human being.... He is frequently witty, sometimes scathing, but more often sad, lonesome, and vulnerable.... This is a fine, if weighty and demanding, book that will help the casual reader more fully understand the personality of one of the great modern composers.... Devotees of the great man, however, will be equally saddened, moved, and transfixed by these letters, which at their most vivid are written with a quill dipped in the well of his agonized soul."

(Phil Miller, The Herald)

"Not unlike his grand and idiosyncratic musical oeuvre, Gustav Mahler's marriage to Alma Mahler straddled the border between the Romantic nineteenth and the Modern twentieth centuries.... Collectors of Mahleriana will find this expertly compiled volume indispensable. More than half of its 350 letters and postcards are published for the first time, and many of the old letters, which were once heavily emended by the distorting hands of Alma herself, are restored to their original form.... It's the novel-like intensity of the pair's complex and tempestuous love affair that will really broaden the audience for this book beyond its surefire appeal to students of modern art and feminism."

(Publishers Weekly, 13 December 2004)

Edition details

• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0801443407
• ISBN 13: 9780801443404
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: De La Grange Henry-Louis, Weiss Günther, Martner Knud