Gustav Mahler: New Insights Into His Life, Times and Work 0754653536, 9780754653530

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Gustav Mahler

New Insights into his Life, Times and Work

Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig Translation, annotation and commentary by Jeremy Barham

First published by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Avenue, New Publishing York, NY 10017, USA First Third published by Ashgate Published 2016 Routledge2017 First issued inby hardback

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Co-published 2007 Co-published inin 2007 by:by: The Guildhall School of Music & Drama The Guildhall School of Music & Drama Barbican Barbican Silk Street Silk Street LONDON LONDON EC2Y 8DT EC2Y 8DT England England Tel: 0044(0)207 (0)207 2571 Tel: 0044 628628 2571 Fax: 0044(0)207 (0)207 7212 Fax: 0044 382382 7212 www.gsmd.ac.uk www.gsmd.ac.uk British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Mathis-Rosenzweig, Alfred Gustav Mahler : new insights into his life, times and work. - (Guildhall research studies) 1. Mahler, Gustav, 1860-1911 2. Mahler, Gustav, 1860-1911 Criticism and interpretation 3. Composers - Austria Biography I. Title 780.9’2 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rosenzweig, Alfred. [Gustav Mahler. English] Gustav Mahler : new insights into his life, times, and work / Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig ; translation, annotation, and commentary by Jeremy Barham. p. cm. -- (Guildhall research studies ; 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-5353-0 (alk. paper) 1. Mahler, Gustav, 1860-1911. 2. Composers--Austria--Biography. I. Barham, Jeremy, 1963- II. Title. ML410.M23R7513 2007 780.92--dc22 [B] 2007002031

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-5353-0 (pbk) ISBN 9780754653530 (pbk) ISBN 13: 978-1-1384-6583-1 (hbk)

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Gustav Mahler

New Insights into his Life, Times and Work

Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig Translation, annotation and commentary by Jeremy Barham

List of illustrations ..............................................................................................................v Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................vii Introduction by Jeremy Barham Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig and the Provenance of the Typescript .............1 Structure of the Typescript ........................................................................................2 Content of the Typescript...........................................................................................3 Translator’s Note ...........................................................................................................7 ‘Made in Germany’: Mahler, Identity and Musicological Imperialism ......9 ‘Gustav Mahler. New Insights into his Life, Times and Work‚’ by Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig (translated by Jeremy Barham) Foreword ............................................................................................................................ 25 Introduction and Attempt to Set Out the Problem ............................................ 27 Gustav Mahler. His Life – His Times – His Work. Volume I Chapter 1.

The Bohemian Homeland. Kalischt – Iglau................................ 77

Chapter 2.

Apprentice Years in Vienna (1875–1879) and their Aftermath .............................................................................................. 87

Chapter 3.

In the Lowlands of Day-to-Day Operatic Life (1880–83) ...151

Chapter 4.

Kassel (1883–85) ...............................................................................173

Notes ..................................................................................................................................194 Appendices......................................................................................................................209 Index ..................................................................................................................................242

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Illustrations Iglau woodcut. Archive of Stürtz Verlag, Würtzburg .............................................................................................viii Rosenzweig portrait, by Nick Jones .............................................................................................................................24 Programme booklet of an extraordinary concert given by the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna 3 June 1945 .........................................................................................................28 Poster by Rudolf Hermann, Vienna 1939. Austrian National Library, Vienna. By permission of the Verwertungsgesellschaft Bildender Künstler..................................................29 Bayreuth Festpielhaus. By permission of the Nationalarchiv der Richard-Wagner-Stiftung, Bayreuth ......................................................................................................................38 Kaiser Wilhelm II. By permission of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin ..........................................43 Caricature, 1899. ‘The baton of Cosima Wagner, with which she makes the most money.’ By permission of the Médiathèque Musicale Mahler, Paris .................................................................................52 Hitler at Wahnfried with Wolfgang, Winifred and Wieland Wagner. Photo by Heinrich Hoffmann. By permission of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin ..................55 North German Confederation, South German States and Austro-Hungary, 1867. From J. Breuilly, The Formation of the First German Nation-state 1800–1871 (London: Macmillan, 1996; reprinted 2001). By permission of Palgrave Macmillan ....................................59 The German Empire, 1874. Appleton’s Hand Atlas of Modern Geography, New York, 1874. Courtesy of the Yale University Map Collection ......................................................................61 Mahler with Bruno Walter, Prague 1908. The Kaplan Foundation, New York. Reproduced from The Mahler Album, ed. Gilbert Kaplan (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995) .................69 Rodin’s bust of Mahler. The Kaplan Foundation, New York. Reproduced from The Mahler Album, ed. Gilbert Kaplan (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995) ......................................................70 Alma Mahler with her two daughters, Maria and Anna. Austrian National Library Picture Archive, Vienna. ÖNB/Wien Image ID: Pf 11.714 C (18) ...........................................................71 The house in Kalischt, Bohemia, where Mahler was born. Austrian National Library Picture Archive, Vienna. ÖNB/Wien Image ID: Pk3002, 6665 ................................................................77 Hugo Wolf ........................................................................................................................................................................... 100 Portrait of Bruckner. Austrian National Library Picture Archive, Vienna. ÖNB/Wien Image ID: 154.959 B ................................................................................................................................... 109 Franz Schubert .................................................................................................................................................................. 119 Schoenberg’s portrait of Emil Hertzka. Arnold Schoenberg Center, Vienna. © Belmont Music Publishers/VBK, Vienna/DACS, London 2006 ...................................................................... 133 Poster for a workers’ symphony concert, 1928. Vienna City Library, Poster Collection .......................... 148 Hitler at the unveiling of the Bruckner bust at the Regensburg Valhalla, 6 June 1937. Ullstein Bilderdienst, Berlin ........................................................................................................................................... 150 Barricades in the 1848 Revolution, Berlin. Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Berlin. By permission of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin .......................................................................... 154 Giuseppe Verdi .................................................................................................................................................................. 155 Wilhelm I, King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany in 1881. By permission of Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz Berlin .......................................................................... 156 Summer theatre in Bad Hall. Collection Netherlands Music Institute/Willem Mengelbergh Archive Foundation ........................................................................................... 163 Provincial theatre in Laibach. Austrian National Library Picture Archive, Vienna. ÖNB/Wien Image ID: 198.176 B ................................................................................................................................... 166

v

Royal Municipal Theatre in Olmutz. Austrian National Library Picture Archive, Vienna. ÖNB/Wien Image ID: NB 610.852 B ............................................................................................................ 167 Royal Theatre in Kassel. Austrian National Library Picture Archive, Vienna. ÖNB/Wien Image ID: NB 610.854 B ............................................................................................................................ 170 Mahler, 1883–84, Kassel. The Kaplan Foundation, New York. Reproduced from The Mahler Album, ed. Gilbert Kaplan (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995) .............. 172 Caricature of Budapest première of First Symphony. The Kaplan Foundation, New York. Reproduced from The Mahler Album, ed. Gilbert Kaplan (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1995) .............. 184 The Huntsman’s Funeral ............................................................................................................................................... 185 Mahler’s Metamorphoses. Austrian National Library Picture Archive, Vienna. .......................................... 189 Appendix 1: Wind-band arrangement of ‘At se pinkl házi’.........................................................................210–11 Appendix 2: Alfred Rosenzweig’s doctoral Rigorosenakt. By permission of the archives of the University of Vienna ........................................................................212–18 Appendix 3: Cover page from the Mathis-Rosenzweig typescript. The Rosenzweig Collection, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London.................................................. 219 Appendix 4: Letters addressed by, or on behalf of, Mahler to Dvořák between May 1901 and May 1902......................................................................................................................220–35 Appendix 5: Letter from Lindsay Drummond publishers rejecting Rosenzweig’s proposal to publish a typically politicised history of the Bayreuth and Salzburg Festivals. The Rosenzweig Collection, Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London.................................................. 236 Appendix 6: The Complete Programmes of Gustav Mahler as Director of the Vienna Philharmonic (1898–1907) ..............................................................................................................237–41

Every effort has been made to trace rightsholders where rights are not attributed.

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Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to the School of Arts, Communication and Humanities at the University of Surrey for providing generous financial assistance enabling the preparation of this volume. I am also thankful to George Odam and Adrian Yardley at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, for their help and support in bringing this project to fruition, and would additionally like to thank Sara Peacock and Laura Wallace. I gratefully acknowledge the individuals and institutions who gave their permission to reproduce illustrations (as detailed in the list of illustrations). I finally owe a debt of thanks to Julie, Georgina, Samuel and Harry for their continual patience and inspiration. Jeremy Barham A collection of papers from the Edith Vogel estate was deposited with the Guildhall School library in 1997. Ian Horsbrugh, Principal of the Guildhall School at that time, deposited the manuscript in the Music Library and asked for it to be properly bound. Realising the possible importance of the manuscript, Adrian Yardley the Music Librarian, consulted Dr Donald Mitchell, who enthusiastically identified it as the ‘lost’ work by Alfred Rosenzweig and suggested that it should be made widely available. The manuscript (available for inspection at the Guildhall School library, by appointment) was carefully bound and the attendant documents preserved together with a draft reader’s translation by Laura Wallace. The Guildhall School Research Centre opened in 1999, and the planning of this publication began. Editorial Board Dr Donald Mitchell Professor George Odam Adrian Yardley

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Title Goes Here, Possibly 3 Lines Introduction Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig and Blah Blah Blah the Provenance of the Typescript

A

lfred Rosenzweig (b. Vienna 21 August 1897, d. London 11 December 1948) was a Viennese musicologist and critic who studied at the Universities of Budapest and Vienna (1918–24). His doctoral dissertation of 1923 ‘On the Historical Development of Richard Strauss’s Music Dramas’ [‘Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Richard Strauss’schen Musikdramas’] was examined by Guido Adler and Robert Lach (see Appendix 2 for their reports). His work as a critic was undertaken mostly for Der Wiener Tag and it was in this paper that he published the article ‘How Mahler Planned his “Eighth”. The First Handwritten Sketch’ [‘Wie Gustav Mahler seine “Achte” plante. Die erste handschriftliche Skizze’],1 which included a facsimile of Mahler’s little-known four-movement design of the Eighth Symphony and his personal dedication of it to his wife. This article marked the beginnings of Rosenzweig’s work towards the production of a large-scale study of the composer. However, his subsequent flight from Austria during the regime of the Third Reich to England (where he went under the name of Alfred Mathis and began writing for Music & Letters), combined with cardiac medical problems, prevented him from bringing his monumental plans to complete fruition. The typescript was left unfinished, although a substantial amount of the material had been committed to paper, and shortly before his death Rosenzweig was known to have been in correspondence with Josef Bohuslav Foerster (1859–1951), the Czech composer and close friend of Mahler during his Hamburg and Vienna years, in order to elicit further information for the study. In a recent article by Vladimír Karbusicky´, a leading authority on Rosenzweig, the typescript is presumed to have been lost.2 Rosenzweig first met the pianist Edith Vogel (b. 1 December 1912, d. 15 January 1992) at a recital she gave in Vienna at the age of 14. They later 1

became lovers and fled Austria for England separately in the late 1930s. Vogel taught at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London (henceforth Guildhall School) from this time until shortly before her death. A substantial part of Vogel’s estate was bequeathed to the Guildhall School after the death of her husband, Herbert Jeffrey, in 1997. It was at this point that the ‘lost’ typescript came to light. A draft English translation of the typewritten text had been undertaken in close collaboration with Vogel by her acquaintance Laura Wallace during the 1960s, and this is also to be found in the Rosenzweig collection. A brief report on the typescript together with some short, newly translated, extracts were published by Herta Blaukopf of the Internationale Gustav Mahler Gesellschaft in News About Mahler Research.3 With the exception of this, no part of the typescript has been publicly disseminated.

Structure of the Typescript First title page: Gustav Mahler Neue Erkentnisse zu seinem Leben, seiner Zeit, seinem Werk Von Alfred Mathis [Gustav Mahler New Insights into his Life, Times and Work

By Alfred Mathis] pp. I–II: Vorbemerkung [Foreword] (dated London, August 1945) pp. III–LXXXIII: Einleitung und Versuch einer Problemstellung [Introduction and Attempt to Set Out the Problem] (dated London, August, 1945) Second title page: Gustav Mahler Sein Leben – Seine Zeit – Sein Werk Von Alfred Mathis (Mit einem Vorwort von Anna Mahler) I. Band [Gustav Mahler His Life – His Times – His Work By Alfred Mathis (With a preface by Anna Mahler)4 Volume I] 22

pp. 7–18: I. Die Boehmische Heimat. Kalischt – Iglau [The Bohemian Homeland. Kalischt – Iglau] pp. 19–78: II. Lehrjahre in Wien (1875–79) und ihr Nachhall [Apprentice Years in Vienna (1875–79) and their Aftermath] pp. 79–101: III. In den Niederungen des Opernalltags (1880–83) [In the Lowlands of Day-to-Day Operatic Life (1880–83)] pp. 102–121: IV. Kassel (1883–85) Appendices pp. 1–5: Die kompletten Programme Gustav Mahlers als Dirigent der Wiener Philharmoniker (1898–1907) [The Complete Programmes of Gustav Mahler as Director of the Vienna Philharmonic (1898–1907)] p. 6: Gesellschaftskonzerte unter Mitwirkung der Wiener Philharmoniker unter Leitung von Gustav Mahler [Gesellschaft concerts with the Participation of the Vienna Philharmonic under the Directorship of Gustav Mahler] pp. 7–8: Sonderkonzerte unter Mitwirkung der Wiener Philharmoniker und unter Leitung von Gustav Mahler [Special Concerts with the Participation of the Vienna Philharmonic and under the Directorship of Gustav Mahler]

Content of the Typescript Given both the difficulties of undertaking archival research in the years surrounding the Second World War and the then undeveloped state of Mahler scholarship, the impact of the purely biographical elements of MathisRosenzweig’s study – which did not in any case progress very far – has now diminished, and some of his findings have been superseded in the work of later generations of writers (primarily Henry-Louis de La Grange’s multi-volume biography).5 However, despite the declared intent of the first volume of the study to chart the life of the composer, and in view of the 3

author’s highly charged political disposition, these biographical elements do not form the main content of the Introduction and initial chapters of the text. Here, such material is instead used as a loose framework and platform for Mathis-Rosenzweig’s profound examination of the late-nineteenth- and turn-of-the-century political and cultural environment within which Mahler’s music was embedded. This is an environment in which Wagner, Bruckner and Wolf feature prominently, and in which Mahler’s music is viewed from the wider perspective of nineteenth-century German cultural domination and the subsequent rise of political extremism in the form of Hitlerite fascism. It is in these contexts, for example, that the nuances of the Mahler–Wagner relationship are examined by Mathis-Rosenzweig in the ‘Introduction and Attempt to Set Out the Problem’ by setting Mahler’s early Wagner veneration against the later propagandist Bayreuth myths disseminated by Cosima Wagner, which contributed to her opposition to Mahler’s appointment at the Vienna Hofoper. Further topics addressed in the Introduction include (i) the rarely discussed but related possibility of viewing Mahler as anti-Wagnerian rather than as epigone; (ii) a critical assessment of the mid-century condition of Mahler research and of the National Socialists’ ‘scholarly’ reception of his music; (iii) the historical placement of his music in a specifically Austrian, as opposed to German, symphonic lineage; (iv) an examination of the political developments of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in which Mahler grew up; (v) a subtle pre-Adornian reference to the applicability of the programme music aesthetic to Mahler’s symphonies; (vi) a discussion of Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre as one of the earliest and greatest monuments constructed to Mahler; and (vii) an assessment of the reasons for Mahler’s unpopular reception in pre-war western Europe. Some of these ideas are taken up and developed further in the first two chapters of the study. For example, the latter part of Chapter 1 (‘The Bohemian homeland. Kalischt – Iglau’) deals with Mahler’s profound spiritual and musical affiliation with the distinct, non-German culture of eastern Europe. It assesses Mahler’s relationship with Bohemian–Moravian folk music and with the music of Smetana, Dvorˇák and Foerster – issues that have received only sporadic attention in the literature on the composer (see the essay beginning on p. 9). It also confirms the hitherto unknown fact that in 1901–02 Mahler made extensive, albeit unfulfilled, plans to perform Dvorˇák’s opera Rusalka in Vienna. The Rosenzweig Collection at the GSMD also contains copies of seven previously unpublished letters addressed by, or on behalf of, Mahler to Dvorˇák between May 1901 and May 1902 on this subject. These are presented in facsimile in Appendix 4. 4

Chapter 2 (‘Apprentice Years in Vienna (1875–79) and their Aftermath’) is the most extensive section of the study in terms of both the depth of discussion and the range of topics addressed. These include (i) details of Mahler’s early musical experiences as a boy in Iglau, including a letter from Mahler’s father to Gustav Schwarz regarding his prospective study at the Vienna Conservatoire, which has not previously been published in the literature on the composer; (ii) an account of the troubled relationship between Mahler and Wolf; (iii) an analysis of the historical context and structural elements of the separate Austrian symphonic lineage broached in the Introduction; (iv) the influence of National-Socialist music propaganda on early British Mahler reception; (v) the politicising of the ‘New German School’ through the force of Wagnerism; (vi) the consequent ideological distortion of the music and figure of Bruckner; (vii) associated difficulties pertaining to the early publication of Bruckner’s symphonies; and (viii) the status of conductors’ alterations to Bruckner’s scores in performance. Other topics include discussion of the Wolf–Bruckner and Mahler–Bruckner relationships. While Chapters 3 (‘In the Lowlands of Day-to-Day Operatic Life (1880– 83)’) and 4 (‘Kassel (1883–85)’) contain a smaller quantity of material, the former includes substantial digressions on the political and racial aspects of Wagner’s prose writings and an intriguing ideological comparison of Wagner and Verdi as a backcloth to the outlook of the young Mahler. The latter chapter includes brief discussions of the Brucknerian influence on Mahler’s Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and First Symphony, and of the relation between song and symphony, together with a little-known review of the 1885 Kassel Music Festival directed by Mahler, which appeared in the short-lived journal Parsifal and which has not previously been published in the Mahler literature. An annotation below pp. 117 and 118 of the draft translation reads: The second volume was to have contained an examination of all Mahler’s symphonies: their origin, their place in historical development – musical and personal; and the first volume was to have followed Mahler’s biography until his death. – Translator’s note. It is a matter of great regret, of course, that Mathis-Rosenzweig did not live long enough to complement the historical and cultural study presented in the extant typescript with the more detailed and specific musical analysis promised in subsequent chapters. In addition to the biography – which, according to the author, was itself to be divided into two volumes (1860–97 and 1897–1911) – the second of which would have included an analysis of 5

his operatic reforms in Vienna, and both of which would have discussed the works in systematic, chronological fashion – Mathis-Rosenzweig intended to devote separate chapters at the end of the second volume to (i) a study of Mahler’s symphonic structuring processes; (ii) an examination of practical issues in the interpretation of the symphonies with reference to the work of contemporary conductors such as Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer; and (iii) what would have been one of the earliest critiques of National-Socialist theories of ‘degenerate art’. Nevertheless, the unique distinction of Mathis-Rosenzweig’s typescript is due to the fact that it is over fifty years old and was written by an Austrian exile in England at a particularly momentous time in the history of the twentieth century, yet during the nadir of the global understanding and exposure of Mahler’s music. The provocative nature of its cultural critique of ‘great-German imperialism’ and National-Socialist thinking, so rare in the literature on Mahler, is both disconcerting and compelling. It can be seen from the above description and in the following translation that, despite its incomplete condition, the text is valuable not only for its wide range of incisive cultural, historical and political insights, but also for its own status as a historical document. It offers intriguing interpretations of the reception history and cultural lineages of Mahler’s and Bruckner’s music, and contributes a highly politicised dimension to the development of Mahler scholarship located chronologically between the personal testimony of early writers and subsequent objectivised theoretical and interpretative approaches. It should be noted, for example, that MathisRosenzweig’s Foreword and Introduction were completed a mere three months after the conclusion of the war in Europe. Mathis-Rosenzweig’s uncommon and ‘untimely’ awareness in 1945 of the historical, social and cultural importance of Mahler’s music can be seen in retrospect to have been courageous, astute and, in fact, particularly well timed. Developments in the global political and social landscape during the subsequent half-century nurtured cultural sensibilities in such a way that his remarkable predictions of the fate of Mahler’s works have been vindicated to an extent that even he could scarcely have imagined. Rosenzweig’s text will therefore be of significant interest to scholars of Mahler, Wagner, Bruckner, Wolf, fin-de-siècle music in general, the political dimensions of musical historiography, twentieth-century reception history in the arts (particularly that of the Austro-German musical repertoire), the aesthetics of National-Socialist thinking, and the wider cultural politics of late-nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century Europe.

6

Translator’s Note While certain aspects of Rosenzweig’s occasionally awkward style have been ‘improved’, some of his stylistic idiosyncrasies, such as beginning sentences with ‘And’, and a degree of repetitive phraseology, have been retained. With the exception of surnames, passages underlined by Rosenzweig are presented here in italics. All notes are editorial unless otherwise marked. Words or phrases that are of dubious or ambiguous meaning are translated, with the original German placed in square brackets immediately after. Rosenzweig consistently uses the terms alldeutsch and grossdeutsch, which have been translated here as ‘pan-German’ and ‘great-German’ respectively. Rosenzweig perceived the latter as an Austrian movement that included Georg von Schönerer and his followers, and effectively acted as an affiliate to Prussian pan-Germanism. To all intents and purposes these terms define the same ideologies separated only by geographical boundaries. Notes 1 Alfred Rosenzweig, ‘Wie Gustav Mahler seine “Achte” plante. Die erste handschriftliche Skizze’, Der Wiener Tag 3607 (4 June 1933), pp. 27–8. 2 Vladimír Karbusicky´, ‘Gustav Mahler’s musical Jewishness’, in Jeremy Barham (ed.), Perspectives on Gustav Mahler (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), pp. 195–216. 3 Herta Blaukopf, ‘An (unfinished) Mahler biography from 1945. The forgotten music critic Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig’, News About Mahler Research 41 (autumn 1999), pp. 31–9. 4 This was planned but never produced. 5 Gustav Mahler Vol. 1 (London: Gollancz, 1974) (HLGE1); Gustav Mahler. Chronique d’une vie. I: Vers la gloire (1860–1900) (Paris: Fayard, 1979) (HLGF1); Gustav Mahler. Chronique d’une vie. II: L’Âge d’or de Vienne (1900–1907) (Paris: Fayard, 1983) (HLGF2); Gustav Mahler. Chronique d’une vie. III: Le Génie foudroyé (1907–1911) (Paris: Fayard, 1984) (HLGF3); Gustav Mahler Vol. 2. Vienna: the Years of Challenge (1897–1904) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) (HLGE2); Gustav Mahler Vol. 3. Vienna: Triumph and Disillusion (1904–1907) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999) (HLGE3).

‘Made in Germany’: Mahler, Identity and Musicological Imperialism Jeremy Barham Home is where one comes from, and it can also be where one goes to Franz Nabl (1883–1974)

Introduction

I

f reports of Mahler’s early childhood are accurate, at the age of about five or six he interrupted the chanting during one of his first visits to the synagogue in his home town of Iglau by singing his favourite song ‘At se pinkl házi’ (‘Let the knapsack rock’). This song was probably one of many folksongs sung to him as a young boy by Czech employees of his father. Its text runs as follows: A wanderer, A wayfarer, Went from Hungary to Moravia And there, in the first inn, Danced as if on water. He danced like a madman And his knapsack rocked with him, Whether it rocks or not, The devil won’t take it away.1 Interestingly, the song was not one of ancient provenance that had been orally transmitted through the generations, but rather was composed in the nineteenth century by a Prague organ-grinder, Fr. Hajs. Its popularity gave rise to a familiar Czech greeting: ‘Let the knapsack rock’, which was answered by ‘let it rock’. Characterised by typically four-square rhythms, melodic/phrase structure and tonic–dominant harmonies, and labelled as 9

a ‘Polka tremblante’ in the copy of the wind-band arrangement I obtained from the Moravian Museum in Brno, it possibly had some influence on Mahler’s reputed first composition: a polka with funeral march for piano (see Appendix 1). Evidently the young Mahler was thoroughly steeped in the language, landscape, culture and music of his Czech surroundings, speaking the language fluently as a child,2 visiting relatives in nearby towns and villages, hearing music of military bands and itinerant Bohemian Musikanten (a tradition that initially developed due to progressive German cultural domination from the seventeenth century and the relegation of Czech language and culture to the peasantry and a position of servility), receiving lessons from Czech musicians, and playing Czech folksongs on his accordion. He was later to admit, to his biographer Richard Specht, that almost exclusively those impressions he had gained between the ages of four and eleven were fruitful and decisive for his artistic creativity,3 and Josef Foerster claimed that ‘the melodies of Czech folksongs were of great influence on many of his later compositions’.4 Interviewed in the last year of his life by a reporter from The Etude, Mahler reputedly said: As the child is, so will the man be. ... So it is in music that the songs which a child assimilates in his youth will determine the musical manhood ... the musical influences which surround the child are those which have the greatest influence upon his afterlife [later life] and also that the melodies which composers evolve in their maturity are but the flowers which bloom from the fields which were sown with the seeds of the folk-song in their childhood.5 Yet German was the language of his aspirant home environment and his schooling, and German high culture the ultimate content of his education. For within the Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia, as Hillel Kieval writes, ‘social and cultural elites promoted a new ideology of “Europeanness” tied to a programme of German linguistic acculturation and middle-class social aspirations’, a German liberalism that paradoxically neglected other national groups in the Empire, especially the Czechs with their unique cultural and national traditions.6 Furthermore, Iglau was part of a German enclave or language-island [Sprachinsel] on the Bohemian–Moravian border, within an Austrian Empire which, though German-dominated, during the 1860s had become increasingly alienated from the northern German states of Bismarck’s Prussia, which it had previously dominated. The Habsburgs’ defeat by Prussia in 1866 and the result10

ing Treaty of Prague effectively ended centuries of Habsburg power in the German world, signalling Austria’s inability to underpin German unity and to determine its true German nature. Notably, during the Prussian occupation of Prague ‘Let the knapsack rock’ was frequently used by soldiers as a rallying cry to generate goodwill amongst a resentful people. As a student in Vienna Mahler was closely associated with the panGerman cultural politics advocated by Viktor Adler, Engelbert Pernerstorfer and Heinrich Friedjung, which centred on the figures of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wagner, and devoted itself to the political and cultural healing of the 1866 wound. This cultural–political movement led indirectly to the founding of the Deutschnationaler Verein by the anti-Semitic and aggressively nationalistic Georg von Schönerer, whose ultimate aim was to wreck the Habsburg Monarchy and incorporate it into Hohenzollern territory. From the 1870s even Jews who had moved to Vienna from Bohemia and Moravia were themselves already beginning to resent association with unassimilated Ostjuden: what Treitschke would call the ‘deluge’ of ambitious ‘trouser-selling youngsters’ from the East.7 On more than one occasion Mahler is known to have expressed the alienation he felt from these so-called ‘brothers’, suggesting a problematic, self-reflexive shifting back and forth between cultural–racial affiliation and disaffection: a ‘Jewish’ anti-Semitism. In view of all this, it is justifiable to ask what precisely were Mahler’s ethnic and political allegiances in the context of the socialist, völkisch, antiLiberal generational tension in late-nineteenth-century Vienna with which he was closely implicated. Was his Deutschtümelei the same as the chauvinistic type associated with the bourgeoisie of the crumbling Habsburg empire? To what extent was he aware of and sensitive to the political and historical tensions he lived through, and how does this square with his idiosyncratic musical absorption of the sounds of ‘old’ Austria? At what stages in his life, and to what degree, did he consider himself to be (or indeed not to be) Bohemian-Moravian, German, German-Bohemian, Austrian, Austro-German, Austro-Hungarian, or Central-Eastern European? How are Mahler’s supposed allusions to Slavic or Central-Eastern-European völkisch music to be understood (in, for example, ‘Lob des hohen Verstandes’, ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’, the third movement of the First Symphony, the scherzi of Symphonies Five and Six, the first Nachtmusik of Symphony Seven, the Ländler of Symphony Nine, and the Steigerungsform of repeated refrains in ‘Fischpredigt’ and ‘Irdische Leben’)? Are they to be taken as natural, authentic emblems of national belonging and identity dominant over 11

the so-called classic-romantic traditions; or as objectified ‘foreign’ elements held up for scrutiny within an imperialist high-art stylistic language; or as fully integrated ‘yeast in the dough’8 of a new inclusive musical idiom giving glimpses into the social condition? Just how deep did Mahler’s famous sense of alienation run? As an assimilationist Jew, he belonged to a minority – but self-appointedly culturally superior – German community located within an historically oppressed and suppressed larger Czech region (itself dominant over the Slovakians). This region was politically a part of German Austria, an empire that in turn had become alienated from the rest of the German world yet was the dominant partner in the bipartite, multi-national AustroHungarian empire. This essay aims to provide at least an initial framework for addressing the potentially bewildering matryoschka-like configuration of Mahler’s political allegiances, and for understanding the cultural and historical significance of the views expressed in Rosenzweig’s text.

Mahler and his Czech-Bohemian Origins and Disposition One of Mahler’s earliest compositional plans for the eventually aborted operatic project Rübezahl, on whose libretto he worked in 1879, should be mentioned first. It is the mythical story of the mountain spirit from the Silesian Riesengebirge or Krkonoše mountains, which ironically would later be used as a symbol of alienation by homesick Sudeten Germans who had migrated to West Germany or were expelled from the Czech lands during and after the Second World War. Whatever music Mahler composed for this opera project probably found its way into his early songs and First Symphony. Five years on, in 1884, he apparently took some pleasure in showing his friend Fritz Löhr around the vicinity of his home town of Iglau. Löhr recalls the experience in a mixture of erotic, reverential and faintly condescending ethnographic tones: There in the height of summer we would go for walks lasting half the day, wandering among flowery meadows ... to villages where the peasantry was in part Slav. And on Sunday there was an expedition to where authentic Bohemian musicians set lads and lasses dancing in the open air. ... There was the zest of life, and sorrow too ... all of it veiled by reserve on the faces of the girls, their heads bowed towards their partners’ breast, their plump, almost naked limbs exposed by the high whirling of their many-layered bright petticoats, in an almost solemn, ritual encircling. The archaically earthy charms of nature and of nature’s children, which Mahler came to know in his youth, prepared the ground for his creative work and never ceased to vitalize his art.9 12

Mahler was still referring to Iglau as his home in 1885,10 and in 1893 while in Hamburg he openly acknowledged that the Bohemian music of his childhood found its way into many of his works: ‘I’ve noticed it especially in the “Fischpredigt”’, Mahler said, referring to the national sounds of Bohemian street musicians, his phraseology suggesting that their appearance was the result of unconscious processes.11 A relatively small, but nevertheless significant, number of commentators – both Czech and nonCzech – have recognised this element in Mahler’s music, and have provided examples either of Mahler’s actual use of existing Bohemian-Moravian melodies or of his instrumental, textural or harmonic indebtedness to Czech folk idioms.12 When Mahler was back in Vienna in 1901 at the centre of the AustroHungarian Empire, the situation took on a new light: Mahler described the difficulty of composing the Scherzo of the Fifth Symphony given the daring ‘simplicity of its themes, which are built solely on the tonic and dominant’, and his principle that ‘there should be no repetition, but only evolution’.13 He went on freely to admit, again using unconscious terminology, that the melody ‘An dem blauen See’ by the Carinthian composer of popular folkloric choral waltzes, Thomas Koschat (1843–1914), had ‘crept into the second [sic: third] movement’ and that it was preferable that this kind of undeveloped melody rather than one of Beethoven’s fully explored themes had been appropriated.14 Here we have an example of Mahler not only endorsing the assimilation of, in this case, pseudo-folk sources, but also articulating the problematic reconciliation of a supposedly ‘primitive’ material (whether authentic or not) with the logical and developmental methods of high culture; in other words the difficulty, couched in implicitly hierarchical terms, of matching a concrete/intuitive basic substance with an abstract/rational process, or as Michael Beckerman might say, the ingenuous with the stylised, a pairing whose coexistence lies at the root of his notion of musical ‘Czechness’.15 Mahler’s experience of the Czech language and his views on Smetana are also revealing. While working in Prague in 1886, he wrote to his future employer in Leipzig of hearing the operas of Smetana (underlined), Glinka and Dvorˇák at the Bohemian National Theatre (Narodni Divadlo), saying: ‘I must confess that Smetana in particular strikes me as very remarkable. Even if his operas will certainly never form part of the repertory in Germany, it would be worthwhile presenting such an entirely original and individual composer to audiences as cultivated as those in Leipzig’.16 With either political naivety or extreme bravery, during his first year in Vienna he 13

chose to celebrate the Emperor’s name day with the premiere of Smetana’s Dalibor, albeit in German, and this at a time when the tension between Czech and German speakers in the Empire had intensified. He surely knew that, although Smetana mainly spoke and wrote in German and was criticised by his fellow countrymen for being too Wagnerian, in Vienna he would be, and was, viewed by many as an extreme nationalist.17 Four years later, in the middle of his reign in Vienna, Mahler nevertheless spoke of Smetana’s Dalibor as follows: ‘You can’t imagine how annoyed I was again today by the imperfection of this work ... . He was defeated by his lack of technique and his Czech nationality (which hampered him even more effectively, and deprived him of the culture of the rest of Europe)’.18 Such sentiments would be repeated in some elements of post-1945 German music historiography, for example: ‘the secular art music of the Czechs arose late, as is appropriate to a primarily peasant society’;19 the view of Smetana as a minor master (Kleinmeister); and the following description of Dvorˇák: ‘on account of the constantly erupting vernacular musicianship, [there is] an absence of true depth and concentration’.20 Curiously, Mahler nonetheless kept Smetana’s Dalibor in the repertoire for a further three years until 1904, while in his opening season at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1907 he gave the first American performance of The Bartered Bride. In 1909 a music society called ‘The Bohemians’ gave a dinner in Mahler’s honour in New York, and in an interview with German reporters in New York he identified himself somewhat defensively as a Bohemian: ‘Ich bin ein Böhme’.21 In stark contrast to this, Mahler’s well-known admonition against ‘Schlämperei’ (slovenliness) in musical performance should be seen in the context of the widespread contemporaneous use of this term to denote many of the less desirable aspects of provincialism in general. While in 1894 Mahler’s command of the Czech language was good enough for him to make alterations to the libretto of The Bartered Bride,22 ten years later, again while in Vienna, in response to Janáček’s invitation to attend a performance of Jenůfa in Brno he requested a piano reduction with German text ‘because I do not speak the Bohemian language’.23 These comments and events raise the questions of how the apparently assimilationist Mahler viewed the potentially shifting relationships of centre and periphery, self and other, and high and low in the German/nonGerman axis, and how his music might be said to articulate or reinterpret these relationships. To adapt a well-known anti-Semitic critique of the composer, does Mahler speak German with a Czech-Bohemian accent or Czech-Bohemian with a German accent? Or is the issue far more complex 14

than this, given the problems associated with determining his degree of conscious or unconscious resistance to assimilation? If Mahler, like the majority of German-speaking Bohemians of his time, identified Czech music primarily with folk music befitting rural and lower-class communities, in contrast to ‘German’ art music,24 does his musical language assume even greater political significance? The remainder of this essay will review these and previous questions with reference to Rosenzweig’s text Gustav Mahler. New Insights into his Life, Times and Work.

The Rosenzweig Typescript and its Historical Importance for Mahler Studies The recently discovered surviving typescript, written during the lowest period of Mahler’s reception history, is substantial and gives a distinctive reading of the composer’s early-twentieth-century political and cultural environment from the perspective of German cultural domination and the subsequent rise of fascist extremism. Most of the text appears to have been completed in August 1945 in London, a mere three months before the conclusion of the war in Europe. Within the overarching construction of a continuing Austrian versus Prussian or Habsburg versus Hohenzollern opposition, and with an implicit inclination for pan-Slavism or Slavophilia, three main areas emerge from Rosenzweig’s study: The placement of Mahler’s music within a specifically Austrian, as opposed to German, symphonic lineage. The view of Mahler as anti-Wagnerian rather than as Wagnerian epigone. An emphasis on Mahler’s profound spiritual and musical affiliation with the distinct, non-German culture of Central-Eastern Europe. Early on, for instance, Rosenzweig sets the scene for his highly politicised cultural analysis, writing: Born on the eve of the imperialist epoch, Mahler experienced the great struggles of nationality between the German bourgeoisie in Austria and the strengthening Slav countries. There was no greater musician of this epoch who had felt and endured more intensely the prevailing nihilistic trends of the great-German chauvinism and racial hatred than Gustav Mahler. (Rosenzweig, vii)25 15

In support of his first contention, Rosenzweig cites the role of Bohemian and Austrian musicians such as Stamitz, Holzbauer, Wagenseil, Monn, Reutter and Tuma in preparing the way for the so-called ‘universal’ style of Viennese classicism.26 He also refers to what he calls the great-German annexing techniques of a large number of popular music histories from the turn of the century, through Weimar Germany to Nazi literature, but also from France, England and the USA – a body of literature that, by presenting figures such as Bruckner and Mahler under the stamp ‘made in Germany’, attempts to ‘wipe out the impression that, from Schubert onwards, there was a separate Austrian development of the post-Beethovenian symphony’ (Rosenzweig, 24, 25). For Rosenzweig, Hitler’s 1937 unveiling of the Bruckner bust in the Valhalla at Regensburg signalled the composer’s promotion to ‘German hero of music’ and indicated that ‘the blow against the separate Austrian development of the post-classical symphony – so disagreeable to great-German ideology – had succeeded’ (39). However problematic it may be to trace securely a third symphonic lineage of volkstümlich-naturhaften Austrian ‘finale symphonists’ (a term borrowed by Rosenzweig from Paul Bekker’s 1921 study of Mahler) of which Mahler was the consummation – separate from the middle-German Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, and the new German Liszt – Rosenzweig’s analysis of the structural development of the post-classical symphony nevertheless provides early notification of Siegfried Kross’s recent claim that ‘It is at the very least necessary that the writing of music history liberates itself from the cliché of a “true” Beethovenian succession and from the ideologicallyrooted fixation on the formal type of Beethoven’s middle period as representing an ideal’.27 After all, the notions of a culturally central superior Germany and of Czech-Bohemian art as a peripheral German subtype are relatively recent ones: Burney, for instance, described Bohemia as the ‘conservatory of Europe’. Nevertheless in more recent times, as Draughon and Knapp write, ‘the myth of musical transcendence, that German art music ... was universal and culturally uninflected ... has occupied the background for most attempts to identify Jewishness (or Czechness, or Russianness, or any other implicitly marginalized ethnicity) in music’.28 Rosenzweig’s polemic against Wagner centres on his view of the inauguration of the Bayreuth Festival in 1876 as ‘the most powerful cultural symbol of new-German imperialism’ with its ‘insane hunger for power’ (Rosenzweig, 13). In light of this, and given Cosima Wagner’s intrigues against Mahler’s Vienna appointment, her monopoly of a fossilised ‘authentic’ Bayreuth performance tradition, and in the face of Mahler’s 16

early Wagner veneration, Rosenzweig characterises Mahler’s life as a unique struggle against the ideology of the Festival. Impelled by a mission to keep Wagner’s work alive in the contemporary theatre, Mahler came to see Wagner and Bayreuth as two different worlds: the one a ‘shining star in the firmament of his life’ and the other a hotbed of ‘pan-Germanism and German imperialism which threatened his life and the existence of his work’ (14). In adopting this view Rosenzweig is building on the early work of Hans Redlich (neglected in the Anglo-American academy), who describes Mahler’s music, in contrast to Wagner’s, as ‘folk music, music of the masses’, ‘permeated by German and Slav, particularly Czech folksong’,29 and the composer himself as a victim of the ‘spiritual annexing technique of German musical historiography which sought to misrepresent Mahler as a Wagner epigone’.30 Such a position is reinforced by Rosenzweig’s reference to Zdene˘ k Nejedly´, another of his critical forbears who, as a Marxist professor of music in Prague and Czechoslovakian Minister of Education, was uniquely placed to recognise Mahler’s relation to Slav musical culture in his 1912 monograph on the composer. However, whereas Nejedly´ generally emphasises the essential Germanness of Mahler and his art as the means through which he was able to appreciate the culture of ‘foreign peoples’ and to effect some kind of reconciliation of ‘the tension between the Teutonic and Slavic worlds’,31 Rosenzweig goes further. Adopting a largely discredited, but perhaps historically defensible, Slavophiliac stance derived from Herder’s late-eighteenth-century contribution to Slavonic studies and to national revival, Rosenzweig tends to invert this hierarchy, recasting the notion of mediation between cultures to affirm the primacy of Mahler’s native and natural absorption of folk and other music from Bohemia and Moravia – areas which he describes as ‘the most intellectually and culturally active crown lands in the monarchy’ (Rosenzweig, 45). For Rosenzweig, the life history of Mahler was the history of a musician equally at home in the Slav and Austrian musical landscapes and in whose work ‘the Slav element was a constituent part, thereby giving rise to a new universal value in the music of the western world’ (17). For him, therefore, Mahler’s musical voice is unquestionably that of an Austrian speaker of a Czech-Bohemian language, a language whose sound ideal centred on the bagpipe and wind band, and whose aesthetic was characterised by the interpenetration of sophistication and simplicity. If divested of high-cultural refinements, this musical voice may reveal its true, primal nature in terms not dissimilar, for example, to the madly rocking knapsacks and Dudelsack sound world of Uri Caine’s late17

twentieth-century, postmodern takes on the Mahlerian idiolect.32 Caine’s inspiration for his klezmer version of the third movement of Symphony No. 133 was most probably the following description by Mahler: You have to imagine the ‘Bruder Martin’ funeral march carelessly played through by an extremely bad music band of the type which used to follow funeral processions. Amidst all this, the whole crudeness, joviality and banality of the world, and at the same time the Hero’s dreadfully painful lament, can be heard in the strains of any one of these motley ‘Bohemian street-bands’.34 Caine’s approach might be frivolous or heretical to some, but it raises the important and intractable question of whether the results constitute a distillation of some pure essence or an elaborate distortion of Mahler’s musical substance.

Conclusion As one of the earliest contributions – albeit unrecognised at the time – to the rehabilitation of Mahler’s music within the artistic life of the midtwentieth century, Rosenzweig’s study is representative of that sometimes controversial ideological partisanship brought to bear in the cultural healing process of liberated Europe, whose aim was to provide a powerful humanitarian corrective to the horrors of tyranny that, topically for Rosenzweig, were severely stifling Czech musical life in the Nazi occupation after 1939. As such it may justifiably be accused of occasionally overstating its case. Nevertheless, as a historical document, its provocative cultural critique serves as a revealing testament to a kind of world-view in which the condition of art, and in particular music, is accorded fundamental significance in the realities of political and social development. Furthermore, it encourages us to interrogate Mahler’s position in the political dimensions of twentieth-century musical historiography, providing something of a missing link in the development of Mahler scholarship between early personalised eulogies or invective and more recent historically detached biography and analysis. As far as Mahler himself is concerned, Rosenzweig seems to paint, avant la lettre, a quasi-Adornian picture of the sense of social awareness mediated through his music. Adorno would later write: ‘Mahler pleads musically on behalf of peasant cunning against the powers-that-be ... on behalf of outsiders, jailbirds, starving children, losers, lost causes. Mahler is the only composer to whom the term “social realism” could be applied, if it 18

was not itself so depraved by power’.35 More recently, Dahlhaus has taken up this idea of the ‘sense of justice’ in which Mahler’s forced heterogeneity is rooted. Mahler’s realism avoids the ‘petrifaction’ and ‘embourgoisement’ of folk art by ‘accepting the full extent of tradition without regard to bourgeois norms [and] attempt[ing] to involve itself in the continuing life of the folk song by emending and modifying’.36 He does this not by pretending closeness but by emphasising distance, adopting the sentimental or satirical tone to suggest that ‘it is as something lost ... that folk song is not lost’.37 I would further argue that, in the face of increasing protoFascist anti-Semitism in the Vienna of the 1890s, Mahler’s nostalgia for assimilation could have been just as great. As Egon Schwarz suggests: ‘The problems in Vienna at the turn of the century were so complex that the answers to them led into pathless areas of utopia, eccentricity, ambivalence and resignation’.38 Rosenzweig’s polemic thus invites the re-consideration of Mahler’s musical voice as an open-ended and richly ambivalent exposure and negotiation of geo-political tensions: tensions, for example, between a democratising of the local, everyday, even mediocre – aesthetically indebted to Herder’s elevation of the value of oral traditions alongside high culture within civilisations – and the impulse to conform to a universal but exclusive imperialist ideology. It would be tempting, though not entirely problem-free, to see in this a correlation with the political configurations of, on the one hand, a multi-national – and hence, idealistically speaking, an anti-nationalist – Austria (torn between a pan-German impulse and its Central European vocation), and on the other hand a more monolithically perceived Prussian Germany. If this voice embodied what Bruno Nettl refers to as a GermanBohemian culture, resting uniquely both on the inclusive ‘interaction of Czech and Bohemian cultural and stylistic elements’, and on the fruitful confrontation of ‘universal’ classical style (which Slav musicians did much to establish) with ‘pure’ native folklore,39 it would explain its demonisation at the hands of Fascist exclusivity. Mahler’s embodiment of the empowered Jew of liberal Austria and his apparent desire for the unification of Germanspeaking lands may ironically have served to increase the perceived value of what was at risk of being lost in the process: the pan-Slavic search for freedom from Germany, which was itself exclusive in turn, and very much a nineteenth-century political invention. In this way, his music may be said not just to have reflected in general terms the sorrows of an entire world, as Rosenzweig suggests (vii), but more specifically to have encoded the age-old historical tragedy and cultural inferiority complexes of Central and 19

Eastern Europe, the early twentieth-century cultural heart of the continent which had always thrived on its complex racial and cultural impurities and as a consequence had always been on the ‘wrong side of ... history’.40 This was a creative achievement that even Nazi propagandists were ultimately powerless to silence.

Notes 1 Jiři Rychetsky, ‘Mahler’s Favourite Song’, The Musical Times 130 (December 1989), p. 729. 2 See Josef Foerster, Poutník v cizině [Der Pilger in der Fremde] (Prag: Orbis, 1947) and Arnošt Mahler, ‘Gustav Mahler und seine Heimat’, Die Musikforschung 25 (1972), pp. 437–48. 3 See Richard Specht, Gustav Mahler (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1913), pp. 165–6. 4 Foerster, Poutník v cizině, p. 44. 5 Gustav Mahler, interview in ‘The Influence of the Folk-Song on German Musical Art’, The Etude (May 1911), pp. 301–2. 6 Hillel Kieval, Languages of Community. The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), p. 5. 7 Cited in Dennis Klein, ‘Assimilation and the demise of liberal political tradition in Vienna: 1860–1914’, in David Bronsen (ed.), Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis (Heidelberg: Winter, 1979), pp. 234–61, p. 249. 8 Mathias Hansen, ‘Zur Funktion von Volksmusikelementen in der Kompositionstechnik Gustav Mahlers’, in Rudolf Pecman (ed.), Hudba slovansky´ ch národu a její vliv na evropskou hudebni kulturu [Music of the Slavonic Nations and its Influence upon European Musical Culture] (Brno: Ceská hudebí spolecnost, 1981), pp. 381–5, p. 383. 9 Knud Martner (ed.), Selected Letters of Gustav Mahler (London: Faber & Faber, 1979), p. 393; my italics. 10 Ibid., p. 89. 11 Peter Franklin (ed.), Recollections of Gustav Mahler by Natalie Bauer-Lechner (London: Faber Music,1980), p. 33. 12 See, for example, Richard Batka, Die Musik in Böhmen (Berlin: Bard, Marquardt & Co., 1906); Hans Redlich, Gustav Mahler. Eine Erkenntnis (Nürenberg: Hans Carl, 1919); Karl Michael Komma, Das Böhmische Musikantentum (Kassel: J. P. Hinnen-thal-Verlag, 1960); Quoika, Rudolf (1960) ‘Über die Musiklandschaft Gustav Mahlers’, Sudetenland: Böhmen. Mähren. Schlesien. Kunst, Literatur, Volkstum, Wissenschaft, 1, pp. 100–9; Ernst Klusen, ‘Gustav Mahler und das böhmisch-mährische Volkslied’, in Georg Reichert and Martin Just (eds), Bericht über den Internationalen Musikwissenschaftlichen Kongress, Kassel 1962 (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1963), pp. 246–51; Mahler, ‘Gustav Mahler und seine Heimat’; and Vladimir Karbusicky´, Gustav Mahler und seine Umwelt (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978). 13 Franklin (ed.), Recollections of Gustav Mahler, p. 172. 14 Ibid.

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15 Michael Beckerman, ‘In search of Czechness in music’, 19th-Century Music 10(1) (1986), pp. 61–73, p. 71. 16 Herta Blaukopf (ed.), Gustav Mahler Briefe (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay, 1996). 17 In response to the dispute over the official language in Bohemia and Moravia, Count Badeni (the Polish head of the Austrian Government) issued the inflammatory decree in April 1897 that the Czech and German languages were to be of equal standing in all official communications, and the violent disputes that followed this pronouncement eventually led to his dismissal. Critics of Mahler’s performance noted the worrying preponderance of Slav officials and rowdy students in the audience. See Blaukopf: 2005. 18 Franklin (ed.), Recollections of Gustav Mahler, p. 180. 19 Hans Joachim Moser, Die Music der deutschen Stämme (Vienna: E. Wancura, 1957), p. 528. 20 Hans Joachim Moser, Musik Lexikon (Hamburg: H. Sikorski, 1956), pp. 1195 and 303. As Rosenzweig discusses, Mahler had gone to great lengths in 1901 – although ultimately unsuccessfully – to secure a performance of Dvořák’s Rusalka at the Vienna Opera. 21 Henry A. Lea, ‘Mahler: German romantic or Jewish satirist?’, in David Bronsen (ed.), Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis (Heidelberg: Winter, 1979), pp. 288–305, p. 291. 22 Mahler, ‘Gustav Mahler and seine Heimat’, p. 438. 23 Kurt Blaukopf, ‘Gustav Mahler und die Tschechische Oper’, Österreichische Musikzeitschrift 34(6) (1979), pp. 285–8, p. 287. 24 It should be noted that the Czechs were themselves complicit in the nineteenth-century revival of their folk culture and the establishment of these stereotypical cultural associations. 25 This page number, and the numbers that follow from Rosenzweig, are taken from the pagination in the original German typescript. 26 Of course many figures, such as Vanhal, Benda and Pichl, who appear as a subset of German composers in much German music historiography but as Czech in Czech historiography, moved to Vienna, Germany, Italy, France, England and Russia as part of the vast eighteenth- and nineteenth-century diaspora of intellectuals, artists and musicians from the Czech lands, thereby exerting huge influence on European music history. 27 Siegfried Kross, ‘Das “Zweite Zeitalter der Symphonie” – Ideologie und Realität’, in Siegfried Kross (ed.), Probleme der symphonischen Tradition im 19. Jahrhundert. Internationales musikwissenschaftliches Colloquium, Bonn 1989. Kongreßbericht (Tutzing: Schneider, 1990), pp. 34–53, p. 35. 28 Francesca Draughon and Raymond Knapp, ‘Gustav Mahler and the crisis of Jewish identity’, Echo 3(2) (fall 2001), paragraph 28. 29 Hans Redlich, Gustav Mahler. Eine Erkenntnis (Nürnberg: Hans Carl, 1919), p. 28. 30 Redlich, Gustav Mahler, cited in Rosenzweig, 17. It is a matter of great regret that Rosenzweig did not live long enough to complement this historical and cultural examination with the extensive supporting musical analysis promised in subsequent chapters of his text.

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31 Vladimir Karbusicky´, Gustav Mahler und seine Umwelt (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,1978), p. 133. 32 See especially tracks 1 and 5 on Gustav Mahler/Uri Caine: Urlicht/Primal Light (Winter & Winter, New Edition CD 910004-2, 1997) and also Gustav Mahler in Toblach (Winter & Winter, New Edition CD 9100462, 1999) and Uri Caine/Gustav Mahler: Dark Flame (Winter & Winter Music Edition CD 910 095-2, 2003). 33 Track 5 of Gustav Mahler/Uri Caine: Urlicht/Primal Light. 34 Herbert Killian (ed.), Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner (Hamburg: Karl Dieter Wagner, 1984), p. 174. Invoking the Bakhtinian notion of ‘carnival’, Draughon and Knapp see this movement as addressing the ‘oppression of Vienna’s Jewish minority by its Catholic majority – as well as, perhaps, the Eastern lands under her dominion – constructing an inversion fantasy in which the culturally oppressed Jew (or Gypsy, or Slav etc.) surmounts the powers of the dominant group’ (2001, paragraph 19); ‘The canon and the Catholicism it represents are but caricatures and effigies to be mocked within the [Bakhtinian] carnival space, where the relations of power are inverted, where – as Bakhtin points out – the inversion is both signified by and celebrated through the deriding laughter of the once marginalized’ (ibid., paragraph 21). The canon’s final word in the movement suggests that the cultural oppression felt by Jews in fin-de-siècle Vienna remains unresolved. 35 Theodor W. Adorno, Mahler. Eine musikalische Physiognomik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1960), p. 67. 36 Carl Dahlhaus, Realism in Nineteenth-Century Music, trans. Mary Whittall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 113. 37 Ibid., p. 114. 38 Egon Schwarz, ‘Melting pot or witch’s cauldron? Jews and anti-Semites in Vienna at the turn of the century’, in David Bronsen (ed.), Jews and Germans from 1860 to 1933: The Problematic Symbiosis (Heidelberg: Winter, 1979), pp. 262–87, p. 282. 39 Bruno Nettl, ‘Ethnicity and musical identity in the Czech lands: a group of vignettes’, in Celia Applegate and Pamela Potter (eds), Music & German National Identity (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2002, pp. 269–87, p. 285. 40 Milan Kundera, ‘The tragedy of Central Europe’, in Gale Stokes (ed.), From Stalinism to Pluralism. A Documentary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 217–23, p. 221.

Gustav Mahler

New Insights into his Life, Times and Work

by Alfred Mathis-Rozenweig Translated by Jeremy Barham

Foreword

T

he following text forms the introduction to a comprehensive biography of Gustav Mahler that was instigated and given substantial support by the publishers of Einheit.1 The management had originally commissioned me to develop my extremely well-received lecture ‘Gustav Mahler: his Life, his Times, his Work’ into a pamphlet that was to appear on the 85th anniversary of Mahler’s birth in July 1945. The scope of this pamphlet was of course severely restricted by the shortage of paper during the war. By the time the repatriation of emigrants began after the Red Army’s liberation of Czechoslovakia, and the entire publication programme of Einheit – still in the process of development in London – was thereby set aside, my work on the requested pamphlet on Mahler was more or less brought to an end. At the same time I nevertheless felt that the subject as I viewed and attempted to formulate it extended far beyond the limits even of a large pamphlet. I therefore resolved to continue working on the plan regardless of the limitations imposed by space restrictions, and I finally realised that a truly accurate, historically and sociologically based account of Gustav Mahler’s life and work would exceed even the dimensions of a large book. I saw clearly then that the world of Gustav Mahler and the far-reaching problems entailed therein could only be properly unfolded and explained in two substantial volumes. A long period of preparation was necessary to establish first of all the basic perspectives from which to begin compiling Mahler’s biography. The results of this preparation are outlined in the following essay, which is to form the introductory chapter of the biography’s first volume and is therefore called ‘Introduction and Attempt to Set Out the Problem’. Here

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not only is a critical overview of the most important sources on Mahler literature presented, but also the problems arising for any future work on Mahler are identified and elucidated from today’s standpoint. I therefore believe that this introductory chapter can justifiably be perceived as an independent piece of work, and that the understanding of Mahler is indeed better served by this than by the originally planned pamphlet, which was conceived more as a general survey of Mahler’s life. Alfred Mathis, London, August 1945.

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Introduction and Attempt to Set Out the Problem

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his book was originally to have appeared on 7 July 1945, the 85th anniversary of Mahler’s birth, in the form of a short biographical sketch. This event in the calendar of course provided only a superficial motive. For in my opinion there were far more important grounds, entirely independent from this, for drawing up a fresh, comprehensive portrayal of the composer Mahler, and for describing his work’s due status in the history of western music, its significance within the Slav musical landscape of the native soil from which it grew and within the Austrian musical landscape into which it grew, and how we stand in relation to this work today. Indeed, a critical examination of Mahler’s creativity, life and work such as this is absolutely essential because the upholders of culture in liberated Europe must scrutinise very carefully those earlier cultural materials that appear to them to be valuable and ideologically suitable for acceptance into the spiritual treasury of the nations, to be kept alive for future generations. And there can be no doubt that the decisive factor in this selection will be the elimination from European cultural life of all that contributed to the development of imperialist ideology and to the spiritual poisoning of mankind with the barbaric, reactionary dogmas of Hitler’s fascism. In those same two countries that may be considered Gustav Mahler’s immediate homelands, the leaders and organisers of future cultural life – Czechoslovakian Minister of Education Professor Zdene˘ k Nejedly´, and Austrian Secretary of State for Education Ernst Fischer – equally stressed in the programmes outlined in their inaugural speeches that after the military defeat of the Hitler regime the ideological fight against National Socialism would have to begin immediately in order to eliminate it down 27

to its last roots. The uncovering of these roots and the clear recognition of the causes of such widespread infection of the German people by National-Socialist doctrines – from whose contagion other peoples had also not been immune – are the prerequisites for any future purging and healing process. A large field will have to be cleared for the conscious fight against, and eradication of, those disastrous influences which, far too rarely noticed, exerted their influence in areas of German history and culture under the vague collective notion of a ‘German tradition’. It was these disastrous influences that led to the break with humanist tendencies in German intellectual life, and to their destruction and replacement by a reactionary ideology of national arrogance preparing the ground for the modern barbarism of Hitler’s fascism.

Programme booklet of an extraordinary concert given by the Vienna Philharmonic, Vienna 3 June 1945.

Thus, in the lands freed from German fascism, the basis of all future cultural politics will be a highly critical reflection and selection, and this will doubtless result in a certain ‘revaluation’2 of individuals and art works decisive for the cultivation of fascist ideology, despite their undeniably striking artistic importance. By contrast, those precious cultural materials whose humanistic qualities dispensed comfort, hope and courage in the hardest of times, and thus emerged triumphant from the great fascist cultural crisis, will be bathed in the light of a great and even more vital tradition. Mahler’s music – branded ‘degenerate’ by National Socialism – is among those cultural materials that will survive the changing times, and we can be 28

sure that it will flourish again in liberated Europe. So it was that in Vienna only a few weeks after the liberation of the Austrian capital by the Red Army after seven years of suppression, a symphony by Gustav Mahler was once again heard in a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic under Clemens Krauss, an event that was commemorated by the erection of a memorial plaque.3 The enthusiasm generated by this performance of the First Symphony by the Vienna Philharmonic is all the more understandable when one considers what Gustav Mahler meant for Vienna and European musical life, and the fanatical hatred of the Nazis who were not just content to obliterate his memory and life’s work, but also attempted by all possible means to falsify the historical portrayal of his personality, activities and creativity in a hideously deformed caricature. Mahler’s Jewish origins alone cannot fully explain this extraordinary display of propaganda through lies and the pseudo-scientific distortion of the facts of musical history. Although Mahler’s Jewish origins of course formed the principal argument of the National-Socialist polemic and propaganda campaign directed against him, it is nonetheless clear that he would have been placed on the list of ‘degenerate’ composers and his work banished from the musical life of the Third Reich even if evidence of his ‘Aryan’ origins had been produced. There are many grounds for believing this, grounds which in part are causally connected but also weigh separately in the balance, emerging from the origins, environment and specific circumstances of Mahler’s life, and contributing decisively to the formation of his personality and the intrinsic nature of his music. They simply share a profound, uncompromising opposition to the great-German imperialist ideology whose final and most dangerous manifestation became Hitler’s fascism, under the label of ‘National Socialism’.

There were other, similarly important composers of Jewish descent – for example, Karl Goldmark – to whom the strictures of the National-Socialist State Department of Music [Reichsmusikkammer] were automatically 29

Poster by Rudolf Hermann, Vienna 1939.

applied, whose works were expelled from the musical life of the Third Reich, and whose names were simply removed from all National-Socialist music publications as if they had never existed. With Mahler, however, it was quite different. The Nazis were apparently clear from the outset that they would not be able to demolish the continuing force of Gustav Mahler’s memory and his music through mere bureaucratic means. Therefore he was immediately put on the list of ‘degenerate’ composers, and books were written against him that attempted to prove his guilt in the adulteration and degeneration of the values of German musical culture.4 The Nazi propagandists would have been compelled to lead this fight against Mahler even if he had happened not to be of Jewish descent because his music reflects with overwhelming power and intensity the sorrows of the world and the tragedy of his own life’s struggle. Yet at the root of Mahler’s struggle lay the seeds of conflict that gave rise to the hostilities and turmoil shaking our present existence. Born on the eve of the imperialist epoch, Mahler experienced the great struggles of nationality between the German bourgeoisie in Austria and the strengthening Slav countries. There was no greater musician of this epoch who had felt and endured more intensely the prevailing nihilistic trends of great-German chauvinism and racial hatred than Gustav Mahler, who at the height of his career as Director of the Vienna Opera said the following: ‘I am thrice homeless: as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans and as a Jew throughout all the whole world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.’5

This original expression of Mahler’s was made public for the first time in the memoirs of his widow Alma Maria Mahler, then wife of the writer Franz Werfel, which appeared during the Second World War. The full title of this highly significant book reads Alma Mahler: Gustav Mahler. Erinnerungen und Briefe (Amsterdam: Allert de Lange, 1940). Before we refer more closely to these memoirs, one of the most important sources in Mahler research, it should be pointed out that in the existing German Mahler literature – in so far as it has any particular biographical bent – Mahler’s relationship with his Bohemian-Moravian homeland and with Vienna and Austria has yet to be considered and examined in context.6 To be sure, in his short biographical study of Mahler produced in 1905 by Gott & Tetzlaff (Berlin), one of the first writers, Richard Specht, referred 30

to the importance of childhood and youthful musical experiences for the later development of the musician: the Czech folksongs and dances that he heard in his birthplace, the Bohemian village of Kalischt, and later in the Moravian provincial town of Iglau where he also had occasion to listen to the sounds of Austrian military music. In his extensive and insightful book on Mahler appearing two years after the composer’s death, in 1913,7 Specht touches only very fleetingly on the influences of native Slavic folk music on the development of the symphonist. However, before this, in September 1910, Paul Stefan published a book on Mahler (Munich: R. Piper & Co.) whose later editions provided more extensive biographical development, although in the very first sentences the author warned the reader: ‘Do not expect to find a “biography” here, as was predicted even during his lifetime, in a friendly manner by some, in mockery by others.’8 Born in 1879 in Brno and resident in Vienna since 1898, the music critic Paul Stefan displayed from the outset a shrewd understanding of the Slavic elements in Mahler’s nature, making serious efforts to obtain information from Mahler’s childhood friends about the composer’s early years in Kalischt and Iglau. Two people in particular, linked with Mahler from his earliest youth through shared experiences, were able to place valuable authentic material at his disposal: Friedrich Löhr, a schoolteacher and archaeologist from Vienna, and the eminent music historian Guido Adler (born in 1855 in Eibenschütz, Moravia), who had grown up in Iglau like Mahler and since 1898 had been Professor of Musicology at the University of Vienna. For decades up to the time of Mahler’s death, they had been his most loyal and devoted friends. They had been among the first to recognise his musical genius and were staunch believers that he was destined for great things. Both had made notes on the experiences they had shared with Mahler – especially Löhr, who not only had innumerable early letters from Mahler in his possession but also had diligently kept a diary about all of his encounters with him. As is clearly demonstrated by the style of his book, Stefan had the then unpublished early letters of Mahler to Löhr, Löhr’s diary entries, as well as certain information from Adler at his disposal. Before we come to describe the manner in which Stefan used this material, we should briefly examine the personality and outlook of these two purveyors of information. Friedrich Löhr, a man of extraordinary modesty, guarded Mahler’s letters and his own diary entries like a priceless treasure. Mahler’s friendship was the mainstay of his life; to believe in Mahler, to be associated with his thinking, to have shared in his joys, sorrows, his creative flights and his 31

struggles with musical material, to have witnessed him conducting his own and other composers’ works as the compelling ruler over great forces, this was his greatest delight. He was selfless enough to realise that the privilege of his friendship with Mahler charged him with special kinds of responsibilities. He was anxious not to step into Mahler’s limelight. From his scholarly education he knew very well that he could never take on the task of writing Mahler’s biography, for Mahler was the closest, most vital presence to him and could never become a historical image. Many of Mahler’s friends were his friends too. To describe and critically examine their shifting relationships with Mahler would have required an utterly superhuman suppression of all subjectivity. Furthermore, he clearly recognised that – as a composer, conductor and opera director – Mahler charted a thoroughly forward-looking path into new areas that were anything but historically determinable at the time. Indeed, Löhr seems to have been conscious of his duty to posterity to lay the foundations for future Mahler biography, even though he was plainly of the opinion that the time for such a biography had not yet come when Stefan approached him for information for his projected Mahler book. With his especially protective loyal friendship towards Mahler in mind and a discretion entirely appropriate for the times, Löhr passed on some of his precious biographical material to the young musicologist Stefan, who was ready to enter the lists with a book on Mahler and his music. The attitude of the second source of information, Guido Adler, was quite different.9 As the originator of a precise form of style criticism in musicology, the eminent music historian was one of the founders and most distinguished representatives of a discipline that had only developed fully in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Adler was certainly sympathetic and encouraging towards Paul Stefan’s undertaking, although it must have been clear to him that Stefan’s book could never have been a genuine biography of Mahler. For Guido Adler had the most profound insight into the nature and intricacies of musical development. His keen observation penetrated the most diverse eras of music history and had no chronological limits. No one was more acutely aware of the ephemeral nature of the historically determined, of the transitions and changes in musical style, but also of those constellations of development in which musical art works are formed from eternal values. It did not bother him that the symphonies of his friend Mahler aroused the opposition of academic musical circles. For as a young man he had not only joined in the great party struggles around Wagner and Bruckner (he had been a student of the latter), but he had also studied and had intimate experience of the struggles and conflicts of all the great 32

creative temperaments in the history of music.10 From the past he tried to explain the path of music in the present and to draw conclusions for the future. Time and again his writings showed that he toyed with, and was tempted by, the idea of placing in historical perspective the phenomenon of his friend Mahler – of whose greatness he was completely convinced – although he knew that this was impossible. The fact that he finally carried out this plan after Mahler’s death, writing the first scholarly biographical study of the composer as a kind of obituary, is not to say that this was in any way a Mahler biography as Adler conceived the term: given enough free time he would have been able to capture a historical portrait of his friend’s life and work based on the most precise and detailed research. Nevertheless, Guido Adler’s Gustav Mahler forms the basis and starting point for all scholarly Mahler research. In his memoirs, Wollen und Wirken, which appeared shortly before the annexation of Austria, Adler made further additions to his discussion of Mahler that gave important hints for future biographical research. And in relation to this, it must also not be forgotten that he made efforts to interest his students in the scholarly investigation of Mahler’s works, and that as a result the first style-critical study of Mahler’s songs emerged from the Viennese Institute of Music History, of which he was director: Fritz Egon Pamer’s dissertation ‘Die Lieder Gustav Mahlers’, later published in the ‘Studien zur Musikwissenschaft’ series edited by Adler.11 However sympathetically Löhr and Adler greeted Stefan’s plan to write a book on Mahler during the composer’s lifetime, it seems certain that they pointed out to him the impossibility of producing a genuine biography. Indeed, even in the later editions of the book that appeared after Mahler’s death and contained new biographical material, Stefan explicitly and repeatedly denied that he was offering his readers a biography: When this book was taking shape, Mahler’s life was at the height of its powers, but was also exercising its full rights: the right not to be restricted, partitioned or forced into certain associations. It was not an obtrusive life but rather one that was full of activity; a discreet, hidden life such as those of the old masters of our art; a practical life, but as has been suggested after due consideration, a life of the world at variance with the world. Today, now it is over, we still view it from close proximity as contemporaries. We have still not moved on from it; the phenomenon is still reverberating within us; the calm of perusal and examination is not available to us. And what if it never comes, never comes to this volcanic eruption? Or what if it does not 33

come very soon? To be sure, calmness is not our primary business here. May our aim be to capture the variegated reflection of this life as in a metaphor; and this book can only be called a biography in so far as it presents Mahler’s life itself in paraphrase.12 The same goes for Richard Specht and his extensive and courageous book on Mahler, whose documentary value lies primarily in its abundance of illustrative material (family pictures, Mahler portraits, facsimiles of letters and score pages, pictures of scenery and models by Alfred Roller for Mahler’s operatic work in Vienna), as well as the chronological table ‘Gustav Mahler at the k.k. Hofoperntheater in Vienna’ by the archivist of the Vienna Court Theatres, A. J. Weltner. In contrast to Stefan, Specht acknowledges that he began his Mahler book with the intention of writing a ‘detailed biography’, ‘a documented account of the external and internal life of the greatest artist in the realm of music’.13 What emerged, however, was something quite different. Specht justified this on serious grounds: the most important material for such an exhaustive biography was not yet accessible. One would first have to spend several years visiting all the places in which Mahler had lived and worked in order to collect documents and to question people about the impression he had made at any given time. Besides this, so many people who were in one way or another caught up in Mahler’s life were still alive that it would be impossible to describe these relationships fully. All these things were certainly true of that period. Mahler’s letters had not yet been published, although many had been placed at the disposal of biographers. But the material relating to theatre history – the work of conductors and opera directors – would have been much more readily and accurately obtainable then than today. We do not know whether, despite aerial bombardment, there survive in the opera house archives of Prague, Leipzig, Budapest, Hamburg and Vienna scores and orchestral parts with annotations in Mahler’s hand or instructions under his direction that might lead to conclusions about the special nature of his interpretations.14 Many things can only be deduced indirectly today, other things remain a completely unsolved mystery because their traces have already been scattered far and wide. The same can be said for musical material in the archives of certain institutions such as the Hamburg ‘Subscription Concerts’15 and the Vienna Philharmonic in terms of those used and marked up by Mahler in concert; and the archive of the music publishers Universal Edition in Vienna, which holds the sole copy of the score of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony in which just a year before his death he added new and final retouchings of the instrumentation, never conveyed to the 34

printers even after Mahler’s death due to an oversight of the publisher Emil Hertzka.16 However, there was a further reason for the lack of accessibility to Mahler’s life history, of which the authors Specht and Stefan were not fully aware. It was the period itself, and the attitude of the liberal bourgeoisie at the turn of the century, characterised as follows by one of its spiritual representatives in Austria, the writer Hermann Bahr: ‘profit-seeking becomes the main point of life; but life itself becomes perilous and the wise man avoids this because it is unprofitable’. Mahler’s life also appeared somehow unprofitable even to these his friends and most loyal supporters. Stefan merely wanted to ‘capture a variegated reflection of this life, as in a metaphor’, whereas Specht roundly declared that ‘Mahler’s external life … is not fruitful in the true “biographical” sense’, and that ‘all the external aspects of his existence have little bearing on his art’.17 The generation of that time, for whom art was a game far removed from life, were not willing to recognise the profound connection between the life and music of Mahler, who once said of his symphonies that they were ‘life made music’ and that ‘all my works are an anticipando of the life to come’.18 For the true recognition and interpretation of Mahler’s life would have meant facing up to the demise of that tired, old culture along with its existing forms of life, and proclaiming the end of this disintegrating world, bathed in one last magical glow of sunset, whose fullest expression was to be found in Mahler’s music.

Why was it that Mahler’s life and work remained to the last something of an ungraspable, unsolvable puzzle even to those who fell under the spell of his engrossing personality and to whom his music was a revelation? Why was it that these people, replete with such a great experience, were prepared to pass on to their contemporaries, and to posterity, the ways in which they viewed and experienced Mahler the man and his work, but could never outline more than an incomplete picture of a musical life and show the human, spiritual and artistic development of a composer, conductor and opera reformer in close connection with the environment, currents and forces permeating his epoch? The answer to this question highlights the Mahler problem in all its 35

tragedy. His admission that he felt ‘thrice homeless: as a Bohemian among Austrians, as an Austrian among Germans and as a Jew in the whole world’ provides the key to understanding the epoch within which he lived, the great conflicts with which it was filled, and the path that he trod, bathed in the incandescent glow of his world fame as conductor and reformer of European operatic performance but at the same time deeply isolated, his full significance as creative musician little recognised except on one occasion: during the 48 hours of 11 and 12 September 1910 at the dress rehearsal and first performance of the monumental Eighth Symphony in Munich, which he directed as a man already marked by death;19 here his life as a composer found its fulfilment in the glory of an overwhelming triumph. But even this eminently visible manifestation of the socially binding power of Mahler’s music could not alter the law of his inner development in which the tragic element played a prominent role. As his friend and disciple Bruno Walter aptly put it, at the depths of his soul lay ‘a profound world-sorrow whose rising cold waves would seize him in an icy grip’.20 And from the conflict with this world sorrow and its overcoming arose the power to shape the determining impulses of his musical creativity. Re-submersion in world sorrow after ecstatic flights of creative inspiration, as always occurred following the completion of a work, was a characteristic trait of Mahler the symphonist. One could explain this, as Walter does, by the fact that his nature was such that ‘because of its inconstancy, he was unable to hold conquered spiritual positions. His life and activity were spent in impulses, and so he was forced again and again to renew his fight for spiritual possessions’.21 This is only a partial description of the way Mahler’s spiritual condition functioned; the essence of this unusual trait of his personality remains to be explained. Obviously such a thorough expert and devoted interpreter of Mahler’s nature as Walter would not be content with merely establishing the composer’s lack of spiritual constancy. He tried to explain this phenomenon by suggesting that Mahler was a romantic at heart, governed by ‘the propitiousness or unpropitiousness of the hour’.22 Then, however, Walter continues: And yet it would be fundamentally wrong to think of him as vacillating and unstable. While he was not constant, the direction in which he pointed was firmly fixed and no impulse was able to swerve him from it. Neither ought he by any means to be called unhappy, for he who had been given so rich a substance, so warm a heart, and so eloquent a tongue, cannot be classified among either the happy or the unhappy. 36

He knew of fervent exaltation and of bitter sorrow, and so strong an inward agitation is a finer gift of the gods than mere happiness. And as for sorrow, which, to be sure, was his faithful companion throughout life, Tasso’s comfort was his, too: And if, bereft of speech, man bears his pain, A god gave me the gift to tell my sorrow. [He spoke it in a tongue of which he had supreme command.] His sorrow and his yearning became music, and just as they were reborn again and again, so they were turned ever anew into a work of art.23 But what was the nature of this world that the man named Gustav Mahler loved so deeply with every fibre of his being, and for which he eternally suffered and fought?

He must have seen it more clearly than other musicians at the turn of the century, and felt more strongly, intensely and forcibly the ruling hand of the powers ranged within it to their furthest consequences. And just as he raised the experience of this world to new levels and divined unknown new territories in his music, so he also prophetically grasped the future in his sound world: as mentioned above, he referred to it quite ingenuously and without pathos as ‘an anticipando of the life to come’. It is from this that the huge significance of Mahler’s music for our own time emerges. Twenty-two years after his death, with the establishment of the fascist dictatorship in Germany, the ‘profound world-sorrow’ harboured in the depths of his soul ‘whose rising cold waves would seize him in an icy grip’ had become the predominant feature of European life under Nazi rule. And an intrinsic connection becomes evident between what Mahler experienced and suffered – what he fought against with all the might of his powerful soul in order to find for mankind a way out of great affliction towards the redeeming light – and the struggles and confusions that have been disturbing our present existence for almost an entire decade. The world in which Mahler lived and the society in which he worked stood at a decisive turning point in their development. With improvements in the means of production, the industrialisation of central European countries and the spread of capitalism reached previously unseen proportions. The world economy had already embraced all available markets; sur37

Bayreuth Festspielhaus.

plus stocks and economic crises increased; social antagonisms intensified with the gathering strength of the workers’ movement; political tensions between individual states and power groupings continually brought the threat of an outbreak of hostilities dangerously close. As a child of six, Mahler lived through the conflict between Prussia and Austria which ended with Prussia’s victory, thereby securing the grounds for a separate development of the Austrian countries combined under the Habsburg monarchy. In Mahler’s tenth year the war of conquest waged by the Prussian-Hohenzollern military monarchy against France broke out, and led to the establishment of an insanely power-hungry new-German imperialism. In 1876, five years after the peace settlement, when Mahler was already in his second year at Vienna’s Conservatoire of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, the Wagner festival opened in Bayreuth. With its global influence, this very soon developed into the most powerful cultural symbol of new-German imperialism. For the generation of young musicians who witnessed the fulfilment of the Wagnerian festival idea in Bayreuth, this event was a crucial turning point. It now seemed that the romantic genius could be victorious in the 38

fight against a hostile world and could stamp his will on it as law. Wagner’s contemporaries clearly did not realise the efforts through which this ‘victory’ was won and the compromises with prevailing reactionary powers with which he paid for it.24 For this generation Bayreuth was simply the magical central power of the ‘German spirit’, and Wagner’s music was the storm tide that spread across Europe with unstoppable force and buried the proud edifice of the old opera. Outwardly Wagner’s life’s work seems to have been taken up with the struggle to free German musical theatre from the shackles of French and Italian operatic conventions. His theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the symphonic music drama of romanticism, was partly derived from that intellectual movement of late-Hegelian universalism25 in which many supporters of the democratic bourgeois revolution of 1848 in Germany were immersed. But at the same time it also reflected that retrogressive development steeped in Schopenhauerian pessimism that followed the defeat of the revolution of 1848–49: the time when the revolutionary idea of democracy was betrayed by the German bourgeoisie who preferred to make an agreement with the aristocracy involving meagre concessions rather than an alliance with the workers and peasants.26 There has been no shortage of serious attempts to examine the effects of Wagner’s life’s work in its time and place from a sociological standpoint. From Hugo Dinger’s Richard Wagners geistige Entwicklung, to Guido Adler’s Richard Wagner and Heinrich Mann’s novel Der Untertan, which illuminates the problem with ingenious clarity from a socio-critical perspective through the portrayal of a Lohengrin performance in a provincial German town,27 a thin red line stretches through the vast quantity of Wagner literature up to recent times and continues to develop – a natural reaction to the systematic falsification of Wagner’s historical portrayal in musicological literature produced in Hitler’s Germany between 1933 and 1945 on behalf of Nazi propaganda. It was a particular characteristic of writers such as Dinger, Adler, Heinrich and Thomas Mann and Jacques Barzun28 that their work did not belong to the partisan anti-Wagner literature, but rather centred its examination on the sociological foundations of the struggles around Wagner and the promulgation of his work. To a certain extent other writers on Wagner such as Julius Kapp and Ernest Newman should be included here as well,29 because although the sociological element plays a relatively subordinate role, they bring to bear such independence and objectivity of judgement that not only do they reveal with remarkable candour Wagner’s own efforts in his writings to conceal from posterity certain facts of his life or to present 39

them in an unrealistic light, but also they uncover the systematic attempts at falsification in the writings of the closest Bayreuth circle around Richard and Cosima Wagner, which aimed at any cost to weave an idolising myth, or as Nietzsche put it, a fable convenue [an agreed story],30 around the Wagner phenomenon, and ruthlessly to oppose or discredit all serious research whose results stood in the way of the mythic portrayal it cultivated. So from about the last decade of the nineteenth century onwards, very slowly and still far removed from the consciousness of wider circles, the realisation gradually spread that the creative output of Wagner the musical dramatist should not automatically be identified with the Bayreuth institution, but rather, as Adler put it, Wagner stood ‘above Bayreuth’.31 It was the duty of the generation of musicians to which the young Mahler belonged to prepare the ground for this recognition step by step. Most of them of course never became aware of this at all since they had fallen completely under the spell of Bayreuth propaganda, which sought to induce a worldwide Wagner psychosis. Although no artistically receptive musician could escape the overwhelming effects of Wagner propaganda engineered by Bayreuth in those years, even then there were critical voices that enthusiastically supported Wagner’s art works but protested against the chauvinistic tendencies of Bayreuth propaganda methods: above all the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns, and in England no less a man than George Bernard Shaw, then working as a music critic. What went unrecognised outside the German cultural sphere were the individual elements comprising Bayreuth propaganda: Wagner’s personal role in laying its foundations, and the shrewd exploitation of the hugely provocative effects of Wagner’s personality and music by the intimate Bayreuth propaganda circle around Cosima Wagner after the master’s death. The true significance of Wagner’s various transformations from ’48 revolutionary to renegade of the revolution, to prince’s lackey and finally to state composer of new-German imperialism was as little recognised by his contemporaries as his active racial propaganda. The latter he cultivated not only from Bayreuth but also through his disciples, above all Ludwig Schemann, who, on his instructions, translated into German the racial work of Count Gobineau – completely ignored in France – and subsequently published all of Gobineau’s literary estate.32 It was also overlooked that Schemann organised Gobineau circles in Germany, modelled on the Wagner societies, in which propaganda for Bayreuth was actively cultivated. A further subsequent phase in the development of Bayreuth propaganda was closely linked with the personality of the German Gobineau 40

disciple Schemann, and to this we will return in detail since it has particular significance for the life and work of Gustav Mahler. But before we describe more closely this later stage of development in Bayreuth propaganda we must understand that the struggles around Wagner would not have assumed such excessive forms and exerted such far-reaching influences on the next two generations had they not been supported by political powers that both merged with them and used them as a vehicle. For this it was not only necessary for Wagner to be convinced that his music dramas represented the quintessence of German national art, but also that the ruling powers recognised, through more or less officially acknowledging Wagner as Germany’s national composer, that his personality and work could serve as valuable instruments of propaganda. Ultimately one should not forget that these deliberations had become especially pertinent ever since Napoleon III’s 1861 command performance of Tannhäuser at the Paris Opera, which had demonstrated how the promotion of Wagner the composer could be tied in with the foreign policy plans he was pursuing against the German League. In the third volume of his monumental Wagner biography Ernest Newman examined the political background of the Parisian Tannhäuser performance, thereby dismantling the pious myth that it was only the ardent enthusiasm of Princess Pauline Metternich-Sandor for Wagner’s genius – the personal whim of this exceedingly self-aggrandising eccentric aristocrat – to which the master owed the performance of his work in the French capital.33 That Wagner, on the other hand, was no daydreamer with his head in the clouds, but rather was well aware that the skilled and clear-sighted use of political situations could contribute greatly to increasing his powerful status and above all to the realisation of his artistic ideas of theatrical reform, is shown not just by his close connection with the revolutionary movement behind the Dresden May uprising of 1849, but also by his energetic attempts to gain influence in Bavarian politics through slavish devotion of the young King Ludwig II; and this at a time when, in the struggle between Austria and Prussia for domination in Germany, an attempt was made in Munich to counter Bismarck’s pro-Prussia ‘north-German solution’ to the power question with the idea of a ‘south-German League’ whose political weight would have derived from a close alliance with Austria. If this antiPrussian great-German solution to the power question had come to fruition, Munich would have become one of the most important cultural centres of the German League and, as Bavarian court composer, Wagner would have attained a key position as musical dictator over all German lands. That history took a different course and Bismarck’s idea of the small41

German solution [kleindeutsche Lösung] to the power question carried the day in favour of Prussian-Hohenzollern domination did not alter the fact that Wagner’s music dramas and his efforts to establish a home for national festivals constituted an extremely valuable politico-cultural tool for propagating German notions of power. At court in Berlin this was clearly recognised straight away, and the recognition acted upon, given that the aged Kaiser Wilhelm I, quite unmusical and not at all keen on Wagner’s art, officially attended the opening performance at the Bayreuth Festspielhaus. His son and successor Wilhelm II was soon to extract considerable propaganda advantage from the sociological effects of Wagnerian music drama on the German understanding of power. Here one should first take into account how much the opera-goer’s attitude to musical theatre had changed since the realisation of Wagner’s festival idea in Bayreuth. The production style of Italian opera, French and German Singspiel, and the very embodiment of all theatrically bound musical drama, the works of Mozart, had depended on providing the audience with a finished whole that could be easily grasped; a plot involving stock situations played by stock characters during which the simplest emotions such as curiosity, desire for adventure, eroticism, cruelty and love of satire were aroused through centuries-old theatrical practices. It was essential that the audience were able to comprehend the work without being intellectually or physically overwhelmed, or forced along a particular path – that they freely remained above the operatic situation. In contrast to this, Wagner deliberately aimed for the complete surrender of both performers and audience to his music drama. The fundamental reciprocal process between audience and performed work, already characteristic of the old opera, which mysteriously bonded the people in the theatre into a public social entity, was so intensified by Wagner that each individual’s complete abandonment of free will, their submersion in utter passivity, forms the prerequisite for the pure, unadulterated appreciation of his music dramas. In his book Opera, Edward Dent was right when he compared the opera-goer, exposed to the powerful onslaught of Wagner’s music, with a patient who allows himself to be sedated before an operation.34 It is in this state of complete self-transcendence that the great multitude of listeners experienced the mystic ritual myth of Wagnerian music drama; they identified with the heroes and heroines of the old-German legends, their will to power, struggles, victories and downfall. Could there have been a more effective means of propagating national ideas of power and imperialist ideology than the Wagner cult in German opera houses, over which the national shrine of Bayreuth towered, claiming to be the 42

world’s one and only Wagner stage, the Grail temple to which not only Germans but also people from neighbouring and distant lands had made pilgrimage in order to acquaint themselves with, and savour, Wagner’s art works in their perfect – that is, their authentic – form? Thus it was that the symbolism of Wagner’s music dramas found its way first of all into Prussian-Hohenzollern court ceremony. Wilhelm II loved to surround himself with the aura of Wagnerian heroic figures when appearing before his subjects. Millions of copies of a picture showing the Kaiser in full military splendour as the supreme commander of the German army were scattered throughout the empire: in flowing white cape, the silver helmet of Lohengrin the Knight of the Swan on his head, with famous upturned ‘it is accomplished’ [Es ist erreicht] moustache, leaning on the huge mediaeval imperial sword. Sometimes Lohengrin’s silver helmet with the swan also appeared in pictures of Wilhelm II wearing his modern parade uniform. At all events it was an indispensable part of the wardrobe of a Kaiser who deliberately appeared before his subjects in the pose of God’s emissary Lohengrin, Knight of the Grail. And just as in real life no other mortal in the whole of the German empire wore a silver Lohengrin helmet outside the theatre, so it was the exclusive privilege of the Kaiser to drive a car with a specially made device that sounded the fanfare-like thunder motif from Wagner’s Das Rheingold as a warning signal. Numerous contemporary reports testify to the impressive theatrical effects that could be achieved by the scenic placement of this extravagant horn signal. There was a graphic description of the mounting tension among rows of subjects waiting for the Kaiser to drive past as the fanfare calls of his car horn sounded, first from far away and then gradually nearer: the collective excitement then exploded into hysterical cheering when the car itself came into view. With military precision and with carefully planned commands, the same procedure was repeated at parades inspected by the Kaiser. As the monarch drove to the drill-ground, the approaching signal acted as a warning for the officers who gradually increased the anxious suspense among the men so that it reached its climax at the arrival of the imperial car. In his aforementioned novel Der Untertan, Heinrich Mann showed with piercing clarity the effects of this Wagner cult – adapted by Wilhelm II to 43

Kaiser Wilhelm II.

the Prussian-Hohenzollern idea of power – on the various types of German bourgeoisie of the 1880s, especially on the ordinary citizen who had already been inculcated with the narrowest form of Prussian nationalist pride of station by flag-waving university student associations.35 Listening to Wagner’s works, these ordinary German citizens felt their nationalistic preeminence and sense of allegiance confirmed and brought home to them with immense powers of suggestion. For they identified with Wagner’s romanticised heroic figures of old-German myth, and at the same time they perceived in these heroic Wagnerian figures an indomitable and miraculously triumphant reflection of supreme, divinely granted power – this was the true, secret aim of Kaiser Wilhelm II’s theatrical behaviour. Couched in the most captivating and overpowering contemporary music, the romantic gestures of Wagner’s heroes entered into the everyday lives of the ordinary German bourgeoisie who were spellbound by the Kaiser’s appropriation of them to create a special aura around his personality. Just as any admired model invites imitation, so the German citizen adopted heroic Wagnerian gestures too, and applied them in his own sphere of influence. They became a symbol of a German nationalism bearing all the traits of decadence, a symbol of imperialist notions of power. They introduced a new strain of empty theatricality into German life of the Wilhelmine era and contributed substantially to the creation of that type of ostentatious, intolerant nationalist gripped by the idea of a master race and intoxicated by the combination of Wagnerian and East-Prussian Junkerjargon phraseology of ‘pithy sayings’ in Kaiser Wilhelm II’s speeches; by the rhetoric in the lectures and parliamentary speeches of the historian Treitschke; and by the propaganda writings of the Pan-German League, which appeared a few years later and whose spiritual backers and founders included the Wagnerite and Gobineau disciple Schemann as well as the obscure German race theorists Otto Amon and Ludwig Wilser:36 that triumvirate that exerted such great influence on the pseudo-scientific works of the race theorist and Wagner propagandist Houston Stewart Chamberlain, author of Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts.37 In his novel Der Untertan, Heinrich Mann shows how the contamination and corruption of the German bourgeoisie took the form of the aping of the heroic Wagnerian gesture so redolent of German imperialism. He portrays the events leading to a ludicrous act of treason in a provincial German town, describing its development with consummate mastery. The socio-critical results of his analysis are expressed in the words of the young advocate of the accused who sketches in his plea the following picture of the new kind of ‘nationally minded’ citizen moulded by recent German imperialism: 44

I will speak then not of the ruler, but of the loyal subject, whom he has moulded: not of Wilhelm II but of Diederich Hessling. You have seen what he is like! An average man, with a commonplace mind, the creature of circumstance and opportunity, without courage so long as things were going badly for him here, and tremendously self-important as soon as they had turned in his favour. … At all times … there have been many thousands like him, men who looked after their business and developed political opinions. What is added, and makes of him a new type, is solely the gesture: the swaggering manner, the aggressiveness of an alleged personality, the craving for effect at any price, even at the expense of others. Those who differ in opinion are to be branded enemies of their country, even if they were to constitute two-thirds of the nation. Class interests, no doubt, but hulled in a cloak of romantic lie. Romantic prostration at the feet of a master who confers just enough of his power upon his subjects to enable them to keep the lesser men at bay. And as neither sovereign nor slave exists, neither in law nor in fact, public life takes on the aspect of bad comedy. Opinion appears in costume, speeches fall as from the lips of crusaders who turn out to be nothing more than manufacturers of tin, or paper, and the pasteboard sword is drawn for an idea such as majesty, which nobody can experience outside fairy tales.38

With the recognition, beyond the grasp of previous generations, that a profound causal connection existed between this new type of German imperialist subject and the Bayreuth Wagner festival as highest artistic ideal, we gain a fresh perspective on the life and work of Gustav Mahler. The new type of subject who, as Mann puts it, ‘sees in severity and repression not the sad transition to humane conditions, but the aim of life itself ’39 was the hostile element in Mahler’s life, which directly threatened his work and against which he had to fight an unprecedented battle with all the might of his artistic powers. This battle must be considered unprecedented because outwardly there was no clearly recognisable borderline between Mahler and his opponents. What showed itself on the surface as aggression towards Mahler were merely the actions of cover agents and fanatical partisans who had no idea why they were involved in this 45

struggle. They were simply the tools of dark, clandestine forces that never came out into the open. Above the lowlands of political struggle a ‘cultural superstructure’ rises up as its mirror image, and within this extends the world of the theatre, full of intense conflicts of emotion. At the turn of the century, when Mahler’s artistic influence reached its highpoint with his appointment at the Vienna Hofoper, the gulf separating art and life was so great that very few people were aware just how easily the antagonisms of temperament and the various capacities for illusion on which the theatrical world particularly depended for its emotional conflicts, could be distilled into a conflict of world-views, into a political struggle; and this is in fact what happened in Wagner’s case. What separated Mahler from his opponents was his imaginative ability to break away completely from the usual conventions, and he revealed this in his experience and interpretation of the masterworks of Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner, which were so dear to him and so in tune with his nature. By setting out to express this intimate experience of Mozart, Beethoven and Wagner so purely, and by adjusting the musical and scenic elements of the performance on small and large scales (or, where necessary, fundamentally transforming them) with unique objectivity and powerful artistic conviction in order to achieve this purity and to match his special imaginative intentions, he trod the bitter path of a prophet both bearing witness to his masters and seeking, in his glorious untimeliness, to make their timeless authority accessible to a world that their creative works had already far surpassed. The world in which Mahler lived and worked stood under the banner of Wagner, whose music lent sensual expression to all its emotions, secret yearnings, anxieties, intoxication with power, eroticism and hedonism, with suitably romantic-pessimistic decadence. The classical masterworks of Mozart had become alien to the musical theatre of this time, which worshipped mechanical technology and its associated large-scale expenditure of manpower. People had forgotten how to listen to Mozart’s music, just as they heard the music of Beethoven with which they had grown up only in the customary manner: in slick, routine performances which gave barely an inkling of the soaring artistic heights of the composer’s spirit. However, the theatre had not yet fully discovered the appropriate scenic form for Wagner’s works, despite Bayreuth and Wagner’s first important attempts there to develop such a performance style for his music dramas in 1876 and 1882. The more that Mahler confronted the problems of Wagner performance the more clearly he recognised that in principle there was 46

no real difference between the production methods of older opera that Wagner so vehemently opposed and the first Bayreuth productions. To be sure, Wagner had striven for, and achieved, a level of accomplishment in orchestral, choral and solo performance greater than those encountered in the average opera house. However, in overall terms the achievements of Bayreuth certainly did not constitute any conclusive or absolute solution for the performance style of Wagner’s Gesamtkunstwerk. While the master himself made this quite clear to his colleagues after the first complete performance of the Ring tetralogy, which had opened the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, expressly announcing that ‘Next year we shall do it all differently!’40 – a plan that unfortunately never came to fruition since Wagner only lived long enough to see the 1882 festival for which he staged the first performance of Parsifal – his widow Cosima let it be known to the world via her staff of propagandists that these first Bayreuth productions epitomised Wagner’s artistic legacy, that they were the most perfect, and the only authentic, realisation of Wagner’s artistic will, and therefore unalterably valid for all time.41 In the year of Wagner’s death the young Mahler experienced Parsifal for the first time at Bayreuth, enthusing that he had come to understand ‘all that is greatest and most painful’ and that he would ‘bear it within [him], inviolate, for the rest of [his] life’.42 He had become a Wagnerian, and recognised that serving the master’s work would be a sacred task of his life. But at that time Cosima Wagner and her Bayreuth circle had yet to emerge openly as the guardians of a ‘Bayreuth tradition’. He felt the deepest reverence and admiration for Bayreuth and its festival idea. Fighting mundane operatic routine and raising it to the level of a festival in the Wagnerian sense seemed to him to be his pre-ordained, holy mission. Fourteen years later when he himself had become one of Europe’s most important Wagner conductors, the flame of his love for Wagner and his work burned undiminished, although this love was that of a visionary who had endured considerable suffering and fought great inner battles on its behalf. The distracting and artificial oppositions between classicism and romanticism, between the beauty of the old and the ugliness of the new, which had consumed the minds of an earlier generation as well as those of his own youthful contemporaries in the struggles around Wagner, always remained foreign to him. As we may gather from his letters, Mozart and particularly Beethoven repeatedly appear in the ranks of the great masters of the past who accompanied him on his life’s journey and into his dreams, as illustrious teachers and trusted friends; and alongside them Schubert and Weber with whose works he always felt the closest affinity, while J. S. 47

Bach occupied a prominent place in the thinking and feeling of his mature years. Also among the masters who answered his innermost questions were the three great composers of his own era whom he had encountered in life and whose deaths he had lived through: Wagner, Brahms and Bruckner. Whilst Mahler’s relationship with Brahms and Bruckner has been dealt with on many occasions in the literature and will also be thoroughly evaluated in this book, it is not generally known that during Wagner’s twomonth stay in Vienna in 1875 to direct new productions of the complete Tannhäuser and Lohengrin at the Hofoper, Mahler, as a young conservatoire student, stood face to face for a moment with the master in the cloakroom of a hotel. He had crept in there so that he might just once see the master close up. For some time he stood stock still gazing at Wagner’s hat and cloak hanging on a hook. Suddenly Wagner came in and glanced with some astonishment at the youth who stood there motionless, staring at him. Mahler later recounted to his close family that at first he had wanted to go up to Wagner and help him into his cloak, especially as the master could not immediately get his right arm into the sleeve. But the impression of Wagner’s personality on his sudden entrance was so immense that he stood there as if paralysed. Before he returned to his senses and was at least able to bow in greeting, Wagner had left the room.43 Mahler thus let slip his first and last opportunity to make Wagner’s personal acquaintance. In retrospect this should almost be seen as a stroke of luck in Mahler’s life because his internal relationship with Wagner was thus able to grow, primarily through his devoted efforts to gain the best and most accurate insight into Wagner’s work and its inner laws. This armed him against the tragic realisation that Wagner and his work – which he embraced with deep, enthusiastic love – not only provided a magical source of unending joy when approached for sustenance and learning, but also, through a peculiar chain of circumstances, became the instigator and bearer of dark, destructive powers, a hostile element in his life. Wagner as one of the shining stars in the firmament, extending archlike over Mahler’s life, and at the same time as the dark, threatening cloud of danger casting a shadow over this sky: Mahler freed himself from this dichotomy through realising ever more clearly and deeply in the years of his ascendancy and service to Wagner’s work that Wagner the man went through life in many different guises, like an actor who changes costume and mask for his various roles; that Wagner the political writer had almost to be forgotten if one was fully to enjoy Wagner the creative artist and great musical dramatist without reservation or scepticism. This unconditional and unrestricted love that Mahler bestowed upon 48

Wagner the man and artist, calling him an ‘enthusiastic thinker’ to whom the usual bourgeois standards were not applicable, was the basic precondition for the ardent devotion with which he placed himself at the service of Wagner’s works throughout his life. With the benefit of hindsight it can now be stated with certainty that in the many years of selflessness and responsible awareness of his service to Wagner’s works, Mahler gained deeper insight into Wagner’s creative thought processes than any other artist of his era. The magnitude and extraordinary range of this insight and empathy with the world of Wagnerian creative thought consisted in his unprejudiced attempt to clarify the extent to which Wagner was able to realise his creative thought processes in Bayreuth, and what inevitably remained unfulfilled due to stage technique and orchestral standards of Wagner’s day lagging far behind the scenic and musical visions of his imagination. At the same time, given his precise knowledge of Bayreuth directorial practice and the experience of his own stagecraft, Mahler had to determine those aspects of Wagner’s creative thought processes that had become submerged because the illusionary effect of certain elements of traditional production methods had faded over the years. Combined with this were broader considerations of how these submerged thought processes, an intrinsic part of the work’s spiritual content, might be brought back to life. Mahler was well aware that everything depended on this. This was why he consciously strove to replace worn-out production methods with new scenic and dramaturgical resources, not to mention his continual concern to improve standards of orchestral playing. The ultimate aim was to rescue the original creative idea from obscurity, to reveal it afresh and to re-introduce it into contemporary consciousness, freed from all slovenliness. And this could only happen by establishing a new presentational method that would stimulate the audience’s imagination so compellingly that the impression of heightened artistic credibility would be rekindled, where before there had been only stagnation. However, Mahler undoubtedly recognised that Cosima Wagner, who at the time had promoted Wagner’s achievements in the 1876 and 1882 productions as an irrefutably authentic ‘Bayreuth tradition’, prevented any further development in the stagecraft of the Bayreuth Festival. Thus she, her propagandists and her advisers were to blame for Bayreuth being unable to fulfil its mission with respect to Wagner’s life’s work. Mahler saw that fate had decreed his mission to keep Wagner’s work alive in the contemporary theatre, in the face of the antiquated forms of presentation clung on to in Bayreuth in the name of a fictitious Wagner tradition that it wanted to impose on all other theatres. From then on Wagner and 49

Bayreuth became two different worlds for Mahler, like a shining star in the firmament of his life that at the same time was overshadowed by ominously dark clouds of danger. Here grim, destructive forces converged in the form of a pan-Germanism and German imperialism that threatened his life and the existence of his work. Prophetically he felt the entire dreadful burden of what was to come: the disintegration of the old ways of life, the degeneration of the ethical values of the art work into the trough of a commercial music industry to which musical life would inevitably succumb. Hand in hand with sharpening social, economic and political divisions and a general decline in ethics, came an anti-cultural brutality and barbarism which, to give one example, reacted in 1897 to the heroic death of the Viennese plague researcher Müller in the interests of science with the current catchphrase of the Christian-Socialist politician Biehlolawek: ‘Science is what one Jew copies from another’.44 For anti-Semitism was practised as an effective propaganda tool not only by the pan-Germans in the empire and the great-German Schönerer party in Austria, but also by the new party of the Catholic petit-bourgeoisie, the Christian Socialists – founded by the Mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger – in the belief that by imitating these political methods they would be able to take ‘the wind out of the sails’ of the great-German Schönerer disciples. The period was heading rapidly towards destruction and the only outcome of this would be the 1914 psychosis of mass murder in which the cannons, silenced for several decades, began to rumble once more. This was the scene in Austria when Mahler started work at the Vienna Hofoper, the only Royal Imperial Court Opera director to have marched in rank and file along the Ringstrasse with the Viennese workers on 1 May 1905; the only European composer to have prophetically foreseen the impending world catastrophe and to have captured it in the apocalyptic sounds of his profoundly world-weary music.

Of the contemporaries who experienced Mahler’s work in the years of his dazzling rise in Prague, Leipzig, Budapest and Hamburg, only a few guessed anything of the magnitude and significance of his operatic endeavours and his future mission. Not until he took over the directorship of the Vienna Hofoper in 1897, and the opposition against him began to assume the character of a defamatory political campaign, did it become more widely recognised that the life and work of this musician offered up a shining 50

example, and that this example automatically unleashed counter-reactions whose base vulgarity was plain for all to see. However, even fewer people tried to account either for the deeper, as it were symptomatic, significance of these reactions or for their actual instigators. In general people sought to explain the ingratitude and hostility that regularly erupted with varying intensity throughout Mahler’s exemplary ten-year period of work, by contrasting his artistic fanaticism with the cosy, pleasurable lifestyle of the Viennese, whose superficiality superseded their rash bursts of enthusiasm. With his ‘nervous, impatient and capricious nature’ and uncompromising attitude, Mahler had not understood how to win friends and become a ‘popular figure’ in the Viennese sense. A second argument was offered: as with the two great masters Schubert and Bruckner, it had always been the case that no composer gained success in Vienna during his lifetime, but only found recognition once dead. The opposition to Mahler could also be explained partly by the fact that a certain clique had annoyed large sections of the Viennese musical public with its unrestrained Mahler propaganda. However, no one seemed disquieted by the fact that a press campaign against Mahler had begun in the German national and anti-Semitic newspapers as early as April 1897, thus at a time before he had even appeared before the Viennese public as director of the Hofoper. Who instigated this press campaign? Some light was shed on this in a letter Mahler wrote from Hamburg to the composer Carl Goldmark on 4 January 1897,45 in which he revealed that even during the private negotiations surrounding his Vienna appointment, to which very few were privy, a campaign to discredit him was initiated in order to convince leading officials of the Hoftheater management that his candidacy for the post of Kapellmeister in Vienna was out of the question. Who amongst Mahler’s enemies – he referred to them as his ‘good friends’ in the letter to Goldmark – could have had a direct interest in preventing his appointment as Kapellmeister in Vienna? And if these enemies had got wind of secret negotiations between the general management and the Lord Chamberlain’s Office [Obersthofmeisteramt], why did they opt for the uncertain method of a whispering campaign and not wreck the negotiations by publicising news of Mahler’s closely guarded candidacy? The answer to these questions was for the first time clearly revealed by Alma Mahler in her book Gustav Mahler. Erinnerungen und Briefe [Gustav Mahler. Memories and Letters]:

51

Caricature, 1899. ‘The baton of Cosima Wagner, with which she makes the most money.’

And so he bade farewell to Hamburg, and, in spite of all the intrigues set on foot against him, particularly by Cosima Wagner, who could not tolerate a Jew as Director of the Opera in Vienna, he secured his engagement, first as conductor of the orchestra and heir-presumptive of Wilhelm Jahn and, before many weeks had gone by, as Director.46 Nevertheless, if one takes into account further published letters and documents of Mahler’s time, the reason Alma Mahler gives for Cosima Wagner’s intrigues against Mahler’s appointment should not be regarded as the only one. To be sure, Mahler’s Jewishness was an important basis for Cosima Wagner’s hostile attitude towards him. As many letters addressed to her future son-in-law Houston Stewart Chamberlain testify, she was completely under the influence of the anti-Semitic racial theories and German Herrenvolk idea on which her late husband based many of his writings.47 On the other hand, Cosima Wagner was undoubtedly very well aware that Mahler was one of the most important conductors, and one of the most important Wagner interpreters, of his time. As director of the Royal Hungarian Opera in Budapest, he had given the first, exemplary, performances of Das Rheingold and Die Walküre in Hungarian (26 and 29 January 1890) – a great artistic achievement that caused a veritable sensation. As its principal conductor, he had raised the Hamburg Stadttheater to the rank of one of the premier Wagner stages in Germany. At Cosima Wagner’s request, 52

Mahler coached the tenor Birrenkoven, a member of his ensemble, for the role of Parsifal at the Bayreuth Festival. As an annotation to Mahler’s letter of 10 July 1894 to his friend Arnold Berliner reveals, Cosima Wagner asked Birrenkoven to tell Mahler after the first rehearsal in Bayreuth that no singer had ever come to Bayreuth with this role so thoroughly studied. All that remained to rehearse were passages where costume was essential, e.g. removing the armour in the third act. Birrenkoven was such a great success that Frau Wagner also engaged him to sing Lohengrin the following summer.48 Mahler was thus a factor that Cosima Wagner, as director of the Bayreuth Festival, could not ignore from the point of view of theatrical strategy. This was particularly the case in the 1890s when, after its great initial triumph, the Bayreuth Festival suffered a serious crisis. The essence of this crisis, to be discussed in detail in the second volume of this book,49 lay in the fact that, fifteen years after Wagner’s death, the powerful theatrical effects of the first Bayreuth productions developed by the master himself began to diminish in impact. But, as previously mentioned, it was precisely these original Bayreuth stagings that were held up by Cosima Wagner and her select staff of propagandists as the eternally authentic form of Wagner production. This production style was dogmatically proclaimed as the authentic ‘Bayreuth tradition’, to which all other theatres had to conform so as to avoid accusations of sacrilege towards Wagner’s work. The so-called ‘Bayreuth tradition’ was afflicted by a deep-rooted, insoluble contradiction, for it was founded on a delusion, a fiction. With the aura of authenticity and with Wagner’s personal involvement in the first stagings of the Ring tetralogy and Parsifal at Bayreuth, zealous propagandists were able to promote the belief throughout Europe – including in several non-German countries – that the Bayreuth Festival represented the fullest, and the only valid, realisation of the Wagnerian art work as conceived by its creator; that every last detail of the stage design, scenery, lighting, movement and placing of the performers, and the musical interpretation, as they had been carried out in Bayreuth, must form not just a guiding example for Wagner performances in other theatres, but a law that must be observed to the letter. However, the concept that pervades the entire history of theatre – that no theatrical interpretation is definitive, and that, although the same old masterpieces and the same roles are performed again and again, the theatre continually develops and adapts itself to the changing times – proved more powerful than this myth of the ‘Bayreuth tradition’ disseminated by its world-renowned guardians Cosima Wagner and her propaganda staff. 53

In the book Cosima Wagner und Houston Stewart Chamberlain im Briefwechsel,50 we gain excellent insight into Cosima Wagner’s thinking during this first serious crisis at the Bayreuth Festival. In the letters of 1888–96 the question of renewing the Bayreuth Wagner productions crops up repeatedly like some ghastly apparition. At the centre of the argument were the ideas for stage reform put forward by the French-Swiss designer Adolphe Appia – of pioneering significance and thus completely unrecognised at the time – which Cosima Wagner vehemently rejected. For she was intelligent enough to recognise that were Appia’s reforming ideas to be developed in Wagner’s work and put into practice, it would have spelt the end of the ossified and antiquated ‘Bayreuth tradition’. Yet since the monopoly of Bayreuth as the world’s premier Wagner stage depended entirely on preserving this ‘Bayreuth tradition’, it could only be maintained by spurious means: through opposing all attempts by other theatres to develop a new style of Wagner performance. This explains Cosima Wagner’s great interest in all the key appointments at European opera houses, on which she attempted wherever possible to exert her influence by preventing the candidacy of individuals who could endanger the Bayreuth monopoly. She knew all about the efforts of the Vienna Hoftheater authorities to find a suitable Kapellmeister for the Hofoper and eventual successor to director Wilhelm Jahn, whose duties were severely restricted by an eye complaint, because both Ernst Schuch, musical director of the Dresden Opera, and Felix Mottl, director of the opera house in Karlsruhe, were competing for the post with her special approval. A native of Vienna, Mottl had directed the Bayreuth Festival as principal conductor with great success in 1886, and had belonged to the closest circle of friends centring on the Wahnfried house ever since. Although in principle he would have been acceptable to the Hoftheater authorities, his candidacy was nevertheless dropped because, when asked for confidential advice by the management [Generalintendanz], Eduard Hanslick, music critic of the Neue freie Presse and avid Wagner opponent, brought all his influence to bear against the candidacy of an artist so closely associated with Bayreuth. Cosima Wagner knew very well that in addition to Mottl and Schuch, Mahler was considered a front-runner for the Vienna post. Therefore, in the belief that selection of her candidate Mottl was still possible, she generated anti-Mahler feeling through her many contacts amongst the highest authorities at the Vienna Hoftheater in order to make his already unlikely appointment an impossibility from the outset. As a consequence of the failure of her machinations and the appointment of Mahler to the post, 54

the position of Bayreuth’s official representative in Vienna, Hans Richter, was also severely jeopardised, and the Vienna Hofoper, one of the most outstanding and richly endowed theatres in Europe, became disconnected from the Bayreuth hierarchy. These were the preconditions for the fundamental reform of every aspect of musical theatre carried out by Mahler in his ten years as director of the Vienna Hofoper, through which he inaugurated a new phase in European operatic performance. The reform carried out by Mahler at the Vienna Opera was of the utmost importance for the history of theatre, music and culture. It occurred at the moment when the whole of European musical life was completely under the influence of Wagnerian music drama, and when the Bayreuth hierarchy led by Cosima Wagner and her propaganda team of racial theorists such as Schemann and Chamberlain not only subscribed ideologically to the Pan-German League (founded in 1891) but had also entered into a kind of fighting alliance with it for propaganda purposes. This meant that in her struggle to maintain the Bayreuth Festival’s monopoly, Cosima Wagner had at her disposal not merely the considerable party support of the Bayreuth-led Wagner societies but also the entire machinery of the Pan-German League, representative of the extreme right wing of German imperialism. These connections safeguarded Bayreuth’s far-reaching influence on the Austrian affiliates of the Pan-Germans – the greatGermans and the Schönerer movement – which of course acted as agents of German imperialism in Austria. The decade 1897–1907 was the period in which Mahler directed the Vienna Opera and wrote his Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Symphonies as well as the Kindertotenlieder cycle and the five Rückertlieder. This not only was a highpoint in Mahler’s life and in the centuries-long history of the Vienna Opera, but it also marked a decisive turning point in the history of European operatic performance. Mahler’s opera reform 55

Hitler at Wahnfried with Wolfgang, Winifred and Wieland Wagner.

in Vienna involved an unprecedented enhancement and refinement in the presentation of poetry and music, and their organic interaction. It meant the release of the opera stage from the fetters of the naturalistic style of historical portrayal – as adopted by Wagner from the Meininger stagings in his first productions at Bayreuth – and the application to the opera stage of impressionist principles drawn from the spirit of music. Thus Mahler’s operatic reform in Vienna proceeded in irreconcilable opposition to the ‘Bayreuth tradition’ that had already become obsolete and fossilised fifteen years after Wagner’s death, and whose preservation could no longer be justified on artistic grounds. As Mahler succeeded in developing a style of Wagner production far surpassing that of Bayreuth, so this opposition accordingly intensified into an ideological conflict of cultures played out in the artistic arena and directed by Cosima Wagner and her Bayreuth circle against Mahler’s great operatic reforms in Vienna. It was a cultural conflict directed from Bayreuth with all manner of political intrigue towards Mahler’s directorship of the Vienna Hofoper, and its aim was the systematic impeding and discrediting of his operatic activities. Originally arising from questions of principle in relation to Wagner performance, the ideological opposition between Mahler and Bayreuth extended far beyond this important sphere of activity during the course of the cultural conflict. For the way in which Mahler the conductor and stage-manager began with the music, embracing its meaning and changing moods as the integrative component of operatic scenes, historically signalled the supplanting of naturalistic styles of staging with impressionist principles. Every one of Mahler’s great Vienna productions thus inevitably unmasked the ‘Bayreuth tradition’, hitherto tyrannically imposed on all other theatres. And it was of profound historical importance that Mahler’s opera reform in Vienna, having shaken the despotism of the Bayreuth Wagner monopoly to its roots, not only ushered in a new phase in Wagner performance but also resulted in a renaissance of the works of Mozart and Gluck. By returning these classical masterpieces to contemporary awareness with all their original purity and universal greatness that had been obscured by the wave of nineteenth-century romanticism, Mahler helped to instigate a change in operatic style modelled, in effect, on his Mozart renaissance. This stylistic change involved a reconnection with the great eighteenth-century classical operatic tradition, its revival and its development beyond the naturalism of romanticism’s symphonic music drama into the realms of a new classicism, proclaimed by Ferruccio Busoni in his Entwurf einer neuen Aesthetik der Tonkunst as the worthy goal of future development.51 Even more immediate, though, was the effect that 56

Mahler’s reforms in Vienna had on the work of the greatest opera librettist of the day, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and thus on the dramatic musical compositions of Richard Strauss. This is the glowing tribute to Mahler’s operatic activities in Vienna that Hofmannsthal published in 1910 on the composer’s fiftieth birthday: Where there is spirit, there is activity. Wherever it alights, it comes into conflict with matter; indolence, partial understanding, misunderstanding set themselves against it, but it overcomes them and the air surrounding such a struggle is surely what is interesting: nothing else need be involved. A chaotic, truly heterogeneous whole is formed rhythmically, if convulsively; the inimical or obtuse elements interact and counteract with each other in ways scarcely to be expected, and delighted lover of the arts along with amazed and appalled philistine become aware that out of a multitude of dead ingredients something living can be produced, though of course only through the marvel of a creative spirit. Such a spectacle was Gustav Mahler’s directorship of the Vienna Opera.52 Thus Mahler’s great reforms at the Vienna Opera became a source of inspiration for the young Austrian poet Hofmannsthal, who saw it as his life’s task to revive and continue the great eighteenth-century Viennese operatic tradition. Conscious of this mission, Hofmannsthal became an opera librettist, joining with Richard Strauss, the archetypal dramatic composer of the epoch, in a long-lasting collaboration. Mahler’s Vienna opera reform and Hoffmansthal’s opera texts were manifestations of a particular kind of Austrianism that emerged as a spiritual movement in the European scene at the turn of the century. This Austrianism was the final upsurge of an Austrian cultural will on the soil of the crumbling Habsburg empire, at a time when German imperialism was striving for world domination even in the cultural arena and directly threatening the national cultures of all European peoples. Just as Mahler could accomplish his opera reforms only by fighting against the despotism of the Bayreuth Wagner monopoly, so also Hofmannsthal’s path as opera librettist, which led him to revive the great eighteenth-century Viennese operatic tradition, was allied with the struggle to overcome the Wagnerian kind of symphonic music drama. In fact there can be no doubt that the Austrian theatrical elements in Hofmannsthal’s librettos engendered a new attitude towards drama in Richard Strauss: from the world of Wagnerian symphonic music drama where he had begun, he was able to find the path to a new world of musically and scenically inte57

grated operatic forms – a change of style that gave the whole development of twentieth-century post-romantic opera its identity.

So we now come to the main problem surrounding the historical understanding of the life and work of Gustav Mahler. The alluring phenomenon of Mahler the director of the Vienna Opera at the height of his fame and power managed to find its way into the apologist literature, but there was neither recognition nor historical explanation of the true nature of the struggles Mahler had to endure as conductor and opera reformer. Therefore the historical understanding of Mahler the composer and his creative work was also suspect. Earlier authors, at least those writing in German, unconsciously allowed the radiant light in which the world-renowned conductor and opera director was seen by most of his contemporaries to reflect on the phenomenon of Mahler himself and his work as a composer of songs and symphonies. And so Mahler’s musical output was seen almost exclusively from the angle of representation, despite the fact that the representative element was only one part of his nature. Moreover, the discussion of Mahler’s music wore itself out in endless debates about whether a programme underpinned his symphonies or whether they were absolute music.53 And even if one made a judgement either way, a further objection was raised that would not be silenced for many years after Mahler’s death: that he lacked ‘originality of invention’. What was not understood was the deep inner connection between Mahler’s life and creativity: that it was one and the same force that made devastating inroads into this life and, from his youth until his all-too-early death at 51,54 cruelly threatened everything that gave meaning and substance to his musical being. It was Gustav Mahler’s misfortune to have been born at a time of great Teutomania and German imperialism whose political and cultural impact on the multi-national Habsburg empire weighed heavily on his native Slav homeland. Since the great struggles for freedom in 1848, the uncertain fate of the historical Bohemian and Moravian territories – Gustav Mahler’s native land – had been determined by two significant and decisive factors: the relationship of the Czechs to the Austrians and the relationship of Austria to Germany. The life of every person born in the Bohemian-Moravian territory was bound up with the questions and problems resulting from this. 58

Here across the heart of Europe stretched the political battleground on which the conflicts determining the fate of the Habsburg empire and its constituent nations were played out, and, what is more, the fate of Germany and that of the entire continent. It was in this Bohemian-Moravian arena that oppositions flared up between the progressive, constructive nationalism of a Czech people striving for freedom and equality of rights and fighting for autonomy, and the reactionary, destructive nationalism of a German-speaking minority whose struggle for power was chiefly reliant on the greater numbers of Germans in the empire, and who thus saw the absorption of Austria within Germany as the ideal solution to all their political problems. These kinds of great-German tendencies also existed for a time outside Bohemia and Moravia among the Germans in Austria, although the overwhelming majority of them never seriously contemplated annexation to Germany because their fear of Prussian domination was at least as strong as their opposition to equal rights for the Slav nations. Within the Austrian bourgeoisie the real supporter of the idea of annexation was therefore Schönerer’s extremist German-national party, its counterpart in the Reich being the Pan-German League, the extreme right wing of German imperialism. And one of the most important areas of support for the Schönerer party (an ideological forerunner of National Socialism) was the borderland between Bohemia and Germany: the Sudetenland. This brief outline of the national antagonisms in the BohemianMoravian territory (which continually worsened during the first thirty 59

North German Confederation, South German States and AustroHungary, 1867.

years of Mahler’s life) can of course convey only a small part of the complex problems surrounding the age-old, unpredictable relationships arising out of the gradual intermingling of Czechs and Germans. These relationships are nevertheless of supreme importance for understanding Mahler and his life’s work because, through the combined efforts and mutual influence of the noblest geniuses of the two peoples, they found their comprehensive expression and reflection in the realm of music. Long before the national conflicts had become so pronounced that the notion of the ‘Bohemian’ gradually lost its exalted meaning, the ‘workaday Bohemian musician’ [böhmische Musikant] had made his contribution to the formation of the Viennese classical style native to Austria, and was thus instrumental in creating the universal values of Western music. Mozart’s fondness for Prague, the city of music, and his close friendship with a string of Bohemian musicians are obvious examples of this interrelation. But even in the nineteenth century the interaction of the two peoples continued with the great renaissance of Czech music centring on the two masters Smetana and Dvorˇák. Smetana and Liszt enjoyed a close friendship, and this led to a distinct period of development for the founder of Czech national musical culture. The friendship between Brahms and Dvorˇák proved no less significant, demonstrating how artificial and deadening were the dividing lines between the two peoples that the great-German chauvinists endeavoured to deepen through their anti-Slav claims to power. Brahms not only cleared the path for Dvorˇák into the international music world by enthusiastically recommending him to his publisher Simrock, reading the proofs of his young friend because he was stimulated by the power of Dvorˇák’s melodic invention, but he also tried for years to persuade him to exchange his post in Prague for that of Professor at the Vienna Conservatoire as a counterweight to Bruckner’s presence as a teacher there. Although Smetana therefore went through a ‘Lisztian period’ in his development and like every musician of the time had to come to terms mentally with his experience of Wagner, he travelled entirely his own path as the creator of Czech national opera and ultimately as instrumental and vocal composer, separated by a gulf from the world of Wagner. Similarly, despite strong personal ties and many shared artistic views, through their music Dvorˇák and Brahms appeared to be two sharply etched individuals with completely different physiognomies. Despite this, even Smetana was attacked in his homeland for being a ‘Wagnerian’, and Dvorˇ ák was long criticised for his dependence on Brahms. Given these various musical interrelations and the indisputable existence of an Austrian musical landscape of universal significance whose constituent Slav element played 60

an important role, it would be a grave mistake both to draw conclusions about the rights of a ‘great-Austrian territory’ to exist, and to deny the presence of an independent Czech national music culture, which has gained world recognition far beyond the confines of its BohemianMoravian homeland. During Mahler’s youth, all this – a vivid present-day life of scarcely more than local significance – was still in such a state of flux, and people’s field of vision so narrowed by national conflict, that none of the Germanspeaking writers realised the quite distinct role also played by Mahler, the bard of Slav folksongs and dances, within the Czech musical culture of his Bohemian-Moravian homeland. Gustav Mahler’s life therefore cannot be understood in a historical context, the essence and meaning of his music cannot be historically evaluated, unless justice is done to the Slav elements of his nature. The child born in a small Czech village absorbing from earliest youth the folksongs and dances of the land in all their original purity; the boy who spent his schooldays in a 61

The German Empire, 1874. Appleton’s Hand Atlas of Modern Geography, New York, 1874.

provincial Moravian town until he went to the Austrian capital and entered the Vienna Conservatoire; the young conductor who directed his first opera in the modest theatre at Olmütz; the mature artist who went to the German theatre in Prague, a Prague whose national disputes between Czechs and Germans had a profound effect on the musical and theatrical life of the Moldavian city; the man who later held leading positions in Hungary and, for many years, in Germany until finally he crowned his career with his immortal activities at the Vienna Opera: all this was intimately bound up with the distinctive national and cultural problems of the BohemianMoravian lands, with the Austrian musical landscape and with the inner dynamic of events leading time and again to the rise of the great-German chauvinist movement and preventing harmony between Austrians and Czechs. If escalation of the great-German idea in Mahler’s earliest childhood years was defined by the struggle between Austria and Prussia over predominance in Germany, then these tendencies gained new significance and intensity after the formation of the empire and the Prussian military monarchy’s victorious war of conquest against France which set the seal on German imperialism. The life of Gustav Mahler was a unique struggle against the great cultural symbol of German imperialism, the Bayreuth Festival, whose powerful propaganda for the world domination of a German master state sought – in the same way that it inveigled an insanely power-hungry pan-Germanism – to engender a unique struggle against the smug composure and pleasureseeking of imperialist society. Mahler’s life history was the history of a musician who was equally at home in the Slav and Austrian musical landscapes, and in whose work the Slav element was a constituent part, thereby giving rise to a new universal value in the music of the western world.

In light of this it is clear why, until Guido Adler’s little study, no biographical work on Gustav Mahler could have appeared in the German literature on music history,55 and that it was primarily up to Czech musicology to examine Mahler’s position from the standpoint of Slav musical culture, as Zdene˘ k Nejedly´ did in several of his writings, notably his 1912 monograph Gustav Mahler (Prague, 1912). It is notable that this important contribution to Mahler literature was never translated into German,56 its very existence quite unknown among 62

German and Austrian specialists, and although it was mentioned in Alfred Einstein’s edition of Riemann’s Musiklexikon, strangely enough it appeared not in the Mahler bibliography but amongst Nejedlý’s writings.57 Only after the First World War did interest in Mahler’s music increase widely enough so that important essays were able to develop the understanding of his work. This new stage of Mahler research, which was still not biographical in nature, began in 1919 with the small study of a sixteenyear-old youth published by Hans Carl in Nuremberg, little known despite its remarkable content: Gustav Mahler. Eine Erkenntnis by Hans Ferdinand Redlich. This young Viennese musician had attempted for the first time to submit Mahler’s world-view to a thoroughgoing analysis, and in the course of this he described Mahler as diametrically opposed to Wagner, already pointedly referring to the so-called spiritual annexing technique of German musical historiography which sought to misrepresent Mahler as a Wagner epigone.58 Almost at the same time, however, Paul Bekker had risen to prominence with his study Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler59 which he followed up in 1920 [sic] with his monumental book Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien.60 In the excellent historical introduction to this work Mahler is described for the first time as the final link in the chain of a specifically Austrian development of the post-classical symphony, his work placed in the lineage of Schubert and Bruckner.61 The importance of Paul Bekker’s historical conception will be evaluated in detail in the second chapter of the present book, and so it will suffice merely to mention here that Bekker’s new thought processes were taken up and developed predominantly in the Bruckner literature, especially in the works of Ernst Kurth and Alfred Orel which appeared in 1925.62 1923 and 1924 saw the appearance of extremely important new additions to the Mahler literature. In 1923 the violinist Natalie Bauer-Lechner published the volume Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler with E. P. Tal in Vienna, which gives a chronological record of all her encounters and experiences with Mahler as well as a large number of his own comments. Bauer-Lechner, long-standing viola player in the Soldat-Röger string quartet, became acquainted with Mahler when he was a young music student at the Vienna Conservatory, and joined his most intimate circle of friends. It is obvious that she was extraordinarily devoted to Mahler. As a chronicler of her friendship with him she nevertheless developed a keen gift for observation, and her reminiscences contain a wealth of interesting material of inestimable importance for the understanding of Mahler’s personality and the biographical elucidation of his life and work as conductor and 63

opera director. In addition, Bauer-Lechner left us countless remarks and observations by Mahler on his own works (up to the Fourth Symphony or thereabouts) providing detailed insights into the most intimate aspects of his working practice as song composer and symphonist. After his marriage to Alma Maria Schindler in 1902 Mahler grew increasingly distant from the Viennese circle of friends of his youth, which included the aforementioned schoolteacher and archaeologist Friedrich Löhr, the lawyer Emil Freund, the poet and librarian of the Austrian Imperial Council Siegfried Lipiner, the physician Albert Spiegler and his wife Nina Spiegler, the brothers Heinrich Krzyzanowski (a Germanic scholar and writer) and Rudolf Krzyzanowski (musician and colleague of Mahler at the Conservatoire), Nina Hoffmann-Matscheko (the wife of the painter Joseph Hoffmann), and the famous opera singer Anna von Mildenburg, although certain people such as Löhr and Lipiner remained very important to him in later years. Nevertheless, Bauer-Lechner’s reminiscences are of value only as a source of information on Mahler’s youth and the years of his ascendancy. She breaks off at the point when the period of greatest maturity begins with the composition of the Rückertlieder and the Fifth Symphony. In addition, the circulation of her book was surprisingly limited because of the appearance in the following year of the first substantial collected volume of Mahler’s letters. This highly important primary source for Mahler research, entitled Gustav Mahler. Briefe (1879–1911),63 overshadowed all existing literature on the composer. To begin with, the great richness of Mahler’s life captured in these 492 pages could scarcely be taken in, especially since a large portion of important biographical material was contained only in condensed form in the 96 footnotes Löhr added to his letters from Mahler, which needed to be properly deciphered in order to understand them fully. It has already been suggested that the real foundations for a biography of Mahler lay here.64 It is understandable, then, that a true biography of Mahler could not have appeared even in the post-war years, despite the fact that his symphonies and songs had already earned their place in the musical life of several European countries. Instead of this, many excellent writers such as Mosco Carner, Georg Göhler, Carl Hagemann, Rudolf Mengelberg, Hans Mersmann, Fritz Egon Pamer, Hermann Scherchen, Erwin Stein, Fritz Stiedry, Egon Wellesz and so on occupied themselves with rigorous scholarly analysis of technical aspects of Mahler’s music. But the presence of Mahler himself, the deep interconnections between life and work and their 64

effect in time and place remained in darkness, fading more and more into the mists of transfiguring legend, tendentious falsification and calumny.

The work of a single author that remains unique in the entire literature must be given particular emphasis in this survey because, completed shortly after Mahler’s death in 1911 and dedicated to his memory, it was not only the first but also the greatest and most important monument raised to Gustav Mahler – a monument that even the most gifted sculptor could scarcely have fashioned more boldly and strikingly from stone: Arnold Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre.65 The distinguished nature of the friendship between Mahler and Schoenberg lay in the fact that in a time of general ethical decline, human and moral relations prevailed in a deeply affecting way between two composers who initially grew from the same soil but increasingly went separate ways in their works as they battled from their respective vantage points through the problems of an entire generation. The friendship between Mahler and Schoenberg bridged the deep chasm opening up between these two generations of composers whose works characterised the first phases of a great transformation in twentieth-century musical style, reflecting both the intense struggle between the forces of disintegration and integration, and the final dissolution of the confines of tonality under the impress of unfettered linear energies. While Schoenberg, as a completely unknown young musician, was compelled to cultivate Mahler’s friendship for his physical well-being, emboldened by his incisive and capacious intellect and the genius of his earliest masterpieces – the word ‘cultivate’ [erwerben] is employed here in its truest sense of making the most strenuous efforts in spiritual and artistic work – it was not as if his friendship with Mahler was built on any purely emotional preconceptions, since this might have branded Schoenberg’s statements in Harmonielehre as more or less spurious or arbitrary. On the contrary, if Schoenberg could justifiably say of his own work: ‘I rid my composition students of a bad aesthetic and taught them instead a good lesson in craftsmanship’,66 then he therefore espoused an unprejudiced view of musical phenomena that recognised them for what they are rather than what they should be. In the process of explaining these musical phenomena and aspects of their development in Harmonielehre, Schoenberg sheds light on the figure of Mahler and his music on nine 65

occasions. For example, in the introduction to the chapter ‘The Minor Mode’ [‘Die Molltonart’], where the process by which the seven church modes were refined into the two main types of major and minor scales is examined in detail and put forward as the foundation for the dissolution of tonality, he writes: The decline of the church modes is that necessary process of decay from which sprouts the new life of the major and minor. And even if our tonality is dissolving, it already contains within it the germ of the next artistic phenomenon. Nothing is definitive in culture; everything is only preparation for a higher stage of development, for a future which at the moment can only be imagined, conjectured. Evolution is not finished, the peak has not been crossed. It is only beginning, and the peak will come only, or perhaps never, because it will always be surpassed. ‘There goes the last wave’, Gustav Mahler said once – pointing to a river – to Brahms, as the latter in a fit of pessimism spoke of a high point of music that he held to be the last.67 A consequence of Schoenberg’s revolutionary definition of tonality as ‘One of the advantageous means of producing musical form’ (as opposed to the traditional conception of ‘the principle of tonality as … law’)68 was his broader proposition that the laws of nature revealed in the work of genius may be nothing less than the laws of future humanity. This is why in the chapter ‘The Whole-tone Scale and Related Five and Six-part Chords’ he established the following principle: What I said before about tonality is not by any means to be interpreted as criticism of a masterwork. In the works of Mahler and Strauss, for example, I find that tonality is still quite homogeneous with the character of their thematic material. It is important to me, therefore, to say here that I consider Mahler’s work immortal and that I rank it beside that of the great masters. Aside from that, however, theoretic considerations like these could not bring me to doubt the power I felt. And at different places in this book I have shown that the artist has something to say other than his technique; and what he says to me is above all this Something Other. I have always first understood [a work] this way, not analysing until later. My arguments were meant to refute the belief in the necessity of tonality, but not the belief in the power of a work of art whose author believes in tonality. What a composer believes in theoretically he may indeed express in the external aspects of his work. With luck, only in the external. But internally, 66

where the instincts take over, all theory will with luck fail, and there he will express something better than his theory and mine.69 It will therefore be the task of this biography to highlight the far-reaching historical significance of the Mahler–Schoenberg relationship and its effects on Viennese musical culture, which attained a new universality in the twentieth century through Schoenberg and his school.

In relation to this, the curious prejudices that Mahler’s music still encounters in the countries of western Europe – especially France and England – must also be remembered, along with the completely undisguised contempt with which the literature in English treated the composer for many years. At a time when western Europe was totally intoxicated by the new ethereal sounds of Debussy and French impressionism, this antipathy can partly be explained by the fact that the polyphonic ‘loquaciousness’ [Beredsamkeit] of Mahler the symphonist – the result of a continual struggle for more profound musical expressiveness – was felt by French and English listeners of Mahler’s music to be alien and disturbing. Moreover, during the course of these developments, the thinking and logic of symphonic construction increasingly retreated in favour of a more static succession of neurotic and extremely rarefied contrasting impressions, which was more appropriate to the form of the suite than to that of the symphony. Nevertheless there is every sign that in future Mahler’s symphonies will be much more widely appreciated in English musical life than before, since only a few of them have so far been presented to the English public in rare and not always adequate performances, some of his work being completely unknown there.70

For in the interim the musical life of liberated Europe will have re-evaluated those values previously acknowledged without question. Their current significance will be better understood by the world in the aftermath of the fascist cultural crisis with its ‘supervision’ [Gleichschaltung] of German musical life after Hitler’s seizure of power, resulting in the works of Mahler 67

and several other great composers being officially declared ‘DEGENERATE’ [‘ENTARTET’]71 by the National-Socialist authorities, and banished from the musical life of Germany partly because of their non-Aryan origins and partly because of the progressive nature of the music. At the time only a select few artists – chief among them Arturo Toscanini, the violinist Adolf Busch and the cellist Pablo Casals – immediately recognised the grave significance of these measures, and protested in word and deed against the cultural barbarism of National-Socialist rulers. These measures formed part of a large-scale and cunningly contrived system instituted in order to annex all the riches of long-renowned German music culture and to incorporate them into the arsenal of National-Socialist propaganda weaponry. It will be the task of future socio-musicological research to examine the effects that the Hitler regime was able to achieve in home and foreign politics through the use of music as a weapon of National-Socialist propaganda.72 In Mahler’s case, a particular aspect of National-Socialist music propaganda gained special significance. This was the evidence, procured through pseudo-scientific means, that until the National Socialists seized power in Germany the musical life of European nations had fallen increasingly under the influence of a coherent Jewish strategy at work in the background, until finally after 1918 not just German musical life but that of the whole world was under Jewish control. The real aim of Jewish domination in the field of music, so it was claimed, was to corrupt to the innermost core of its being the music of the various host nations in which they seemed outwardly to have assimilated themselves. According to National-Socialist musicology, this corrupting process was carried out in three stages, the third of which represented it at its most extreme. The central figure in this final stage of development was Gustav Mahler, presented as one of the most dangerous manifestations of Judaism: a fanatic, Rabbinical type of Eastern Jew endowed with the magical sorcery of the pettifogging Talmudist, who, in the guise of a Faustian God-seeker, seemed to struggle to comprehend the deepest mysteries of the German soul. A distinctive National-Socialist Mahler literature thus emerged in the Third Reich that was little known outside Germany because, as previously mentioned, interest in Mahler’s music in western Europe, in France and England, and also in America, was relatively limited. Apart from Mahler’s native land, [the former] Czechoslovakia and Austria, his music was cultivated mainly in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, the republic of Spain (through the initiative of Casals) and the Soviet Union. Reference should again be made to the most important precursor to literature emerging from 68

the Third Reich, the aforementioned Cosima Wagner und Houston Stewart Chamberlain im Briefwechsel, which vastly expands our knowledge of the problematic relationships between Mahler and Bayreuth. The correspondence between Wagner’s widow and her subsequent son-in-law, author of the notorious Grundlagen des 19. Jahrhunderts, clearly shows the degree of human depravity that could issue from the ideological forerunners of Hitlerite fascism in a belletristic exchange of ideas.

After the expulsion of Mahler’s music from the Third Reich – which coincided with the exile of the two greatest Mahler conductors in Europe, Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer – the promotion of his work, though reduced in quantity, lost none of its qualitative and creative significance. For Walter once again went to live in Vienna where he had originally worked under Mahler, and, never having lost touch with the city of music, his adopted artistic home, he placed his consummate artistic maturity in the service of Mahler’s works from the moment of his return. Performances of Mahler symphonies under his baton became symbolic of Austrian and Viennese musical culture. Not only was it of great historical importance, but also – in the interests of the organic development of an authentic Mahler tradition – it was of great future significance that in the last years before the occupation of Austria by Hitler’s troops in March 1938 exemplary recordings of two of Mahler’s works (the Ninth Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde) were made by Walter and the Vienna Philharmonic for His Master’s Voice, thus preserving them for posterity.73 (See the discography at the end of Volume 2.)74 In 1936 Walter finally published his long-awaited book Gustav Mahler.75 On first reading, many who had expected to find the most intimate, definitive revelations of Mahler’s personality and work were disappointed. Like several previous authors, Walter begins by expressly stipulating that he is not trying to write a biography, consciously excluding all details of Mahler’s 69

Mahler with Bruno Walter, Prague 1908.

Rodin’s bust of Mahler.

life and work outside his personal experience of the composer. The book is divided into two parts: ‘Recollection’ and ‘Reflection’. It begins like a book of memoirs. At first one thinks nothing new is to be learned from these pages, but the more one reads the more one feels curiously enriched. Professional critics might complain that it is uncritical, that it does not contain a single musical example, that is says nothing concrete about Mahler’s structural approach, instrumentation or other technical details such as one might expect from one of the greatest of Mahler interpreters. But if one lays the book aside for a while and reads it afresh, one is astonished by the unpretentious simplicity with which it expresses the most profound new things and reveals surprising traits of Mahler the man and musician that had escaped the notice of even the most articulate of previous harbingers and advocates. The book is like a piece of music. One must go through it afresh, experience it inwardly again and again, for then it sounds new and beautiful and offers many the opportunity of discovering something novel and unexpected from an already familiar text, in the same way that one can suddenly begin to hear a passage of a time-honoured piece of music in a ‘new’ way.

With Austria’s occupation by Nazi troops in March 1938 Mahler’s music lost its most important home, Vienna. Rodin’s bust of Mahler donated as a gift by his widow and placed in the foyer of the Vienna State Opera was removed, and the street called after Mahler was re-named ‘Meistersingerstrasse’. The large sum of money given by friends and admirers from many countries for the erection of a monument to Mahler in Vienna was confiscated by the National-Socialist authorities. Aware that Mahler’s memory was being systematically eradicated in Vienna, the city of his enduring legacy, his widow Alma Mahler, then the wife of the poet Franz Werfel, was prompted to publish in her lifetime memoirs and numerous unknown letters of Mahler that she originally intended to make public only after her death. As mentioned above, the book containing this precious documentary material and representing the second principal source of Mahler research appeared in 1940 with Allert de Lange in Amsterdam shortly before the invasion of Holland by German troops. Entitled Gustav Mahler. Erinnerungen und Briefe, only 70

very few copies of this book, one of the most impressive exposés of Mahler’s character, made their way abroad. The author is indebted to Mahler’s daughter, Anna [Fistoulari-] Mahler, for enabling him to study her mother’s book by lending him her personal copy. What distinguishes this book from all others and renders it a cultural document of unique importance is the immediacy with which Mahler’s voice speaks to us from its pages. The earlier collection of correspondence published in 1924 also contained valuable original letters that gave a vivid reflection of Mahler’s nature. But they were letters addressed to adversaries, friends, superiors, subordinates, professional colleagues and musicologists, all of whom were seeking information on his works, as well as to people looking to him for advice and guidance. He answered them sincerely, as was his nature, but nevertheless with a certain restraint. In almost all the letters in the 1924 volume – with the exception of some youthful ones to Friedrich Löhr – Mahler is obliged to adopt a particular ‘attitude’ towards the addressee in order to reveal only certain aspects of his character. Not so in the 1940 collection which consists almost exclusively of highly personal letters to his wife Alma. Alma Mahler was Mahler’s second self, the person in whom he recreated for himself the image of his mother, captured musically in the slow movement of his Fourth Symphony. With the exception of some early letters dating from before and during their engagement, there is no distance, no consciously assumed stance in those written to his wife in which he woos her and tries to win her over by any means possible. They do not have the intellectual intensity of those addressed to his close childhood friend, the poet Siegfried Lipiner, but are mostly quite spontaneous, coming from an inner compulsion. In these letters to his wife Mahler is entirely himself, his words illuminating the innermost secrets of his soul with complete freedom. So for the first time a clear picture emerges of Mahler’s unusually complex relationship with Richard Strauss, whom he understood more perceptively than anyone else and whose fate he had already prophesied in 1902: ‘The time will come when the chaff shall be winnowed from the grain – and my day will be when his is ended’.76 71

Alma Mahler with her two daughters, Maria and Anna.

Besides this relationship with Strauss – which is described in many letters and in an excerpt from the diary of Ida Dehmel, wife of the poet Richard Dehmel – full justice is also done in the 1940 collection to his friendship with Schoenberg, several of whose letters are included. There is also a letter from Busoni, one of the composers whose works Mahler performed in America. (More precise details about the Mahler–Busoni relation can be gleaned, however, from Busoni’s letters to his wife, which have also been published in an English edition.77) It remains for a few words to be said about Alma Mahler’s reminiscences, which precede the actual collection of letters and form the first part of the book. The distinguished English critic Richard Capell discussed these memoirs in a detailed review in Music & Letters, the brusque language of which revealed an unmistakeable animosity towards Mahler.78 If Capell’s intention in doing this was to highlight the thoroughly subjective nature of the memoirs, then he was doubtless correct. In his favour it should be noted that the review was published during the period of ‘appeasement’ in the last months before the outbreak of the Second World War, when at least one sector of the English population was trying at every opportunity not to place undue strain on Anglo-German relations.79 A positive attitude towards Alma Mahler’s memoirs on the part of such an eminent writer as Capell, chief music critic of the Daily Telegraph at the time, would doubtless have had political significance. For in typically uncompromising and frank fashion bordering on the reckless, Alma paints an unadorned picture of Richard Strauss’s marriage and makes it perfectly clear how he degraded himself into becoming a conspicuous front [Aushängeschild] for the musical culture of the Third Reich.80 Certainly no one could have argued with Capell’s repudiation of Alma Mahler’s revelations about the Strauss’s married life if it had been a purely private matter – personal animosity between the wives of two composers who themselves had developed a decidedly odd friendship. Having spent more than twenty years studying the psychological complexity of Strauss’s personality and music, on which I have published several papers (the latest being ‘Stefan Zweig as Librettist and Richard Strauss’81) I believe I can state that the entirely accurate portrayal of Strauss’s relationship with his wife Pauline given by Alma Mahler and in Ida Dehmel’s diary cannot be regarded as a purely private matter as far as musicological research is concerned. It was precisely the pathological nature of this marital relationship from which sprang Pauline Strauss-de Ahna’s tremendous influence on her husband’s creativity. One might characterise this influence as positive and stimulating, and 72

at the same time as hugely destructive and corrupting. None of Strauss’s closest creative collaborators could work with the great composer without confronting his wife’s influence and in some way neutralising it. Thus, for example, the highly significant stylistic change in Strauss’s dramatic works after Elektra, influenced by the great Austrian poet Hofmannsthal and resulting in the composer’s rejection of a Wagnerian type of symphonic music drama, arose from Hofmannsthal’s hidden struggle with Pauline Strauss’s manoeuvring of her husband against him and his creative ideas, a struggle fought with unequal means on the battlefield of Strauss’s soul. It was similar with Strauss’s other librettists, his friend the poet Stefan Zweig and the former principal stage manager of the Vienna State Opera, Lothar Wallerstein, with whom he produced a new version of Mozart’s Idomeneo and a freshly conceived staging of his and Hofmannsthal’s opera Die ägyptische Helena. However, these confrontations did not have nearly so profound an effect on Strauss’s creative processes as did his longstanding collaboration with Hofmannsthal, which is comparable in its musico-historical significance only with those between Raniero Calzabigi and Gluck or between Lully and Racine or Quinault. This is a rare case of personalities such as Richard and Pauline Strauss (and one should not leave a truly outstanding woman of such high intellect as Alma Mahler out of account here) already having passed into history in their own lifetimes. Despite Alma’s unquestionable attempt to be entirely truthful, her memoirs, though for the most part written in a masterly fashion, nevertheless bear the stamp of subjectivity. One must bear in mind that Gustav Mahler was already in his 41st year when he met the young Alma Maria Schindler, his future wife. There was a generational difference between her friends and those of Mahler whom he had known from his earliest youth. Among them were some undeniably very powerful personalities such as Siegfried Lipiner, Anna von Mildenburg, Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Albert Spiegler and his wife Nina. These people, attached to Mahler with almost fanatical devotion, primarily saw Alma as a rival who had had the undeserved good fortune of Mahler’s love falling in her lap. For her own part, Alma clearly described in her memoirs the unpleasant tension that existed between her and Mahler’s old circle of friends. This was obviously not a matter of onesided antipathy. Something else happened too: through Alma, daughter of the landscape artist Emil Schindler, Mahler was introduced into the house of her step-father, the painter Carl Moll, and thus made his first contact with the world of the visual arts. There he met a host of well-known artists from 73

the Secessionist circle, such as Gustav Klimt, Max Klinger, Kolo Moser and ultimately Alfred Roller, later his scene designer and close collaborator in his operatic reforms in Vienna. Despite Mahler’s best musical efforts and detailed directing, these reforms would have remained incomplete had his new way of constructing operatic scenes not been complemented by appropriate stage décor devised by an artist of Roller’s importance who immersed himself in Mahler’s intentions with such complete understanding. Mahler’s encounter with Alma and her step-parents, the Molls,82 was also of crucial importance for his operatic work. Suddenly he was plunged into the new world of visual art, and this alienated him even further from his old circle of friends. Hence Anna von Mildenburg’s initial opposition to Roller’s stage designs at the Vienna Opera.83 Alma is not always entirely fair to Mahler’s old friends in her memoirs, and as a result some things appear in a distorted light. For example, the part played by the singer von Mildenburg and her teacher Rosa Papier in Mahler’s appointment to the Vienna Hofoper was greater than Alma was willing to admit. It especially annoyed her that Mahler remained very much attached to Lipiner and greatly interested in his poetic works:84 Lipiner’s last work was ‘Der Musiker spricht’, an ode written and dedicated to Mahler on his 50th birthday in 1910.85 This was a year before Mahler’s death, and so there can hardly have been a serious estrangement between the two lifelong friends, despite several indications that not only Mahler’s marriage but also certain ideological disagreements muddied the friendship between Mahler and the Lipiner circle. There are also some discrepancies between Alma’s memoirs and her previously published statements, for example on the question of Mahler’s dispute with the ladies’ committee of his American orchestra. According to an article in the New York Sun of 20 May 1911, Alma told an interviewer in Paris, where Mahler lay fatally ill in a sanatorium after his final return from America, that her husband’s physical collapse had been the result of the appalling aggravation to which he had been subjected in his dispute with the orchestra committee, whereas no such accusations appear in her memoirs. There she just says that after a serious altercation with the committee, and especially with one Mrs Sheldon, ‘he came back to me trembling in every limb’. At the end of the next paragraph she says: ‘But the ladies were in the right’.86 Of course such small inconsistencies take nothing away from the huge importance that Alma’s Erinnerungen und Briefe has as a source of information on Mahler’s life history. In what follows I will attempt to reconstruct Mahler’s life and work in the context of his own time from all the material available to me here in 74

London. In order to help future Mahler research, precise sources of citations will be given. For practical reasons the material will be divided into two volumes. The first deals with the period from 1860 to 1897, and therefore extends to his appointment in Vienna, giving further details of this and the events leading up to it. The second volume is devoted to the examination of his opera reforms in Vienna, his activities in America and his works from the Fourth Symphony to the fragment of the Tenth Symphony he left behind.87 In order to demonstrate clearly the intimate connection between Mahler’s life and his work, individual compositions are described wherever possible in relation to the conditions of their genesis. It is self-evident that a measure of restraint will be needed here in order not to disrupt the biographical account too much. For this reason it seems to me necessary to devote a separate substantial chapter to the musical construction of the symphony, and this will be found at the end of the second volume. This is to be followed by the chapter ‘On the Interpretation of Mahler’s Symphonies’ in which an authentic record of the practical experiences of highly important Mahler conductors such as Walter, Klemperer and Scherchen will be presented. Each volume will end with a chronological table. I am fully aware that in future a number of currently inaccessible letters and documents of relevance to Mahler’s biography will become available, and that subsequent biographies will therefore contain better and more complete accounts of his life. The present biography was begun in the last months of the Second World War and the first volume finished in August 1945. No communication was possible between England and the continent at this time. I could not carry out new research in continental theatre archives and libraries, although much interesting and informative material is probably still to be found in these places, providing it was not destroyed in air raids. Press reports on Mahler’s performances of his own works should also be systematically collected, something that is not possible at the present time.88 The same applies to the literature on Mahler that appeared in the Third Reich, of which only a small portion available in the British Museum could be used as a basis for discussing the pseudo-scientific theories of the ‘degeneration of music’ relentlessly disseminated for many long years by National-Socialist music propaganda in a variety of forms – both as sociomusicological treatises, and cleverly disguised as ‘comparative musicology’. The chapter at the end of the second volume devoted to the discussion of theories of degeneracy in National-Socialist music propaganda should be considered only a first attempt in the new field of research opened up to 75

contemporary musicology by the dissolution of National-Socialist ideology. If, therefore, in light of all this the time for preparing and completing a biographical work such as this is not entirely propitious, all reticence and doubt is outweighed by the twin realisations that 1) following the publication in the last two decades of Mahler’s most important letters and several memoirs of his time, a reconstruction of his life containing all the important data and its historical and critical interpretation has now become more feasible than before, since we often lacked the necessary distance from people, institutions and events; and 2) this first attempt to present a historically and sociologically grounded account of Mahler’s life and work, and their effect in time and place, helps in writing the history of our own time, which is having to overcome the horrific interlude of fascist cultural pollution. London, August 1945. A. M.

Chapter 1

The Bohemian Homeland Kalischt – Iglau

M

ahler’s fellow countrymen, the Germans of Bohemia and Moravia, might have justifiably disputed with each other over which of these historic lands could lay claim to his birth and origin. For he was born in the unpretentious village of Kalischt on the Bohemian– Moravian border on 7 July 1860, the second child of Bernhard and Marie Mahler. However, in December of the same year the family moved from Kalischt, just inside Bohemia, to Iglau, the nearest larger town in Moravia, and it was here that he grew up and acquired his first, formative impressions. In an annotation to a letter of invitation from the young musician, Mahler’s childhood friend, Fritz Löhr, who visited him in his parents’ Iglau home in 1884, painted a lively picture of the Iglau landscape that found unmistakeable expression in Mahler’s music: So far as I can recall, he played less during this week that I spent with him in his parents’ house in Iglau. The main thing for me – something for which I cannot be too thankful – was getting to know the place where he grew up, the old parts of the town itself and the glorious countryside surrounding Iglau. There in the height of summer we would go for walks lasting half the day, wandering among flowery meadows, by abundant streams and pools, through the great woods, and to villages where the peasantry was in part Slav. And on Sunday there was an expedition to where authentic Bohemian musicians set lads and lasses dancing in the open air. Ah, there was dancing, there 77 77

The house in Kalischt, Bohemia, where Mahler was born.

was rhythm, causing heart and senses to vibrate as though intoxicated. There was the zest of life, and sorrow too, just as there was a profound gravity, all of it veiled by reserve, on the faces of the girls, their heads bowed towards their partners’ breast, their plump, almost naked limbs exposed by the high whirling of their many-layered bright petticoats, in an almost solemn, ritual encircling.1 But this Moravian landscape was filled not only with dance tunes and folk songs: Iglau was a garrison town. Trumpet signals could be heard blaring out from the barracks, and at nine in the evening the prolonged sounding of the retreat [Zapfenstreich] echoed from the walls. The troops would often move out with drums beating and trumpets sounding. The military marches of the old Austrian army had a very special sound. Their melodic richness and their rhythmic élan – one thinks of the famous Radetsky-March – had something irresistible about them. Alongside folksongs and dances, military signals and marches found their unmistakeable reflection in Mahler’s music, in the songs as well as the symphonies. They were the childhood memories of his sound-drenched Iglau home, transformed into art. Two remarkable women can be found among Mahler’s forbears. First his paternal grandmother, who made her way through life as a pedlar, still carting her bundle of linen on her back from house to house into her eighties. From her he inherited an unwavering willpower in the pursuit of an aim, and her fearlessness and lack of concern in dealing with officials and authorities, which went so far that one time when the old woman had been unjustly punished for infringing pedlar legislation she travelled to Vienna, complained about the penalty in an audience with Emperor Franz Josef and had it waived. By contrast, he inherited a highly sensitive appreciation of all the suffering of creation from his mother, a delicate woman who all but collapsed under the burden of life in an unhappy marriage. A native of Lucˇ enecˇ , she came from a more affluent family than that of Bernhard Mahler, the pedlar’s son, who ran a distillery in his home town of Kalischt. In the eyes of her close relatives, the marriage was a fully deserved ‘demotion’ since she suffered from a limp as a result of infant paralysis and therefore could lay no claim to a ‘better match’. So she married, with the unhappy love in her heart for a man, Bernhard Mahler, who wanted nothing to do with her and who saw her simply as a domestic worker and a birthing machine. In almost uninterrupted succession she gave birth to twelve children. Before Gustav, the eldest son, Isidor, was born on 22 March 1858, but he died in an accident as a small child. A year after Gustav came Ernst in 1861, who wasted away with hydrocardia and died at the age of thirteen on 78

13 April 1874. Gustav had been very fond of his ill-fated brother Ernst, and the awful experience of the boy’s illness and death most likely inspired him many decades later to compose the Kindertotenlieder. Mahler was to experience the death of one of his own children, but not until after he had composed these songs. The second child after Gustav was the sister Leopoldine, born on 18 May 1863, who was forced against her will into marrying a man called Quittner and died of a brain tumour in 1889, the very same year as her parents. After her birth the yield of children in the Mahler household stopped for four years until 6 October 1867, when a son Alois was born.2 He was mentally deficient and had attacks of megalomania that manifested themselves in almost pathological ways. According to Alma’s memoirs, he once dressed up as a mediaeval German mercenary and rode like this on an old hired nag through the streets of Iglau. When someone stopped him, he shouted: ‘You wait. I’ll ride past the castle in Vienna like this, and the Crown Prince will ask: “Who’s that fine young fellow on horseback?” He’ll summon me to his presence and I’ll get some wonderful post’.3 Alois, later changing his name to Louis because he thought it sounded ‘less Jewish’, subsequently developed into the black sheep of the family. He got into debt, forged bills and had to flee to America, where all trace of him was lost.4 It is a wonder that Nazi propaganda did not seize on the case of Alois, in order to expose Gustav Mahler as the brother of a criminal forger. After Alois came a girl called Justine (15 December 1868). She later married the violinist Arnold Rosé, leader of the Vienna Philharmonic and Vienna Opera orchestra, and over many years played an important part in Gustav Mahler’s life. She kept house for him while he was still unmarried, and after the death of their parents (Bernhard died on 18 February 1889 and Marie on 28 October of the same year5) she looked after the younger children. She had been brought up by her father with ruthless severity and was terribly suppressed by him. Once as a young girl she stuck candles all around the edge of her bed and lit them. Then she lay on her bed and convinced herself that she was dead. Justine Mahler-Rosé survived all other members of her family, dying in Nazi-occupied Vienna in 1938, shortly after which her husband emigrated to England. After Justine, Marie Mahler gave birth to a boy on 19 December 1869, who was called Arnold. The child died soon after birth. The next child, a boy called Friedrich, born on 23 April 1871, died on 15 December from scarlet fever at the age of eight months. On 22 April another boy, called Alfred, came into the world only to die thirteen months later on 6 May 1873. On 18 June of the same year Marie bore a son named Otto. He was a highly gifted musician like Gustav, who idolised him, but entirely undisci79

plined. After the death of their parents, when it fell to Gustav, still a young man, to support his unmarried siblings, he did all he could to give Otto a good education. He engaged tutors to coach him; he found quarters for him in the house of his childhood friend Löhr so that he could direct Otto’s studies. Everything was done to further his musical training. On several occasions he even procured posts for him as répétiteur at minor German theatres. All these efforts were nevertheless in vain. Otto was unable to stay the course anywhere, and in failing to do so rebelled against Gustav whose position he kept comparing with his own. Morose, arrogant and taciturn, he had something demonic about him. At the age of 23 he committed suicide. Before shooting himself he wrote on a scrap of paper that life no longer pleased him and that he was giving back his admission ticket. Marie Mahler’s eleventh child was a daughter called Emma (born on 19 October 1875), who later married the solo cellist Eduard Rosé in Weimar. The twelfth and last child, a boy named Konrad, was born on 17 April 1879 and died on 8 January 1881 from diphtheria. It was in this house where life and death followed one another like sunshine and rain that Gustav Mahler grew up. It is said that as a child he went through life in a dream, paying little attention to what was happening around him. So he neither heard the thundering cries of his father nor, of course, understood the sad fate of his mother as she suffered under the tyranny of her husband, an impulsive and strong-willed man who deceived her at every turn. Nevertheless, his mother’s pale face, filled with suffering, imprinted itself on his consciousness. Great suffering became for him synonymous with the noble and the good, so that in later years he still used to say about certain people he met: ‘that’s a beautiful, ruined face’. Mahler’s musical talents were apparent from early childhood. During a visit to his grandparents’ house, the four-year-old Gustav climbed up to the attic where he found an old piano. After several hours of searching for him throughout the house without success, they found him there sitting amongst the junk in front of the piano, strumming on it and singing. This dream-like absorption, accompanied by a complete lack of awareness of passing time, exhibited itself in the child in other, quite unusual ways. Alma reports the following incident in the preface to her collected volume of letters published in 1924: His father had taken the child Gustav for a walk in the woods. All at once he recalled something he had forgotten. He told the child to sit down on a log and wait until he came back. Then he went home. There, as usual, there was all the distraction, noise and tumult of family life. 80

Only hours later was the little boy missed. It was already twilight when the agitated father hurried back into the woods. There, just where he had left him, he found the child sitting quietly on the log, his eyes wide with dreamy contemplation, untouched by fear or doubt, even though he had been there for many hours before evening fell. There is something of the movingly heroic and, at the same time, of fairy-tale appealingness in this image of the solitary child patiently waiting in the dark woods. This is the child that Gustav Mahler always remained at heart. The cloud of dreamy thoughtfulness that wrapped him in solitude never quite left him, whether he was the young conductor in Olmütz, the all-powerful operatic director in Vienna or the celebrated master in New York.6 Time and again the thoughts and recollections in Mahler’s letters revolve around images of the Bohemian-Moravian landscape of his home. The atmosphere of these images chimed in his imagination with the innermost moods of his soul from where musical inspiration rose like the dawning of a hovering dreamscape; or, in a moment of sudden illumination, burst forth like an igniting spark. Thus as a nineteen-year-old who five years before lost his beloved brother Ernst and was now contemplating plans for Herzog Ernst von Schwaben, an opera that he never completed and that he destroyed along with all his early works,7 he wrote: Then the pallid shapes that people my life pass by me like shadows of long-lost happiness, and in my ears again resounds the chant of yearning. – And once again we roam familiar pastures together, and yonder stands the hurdy-gurdy man, holding out his hat in his skinny hand. And in the tuneless melody I recognised Ernst of Swabia’s salutation, and he himself steps forth, opening his arms to me, and when I look closer, it is my poor brother; veils come floating down, the images, the notes grow dim: Out of the grey sea two kindly names emerge: Morawan, Ronow!8 The young Mahler visited Morawan and Ronow, two farms near Cˇaslau in Bohemia, in the holidays of 1875–76. Their gardens, flowers and many friendly people remained in his memory, and he imagined them suddenly setting the scene for a meeting with a blue-eyed girl who smiles at him – a fleeting image that immediately fades away to nothing. These diary notes comprising the nineteen-year-old’s letter to his young companion Emil Freund [sic]9 end with the following outburst: 81

O earth, my beloved earth, when, ah, when will you give refuge to him who is forsaken, receiving him back into your womb! Behold! Mankind has cast him out, and he flees from its cold and heartless bosom, he flees to you, to you alone! O, take him in, eternal, allembracing mother, give a resting place to him who is without friend and without rest!10 Exactly 30 years later, at the beginning of October 1909, Mahler returned to the tranquil landscape of his Moravian homeland in order to put the finishing touches to his most personal and perhaps most important work, the symphony for tenor, alto (or baritone) voice and large orchestra Das Lied von der Erde. It is highly significant that during the most important phase of his spiritual and intellectual development as a composer, Mahler turned to his homeland, that he chose to complete the score of Das Lied von der Erde amidst the landscape of his Moravian homeland. (The outward reason for this journey – the relinquishing of his permanent dwellings in Vienna prior to his second visit to America – by no means suggests that there were not deeper grounds arising from his particular spiritual state.) Mahler had already begun Das Lied von der Erde in the summer of 1908 at Altshluderbach near Toblach. The death of his first child on 5 July 1907 had plunged Mahler into deepest despair. Furthermore, during this time of complete submersion in pain and grief, he learnt from a doctor that he was suffering from bilateral mitral disease and that he would therefore have to give up what were to him indispensable activities: mountain walks, swimming and long hikes. After months of deep depression he assumed a new mental attitude. He looked back on his life as if from a great height, relieved from all earthly concerns. And once again the world shone before him in all its beauty, in the gentle evening glow of farewell. In poems of the tenderest melancholy translated from the Chinese by Hans Bethge11 and published in the anthology Die chinesische Flöte, Mahler recognised a fitting medium through which to give full musical expression to this new vision of the world. He immersed himself more and more in the world of the Chinese poems until, through textual extensions and adaptation of the lyrical sequence of moods into a symphonic structure, there emerged not only a unified content but also the basis for an organic musical construction combining symphonic and lyrical elements in a completely new way. The friend to whom Mahler talked most openly about himself as a creative artist, Bruno Walter, managed to preserve for us deep insight into the world of his soul and feelings during the composition of Das Lied von der Erde and the completion of the score during his stay in Moravia, sketching 82

the following picture of Mahler’s spiritual landscape in his excellent book of recollections: As in nature, twilight dissolves in the glow of sunset, the gloom thrown on his spirit at the onset of his illness passed into the mild radiance of approaching departure, lending a new loveliness to the ‘dear Earth’ whose chant he had composed, and seeming to cast a secret shimmer over his speech and writing [at the new charm of the old life]. I shall never forget his expression as he told me that he had never found the world so beautiful as on a recent visit to the Moravian countryside, and what strange inner happiness he had derived from the smell of the earth rising from the fields.12 This ‘beloved’ earth of his Bohemian-Moravian homeland – the ‘all-eternal mother’ that the nineteen-year-old had once called on despairingly to take him, lonely and restless, graciously into her bosom – appeared at the end of the new work in the cosmic light of transfiguration, as the final goal into whose infinite expanse all existence flows. ‘Der Abschied’, the last song of Das Lied von der Erde, closes with these words: I seek rest for my lonely heart. I shall wander to my native land, my home. I shall never roam afar. My heart is still and awaits its hour! Everywhere the dear earth blossoms in spring and grows green anew, Everywhere and for ever the distance grows blue and bright! For ever … and ever … and ever. Mahler thus grew up in his native Bohemia-Moravia surrounded from his earliest years by folksongs, marches and dances of the land. This emergence from among a long line of Bohemian musicians provided the historical conditions for him to find his ultimate artistic home in Vienna, the city of music, which in the eighteenth century and the first three decades of the nineteenth – because of its special atmosphere derived from a mixture of German, Latin, Slav and Eastern-Hungarian elements – had already become the cradle of the universal Austrian music of the great classical masters Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. During his student years in Vienna, Mahler had already met the master of the post-Beethovenian Austrian symphony, Bruckner, whose works would be vital to his future compositional development. As a German-Bohemian in an Austrian musical landscape, Mahler’s work in the fields of song and symphony would become a towering pin83

nacle in the development of Austrian music, and yet he never lost the attachment to his native country. Just as in his music Mahler knew how to blend Slav and Austrian elements into a seamless organic whole,13 so in his activities as conductor and opera director he worked in accordance with that progressive tradition prefigured by Herder,14 whose proponents recognised a humanistic ideal in the overcoming of national differences, in the mediation between the worlds of Slav and German culture. A distinctive chapter in Mahler’s life and one not appreciated in its proper context by previous literature concerns his enthusiastic championing of the two great masters of Czech music, Smetana and Dvorˇák, and of his colleague and close friend Josef Bohuslav Foerster. As successor to Hans von Bülow in the directorship of the Hamburg ‘Subscription Concerts’, Mahler gave the first performance of Foerster’s Symphony Das Leben (Op. 3) [sic] in 1896.15 On 4 October 1897, a few months after his appointment as director of the Vienna Opera, he presented as his first new production the German première of Smetana’s opera Dalibor.16 This important production remained in the repertoire for many years. In 1907–08, the first season in which the then world-renowned Mahler worked at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, he produced and directed the first American performance of Smetana’s The Bartered Bride with the well-known Czech singer Emmy Destin as Marie.17 For this performance he expressly had six dance couples from Prague come to New York to coach the corps de ballet in original Czech dances. A friendly relationship based on mutual esteem existed between Mahler and Dvorˇák. Each at this time had reached the high point of his life and work: Dvorˇák as Czech composer actively promoted by Brahms and von Bülow, whose fame had spread far beyond the borders of his homeland to all the countries of Europe and finally even to America; and Mahler who had become a prominent figure of authority within European musical life as director of the Vienna Hofoper and conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic. Admittedly, in promoting Dvorˇák Mahler was only following in the footsteps of his predecessor Hans Richter. The difference was that after the great triumph of his New World Symphony in New York, Dvorˇák in the meantime had become one of the composers sought after most by conductors, and his music amongst the most frequently played. The honour of being entrusted by Dvorˇák with the première of one of his new works fell to Mahler for the first time on 4 December 1898 when he performed the symphonic poem Heldenlied (Pisenˇ bohaty´rská), Op. 111 with the Vienna Philharmonic in the presence of the composer. According to his biographer Sˇourek, Dvorˇák ‘delighted in its great success’.18 In the following year, on 3 84

December 1899, the Vienna Philharmonic under Mahler gave the first performance outside Bohemia of Dvorˇák’s symphonic poem Die Waldtaube.19 (Shortly before this, the work had been given its world première in Brno by Janácˇ ek.) Dvorˇák declined to attend the Vienna concert because on the same day his opera Der Teufel und die Käthe was being staged for the fourth time in the Prague National Theatre, and he did not want to miss any performance of this work. As opera director too, Mahler went to a great deal of trouble to procure for Vienna a new stage work of Dvorˇák’s. Directly after the highly successful première of the opera Rusalka20 at the Prague National Theatre on 31 March 1901, Mahler approached the master with a request for Rusalka to be transferred to the Vienna Hofoper.21 With typically well-planned efforts Mahler immediately had the libretto translated into German; he secured a contract for Dvorˇák with the management of the Court Theatre containing far better conditions than composers were usually granted; and finally he drew up the following ideal cast list for the opera, to which Dvorˇák gave his assent: Rusalka – Berta Foerster-Lauterer; Wasserman – Wilhelm Hesch; Prince – Leo Slezak; Princess – Marie Gutheil-Schoder. Even the date of the première had already been fixed for March 1902. But for some strange reason Dvorˇák repeatedly delayed signing the contract. Then Hesch fell ill and with that the plan was wrecked. In addition, the management of the Court Theatre seem to have been annoyed that Dvorˇák had not immediately accepted such a generous contract, and it was rumoured that doubts were being expressed ‘in high places’ about the merits of the work, for whose preparation Mahler had insisted on an extravagant 40 rehearsals. In any case the performance under Mahler did not take place.22 While Mahler promoted the music of his Bohemian-Moravian homeland, it should not be forgotten that as a young and still highly controversial composer he had at one time been given significant support by his fellow countrymen, the Germans in Bohemia. One of his earliest champions and biographers, Paul Stefan, was of the opinion that the Bohemian geographical affiliation of his birthplace, the border town of Kalischt, had been a decisive factor in the subsidising of the edition of Mahler’s first three symphonies in 1897 by the Gesellschaft zur Förderung deutscher Wissenschaft, Kunst und Kultur in Böhmen [Society for the Advancement of German Science, Art and Culture in Bohemia]. In turn it seemed, however, that Moravia also had a prominent, though rather less tangible, share in this campaign. For the eminent music historian Guido Adler, born in 1855 in the small Moravian town of Eibenschütz and brought up from a young age in Iglau as one of Mahler’s closest compatriots and friends, 85

became the guiding spirit behind the subsidising of the edition of these three symphonies. At the time Adler was still Professor of Musicology at the German [Karls]Universität in Prague. It was he who made it clear to the Gesellschaft that it was their duty to support a composer of Mahler’s rank, even if his works were still contentious. With the whole weight of his authority as a music scholar, Adler also pleaded the case for Mahler’s symphonies in an extensive report submitted to the Gesellschaft. After lengthy deliberations and delays in the affair, Adler’s expert opinion decided the issue. Then, however, there was a series of formalities to take care of, with which Mahler had some difficulty. In particular, Adler was for a long time unable to obtain a curriculum vitae from Mahler. As the following letter shows, Mahler entrusted his old friend Emil Freund to draw up this document: Undated [Vienna, Spring] 1897 Dear Emil, Please let me have the loan of 200 florins for a few days. – Adler has just written to say that if he does not receive my curriculum vitae within the next two days everything will have to be put off till the autumn! So send it off this instant! To: Prof. Dr. G. Adler, Prague-Weinberge. Yours ever, Mahler23 Thanks to his intimate knowledge of the Iglau locale, Adler has also handed down to us the names of the two teachers who gave Mahler his very first music lessons when he was six. Viktorin, the conductor of a theatre orchestra, introduced him to the rudiments of theory and harmony, while he received his first piano instruction from the teacher Brosch. Two years later the eight-year-old Mahler gave piano lessons to a seven-year-old playmate for five Kreuzer. But the pupil’s inattentiveness caused such furious outbursts in the teacher that the adults forbade the lessons. From 1869 to 1875 Mahler attended the secondary school [Gymnasium] in Iglau. In the latter year he moved to Vienna, returning to Iglau only in the holidays. His apprentice years had begun.

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Chapter 2

Apprentice Years in Vienna (1875–79) and their Aftermath The struggle surrounding his music studies – teachers – friends and fellow students – Hugo Wolf – the central experience: Anton Bruckner – the separate Austrian development of the post-classical symphony

F

or the sake of accuracy, the chronicler should note that there was a short intermezzo in Prague during Mahler’s time at the school in Iglau. In the winter semester of 1871 Mahler attended school in the ‘town of a hundred towers’ on the Moldau. His father had arranged for the eleven-year-old boy to board with the well-known musical family Grünfeld. In her memoirs published in 1940, Alma Mahler reported how he came into contact for the first time with the dark and seamy side of life there.1 He was very much neglected in the Grünfeld household. Things that were sent to him by his parents such as clothes and shoes were kept from him. However, Gustav did not really understand this; as he told his wife decades later, he ‘took it as a matter of course’.2 It was also in the Grünfeld house that the boy, in the midst of puberty, experienced his first sexual shock. Sitting in a darkened room unbeknown to anyone, he became the unwilling witness of a brutal scene between the housemaid and the son of the house, Alfred Grünfeld, who would later become a famous pianist in Vienna. As Alma relates: He jumped up to go to the girl’s help, but she did not thank him for his pains. He was soundly abused by both of them and sworn to secrecy. This episode left a deep mark. Just as one can be angry all day long with people who have annoyed one in a dream, so Gustav never forgave the young pianist who had given him this shock.3 Informed of Gustav’s cruel neglect in the Grünfeld house, Bernhard Mahler appeared one day and took his son back to Iglau. However, if it was decided he should be educated as a professional musician, it was clear that he could no longer remain in his parents’ house. Although the family may now have had little doubt about Gustav’s 87

musical gifts, the cautious Bernhard Mahler would not make the final decision before he had heard the opinion of a prominent authority in the world of music. In order to obtain this, he travelled to Vienna with his son for a few days in 1875 to have him examined by the distinguished piano teacher Julius Epstein, Professor at the Conservatoire of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. [The original German of the following extract (apart from the few lines marked) is currently missing from the typescript, and it is not fully clear where it should be placed in relation to the previous paragraph. However, the draft English translation is extant. The text below is derived from this translation. An indication is given in due course of the point at which the German typescript resumes.] This recognition only dawned gradually and with difficulty on the Mahler family, and it first needed the intervention from a third party to reconcile Bernhard Mahler to the idea of travelling to Vienna with Gustav in order to have his musical abilities thoroughly tested by experts. All this has hitherto been ignored in the literature. Only the aforementioned dream-like revelation of the young Mahler in 1879, which appeared in the collection of letters published by Paul Zsolnay, refers, in its fantastic and unearthly visionary form, to those unnamed people who briefly entered his life and played a significant part in it.4 It should be remembered that this letter to Josef Steiner is in three parts, comprising diary notes from 17, 18 and 19 June 1879. These notes are important because, as previously mentioned, the nineteen-year-old Mahler revealed in them the most intimate moods of his soul in a series of poetic visions and dream images. Several of these he carried with him all his life and they found artistic realisation in one of his last works, Das Lied von der Erde. In the long line of remembered images coursing through Mahler’s mind in this letter, there are also more tangible allusions to people and places closely connected with his youth. Reference is made to the two farms Morawan and Ronow whose ‘gardens, and many people’5 he enthuses about as much as the appearance of a blue-eyed girl who smiled at him and whose name ‘Pauline’ was carved into the bark of a tree. The apparition fades to nothing and a new one gathers shape: Now, over there, that fateful umbrella rises, and I hear the prophetic voices foretelling, from its ribs and entrails, like a Roman augur, the misfortune that is to befall me. Suddenly a table rises out of the ground, and behind it stands a spiritual figure veiled in blue clouds: 88

it is Melion hymning the ‘Great Spirit’, at the same time censing him with genuine Three Kings tobacco! And beside him the two of us sit like altar-boys about to serve at Mass for the first time.6 We must consider what this means. ‘Melion’ is no figure from Greek mythology, but an actual and genuine smoker of Three Kings tobacco: the private coach of the young Gustav Mahler in Iglau, who prepared him for his school examinations. This coaching was all the more necessary since the young Mahler, a student at the Vienna Conservatoire since 1875, was registered at the grammar school in Iglau from 1875 to 1877 only as an external student. In fact Melion seems to have been in close contact with Gustav even earlier, for the decisive turn in his life which took him to the Conservatoire was brought about by a man he came to know through Melion. It happened this way: among Melion’s private pupils was a young man called Schwarz whose father was the administrative manager of the Morawan estates near Cˇaslau.7 Gustav Schwarz was an amiable music-lover who kept an open house and in the interests of his son’s advancement invited the eminent Herr Melion to Morawan in the summer holidays of 1875. The latter called Schwarz’s attention to the fact that there was an excellent pianist amongst his pupils – the young Gustav Mahler from Iglau. Schwarz then extended his invitation to the young Mahler, who took himself to Morawan with Melion in the summer of 1875. The first meeting between the cordial host and the young musician took an odd turn: Mahler played a piece of pure virtuoso music for Schwarz, a fantasia by Thalberg.8 According to reliable reports, Schwarz did not agree with the way the young man interpreted this decidedly uninteresting piece. Then the music student began to play his own compositions, and Schwarz, as reported by the unknown chronicler, ‘listened with growing astonishment and interest, and soon recognised that he had before him the first glimpse of an outstanding talent’.9 Impressed by what he had heard, Schwarz then wrote an enthusiastic letter to Mahler’s father in Iglau in which he expressed the opinion that such an extraordinary musical talent as Gustav Mahler could never attain full maturity in the confines of a small town. Everything should be done to secure a well-disciplined and sound musical education for him in Vienna. Therefore, wrote Schwarz, he was personally prepared to travel to Vienna with Gustav in order for him to be examined by a person of high repute in musical circles. Bernhard Mahler responded to this letter on 28 August 1875 as follows: 89

Dear Sir, First of all I take the liberty of expressing my most cordial and hearty thanks for your splendid reception of my son, and especially, as I gather from your esteemed letter and from my son Gustav’s reports, for the exceptionally warm sympathy and interest, dear Sir, conferred upon his still-developing musical talent. My son will have informed you of the plans I have made regarding his further education; however, your view, as I now gather from all this, does not accord with mine. You advise me in your valued letter, and see the necessity of allowing him to complete his further education in Vienna. In order to examine this scheme more closely and in greater detail, I should be inclined to accompany you to Vienna with my Gustav.10 I sign myself most respectfully, B. Mahler.11 If this letter of Bernhard Mahler already shows signs that Schwarz’s proposal to travel to Vienna with Gustav in order to have his musical talents examined had led to difficult discussions between father and son, then one gains yet more insight into the agitation pervading the Mahler household at the time from the following letter from Gustav to Schwarz, which was presumably enclosed with the above letter from his father: Honoured Sir, Together with the letter from my dear father, may I also thank you, dear Sir, for the kind reception and generous hospitality that you extended towards me. I should only add that it will still take a slight battle to persuade my dear father to agree with our project. He is now clearly leaning in our direction, but he has still not come to terms with it. As in Bürger’s Wilde Jagd two knights stand either side of him, to right and left, pulling him from side to side. I have high hopes that in our case the right one will win the upper hand and ‘dazu mußt du, o Werner, mir verhelfen’ [‘It is you, O Werner, who must help me in this’] My dear father is afraid that either I will neglect and interrupt my studies or I will be corrupted by bad company in Vienna. Although it seems to me that he is inclining to our side, you must appreciate that I am all alone in this fight against the superior power of so many 90

‘reasonable and sober people’. Therefore I ask you to bestow on us the honour of a visit on Saturday 4 September, for only you can win over my father. Please give my compliments to Mme Schwarz and to all the ladies and gentlemen at Ronow. With sincere respects Gustav Mahler12 Schwarz’s visit to Iglau resulted in Bernhard Mahler withdrawing his objections to the planned journey to Vienna. A few days later Bernhard and Gustav Mahler together with Schwarz boarded the train to Vienna. The first steps taken by the three provincial newcomers to attain their goal ended quite negatively, and showed that the timing of their journey had not been auspicious. At every distinguished musician’s address they found closed doors. It was the summer holiday and most of them were still in the country or did not want to be disturbed. Discouraged by this failed odyssey, Bernhard Mahler wanted to go back to Iglau, but Schwarz implored him to make one final attempt: at all costs they had to try the celebrated piano teacher, Professor Julius Epstein. When they called on the eminent man, the same wild-goose chase seemed about to be repeated. He was not in Vienna at all, but still on holiday in Baden. With a final surge of energy Schwarz persuaded Bernhard Mahler, who was beginning to show his less agreeable side, to make the journey to Baden, scarcely one hour from Vienna. Finally they stood in the presence of their goal and were introduced to Professor Epstein. But when he found out the reason for the visitors’ unexpected intrusion – that he was to examine someone’s musical abilities – he declared curtly that he did not want to be disturbed as he was currently on holiday. In this desperate situation it was again Schwarz who proved to be the saviour from disaster. He explained so persuasively to Epstein that young Gustav’s was such an uncommon talent, that the Professor finally, though reluctantly, permitted the three visitors to enter his music room. At his command Gustav sat down at the piano and began to play something. What happened then is already well known. [The rest of this paragraph is present in the German typescript] Professor Epstein, as Stefan reports in his Mahler biography,13 was touched above all by the expression of the youngster’s face and invited him to play something. A few minutes later he had formed his opinion and proclaimed with utter conviction: ‘He is a born musician. I am absolutely certain.’14 With that the destiny of the fifteen-year-old Mahler was decided: he was allowed to remain in Vienna and to enter the Conservatoire of the 91

Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. Thus ended the active part that Gustav Schwarz, the estates manager from Ronow, was called upon to play in Mahler’s life and in the struggles surrounding his musical education. The subsequent relations between Mahler and the old gentleman became known only after Mahler’s death when the Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt of 8 July [earlier cited as 8 June] 1911 published Mahler’s first letter to Schwarz and extracts from his second. The full text of the long second letter was eventually published by Josef Reitler in the Sunday supplement of the Neue Freie Presse on 3 August 1924.15 This extended letter is dated Iglau 6 September 1877, and is actually a letter of condolence. One gets the impression, however, that the young Mahler’s expression of sympathy for the death of Schwarz’s son may only have been the outward pretext for writing: the main purpose was clearly to respond to Schwarz’s reproach for the ingratitude that he interpreted to be the reason for the young student’s almost two years of silence. This reproach was all the more unfounded because throughout his life Mahler had expressed feelings of gratitude and friendship, sometimes extending to the deepest bonds of affection, to all those who showed him any kindness and whom he considered to have understood him as a human being and as an artist. The essential premise for this, however, was sensitivity of spirit. If this was lacking, and Mahler felt that expressions of gratitude were expected or demanded of him for superficial and conventional reasons, he was repelled and became irritated, suppressed his initial feelings of gratitude and as a result appeared outwardly cold and distant. In the long condolence letter, emotions of wounded sensitivity were still unfamiliar to the seventeen-year-old youth. Instead there is an attempt to be completely frank and not to fake any sentimental feelings of sympathy that would have been inwardly as foreign to him as Schwarz’s late son, whom he had hardly known. The letter begins: ‘Honoured Sir, it will perhaps be more than a little surprising to you that it requires such a sad occasion for me to begin corresponding with you, and you certainly have every right to accuse me of gross ingratitude and ill-judgement.’ A long discussion of the question of guilt follows, and then come the reasons why he had not put his sincere feelings of gratitude towards Schwarz in writing until then. Returning again to the occasion for his letter, the bereavement, he writes: ‘I was truly moved by your sad loss, but I wanted to dispense with the usual formalities and consolatory phrases because after all these words are addressed to a man and not to a woman.’ For the hospitality enjoyed by Mahler in Schwarz’s house and especially for his engineering of the decisive turning point in his life, the young student uttered the warmest and most touching words of gratitude all the more readily: 92

When I had the good fortune two years ago to become acquainted with your honoured household, when you extended to me the most willing kindness and accepted me more readily than perhaps I deserved, then I could hardly have dreamt that the man who smoothed down the huge waves of my destiny like Poseidon with his trident, and like a true helmsman, steered the ship of my life towards a better harbour, would one day have cause to complain bitterly about my behaviour or attitude towards him. – In those happy, momentous days when you showed me the promised land, that vision entered into the innermost fibres of your eager pupil’s heart, to rule there like a king and to guide me along all my paths. Through your mediation I was later able to gain a powerful friend in Vienna who even today shows me the greatest sympathy and warmest good will. And it was you who opened the gateway to the Muses for me and led me into the land of my dreams. – And now you may ask, how did it come about that I could so forget all my obligations towards you, and instead of informing you of my progress and achievements persisted in the most incomprehensible silence? … [Mahler’s ellipses] I no longer know why myself. Only an unfortunate combination of conditions and circumstances made it morally impossible for me to maintain16 spiritual communication with you, and thus to burden myself with a guilt that I had to carry for two years of my life. – Today, now I have become more mature and thoughtful, when I think about it – which I often do – my whole attitude seems to me to have been childish and, if I were not so concerned by it, almost laughable. I was a young fool at the time who let himself be blindly ruled by his passions, only ever following the impulses of the moment. What might still appear a mystery to you, I would rather, and could more readily, explain to you at a later time when we meet each other face to face. But whatever you do, do not accuse me of ingratitude. I have never forgotten what I owe you, and it has never occurred to me to cast the least aspersion on you. Put it down to my youthful impetuousness, which on many occasions already has inflicted some bad times on me. I hope furthermore that you will believe all this, that these are not simply empty excuses – I assure you of that on my word of honour as an artist, and that is sacred to me. As far as my progress is concerned, I can say that I did not delude myself when I took that path, and that I fulfil the demands of my teachers most satisfactorily; perhaps, if fate allows, you will hear more of me this year.17

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This letter could easily have given Schwarz the opportunity of gaining the confidence and friendship of the young man and participating once again as a fatherly figure in Mahler’s future life. That something apparently made this impossible is shown by Mahler’s renewed silence, which now lasted for many years, until the young music student had become the mature master and director of the Vienna Hofoper. Only then did the aged Schwarz reappear like a shadow from former times, presenting himself to the musician now he had reached the zenith of his life and work after extensive spiritual and intellectual development, and after the most strenuous labours. The meeting, as the anonymous writer reported in the Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt a few weeks after Mahler’s death, was ‘short, and, on Mahler’s part, conspicuously cool’.18 How could it have been any different? How could it have been possible for the highly personal and subtle relations between the composer and his ‘discoverer’ simply to resume from where they had been broken off twenty years before? In the two decades of separation, did Schwarz ever give the struggling composer a single sign that he was at least endeavouring to make himself familiar with his music and to take an interest in his creative development? The early enthusiasm of the well-appointed estates manager from Morawan for the boy’s first attempts at composition could not mean anything, even on sentimental grounds, to the master who by now had reached his Fourth Symphony. Furthermore, Mahler remorselessly destroyed not only these very first attempts but also the manuscripts of juvenilia written much later, because he thought them worthless.19 It was nevertheless a complete misunderstanding of Mahler’s character when the anonymous writer interprets his great reserve during his last meeting with Schwarz as follows: ‘As usually happens with famous men, he too had destroyed all bridges which linked him with the beginnings of his career’. The three-part confession of summer 1879 contained in the aforementioned letter to Steiner attests to the fact that Mahler never broke off his connections with the past, with his youth. Shortly after his reminiscences about the ‘many friendly people’ in Morawan and Ronow, which included Schwarz and his family, he continues with a touching appeal to the ‘muchloved earth’, an artistic theme which rested for decades in his subconscious until he took it up again towards the end of his life and made it the basis of the transfigured ending of Das Lied von der Erde. Connections such as this together with musical memories of childhood – Czech folksongs or dances and the military music of the old Austrian army – formed Mahler’s bridge to his youth. If the real world of Mahler remained closed to Schwarz, he nevertheless 94

appears to us today as a rather touching figure. It is clear how proud he must have been of Mahler’s subsequent world fame from the fact that the once well-appointed estates manager from Morawan – the self-proclaimed discoverer and benefactor of Mahler the composer, who spent the impoverished autumn of his life in a Jewish old people’s home on the Seegasse – had held tight to the two letters from the young composer along with Bernhard Mahler’s letter of invitation, carefully preserved them and bequeathed them to his heirs as the only trace of his former wealth. [The German typescript resumes from here] The fifteen-year-old Mahler, then, was officially enrolled in autumn 1875 as a student at the Conservatoire of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, which since 1851 had been under the directorship of Joseph Hellmesberger. According to the institution’s register, Mahler had the following teachers in his principal subjects: Prof. Julius Epstein (piano), Prof. Robert Fuchs (harmony) and Prof. Theodor Krenn (counterpoint and composition). The extraordinary talents of the new student seemed to have been recognised at once. For, passing over the preliminary classes, Mahler was admitted into Epstein’s first piano instruction class, and alongside harmony tuition he received lessons in counterpoint and composition straight away, which was not normal institutional procedure. Mahler must already have produced work of his own whose standard led to such high estimation of his abilities. Of these teachers Mahler seems to have been closest to Epstein, for the published letters contain two very affectionate ones to this man: one, undated, from Iglau, which must be from 1877 since he mentions passing his matriculation at the school there. Mahler informs Epstein that he arrived in Iglau several days too late for the end of term, so that he had to postpone his leaving examination until the autumn. He nevertheless hoped to carry out the holiday task set by Epstein to his full satisfaction. The letter opens with the following words, which indicate the truly cordial relationship that existed between teacher and pupil: My dear and revered Master, You cannot imagine the joy that your esteemed letter has given me; I really do not know what to say in gratitude for so much kindness. But even if I were to write page after page in the attempt to express my thanks, it would not amount to anything but: ‘how very like you’. Let me assure you, this is not just empty talk, but something I really and truly mean.20 Mahler stayed in correspondence with Epstein long after leaving the Conservatoire. For example, he wrote to him from Cassel [sic] about the 95

great music festival he was directing at the end of his term as conductor in nearby Münden, asking him to make information about the festival known in Vienna. Epstein often spoke about his student Mahler, and made no secret of his preference for him. There was also no doubt that Mahler’s extraordinary piano playing, which caused a sensation wherever he went, bore eloquent witness to Epstein’s teaching abilities. After a year at the Conservatoire Mahler won first prize in piano playing at the end-of-year concert for his performance of the first movement of Schubert’s Sonata in A minor [probably op. 42 (D845)], and in his second year again a first prize for his performance of Schumann’s Humoreske. In 1884 Mahler himself admitted to his friend Löhr that five or six years earlier he had certainly been a more able pianist. Löhr described in detail Mahler’s piano playing when the composer visited him in Perchtoldsdorf in 1884: Two things occupied the foreground in those days in Perchtoldsdorf: our walks and music, many hours of music. The windows of my room on the first floor of the Eder-Haus on the market place were kept closed, despite the summer heat, and yet there were always people standing outside, listening. How few people there are today who know what it meant then to hear Mahler at the piano! … I have never before or since heard such de-materialization of the human, the technical process. Mahler rose inexpressibly above what his hands did. He could never have given an account of how he achieved what he did; every thought of technical difficulty was utterly cancelled out; all was disembodied, purely contemplative, passionately and spiritually concentrated on all that, without conscious physical contact, passed from the keys into his being. In a way all his own, comprehending it with the energy and accomplishment of genius, bringing out every nuance, every shade of expression, he caused the music to ring out with all the force with which it had gushed forth from the soul of its creator. In Beethoven’s Sonata op. 111 (no. 32), for instance, the storm at the beginning broke out in a terrible maestoso, shatteringly intense, with a wild ferocity such as I have never heard again; and similarly the finale faded out, pure, utterly luminous, in loveliest beauty, softly and softlier still, from closest touch with this earth out into eternity. Yet what can words convey of how his playing affected one? I am simply awed by the exalted happiness that was granted to me – thinking back now to what Mahler gave me, the sole listener, in those years: all Beethoven’s sonatas, Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Klavier, 96

and many another work of that most beloved master, and yet more, such as, one unforgettable afternoon in the long house next to the Karlskirche [Vienna], where Mahler was lodging at the time, the whole of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis played right through without a break. Not long after this Mahler lost interest in playing the piano, and particularly works written for the piano, since he had become accustomed to mastering the orchestra in that same way. But anyone who in those early days heard him at the piano, in the truest sense of the word reproducing the music, understood him, and what he could do, and his early destiny as a conductor.21 We have far less accurate information about Mahler’s beginnings as a composer. Teachers and fellow students alike were full of admiration for the wealth of ideas in the compositions of Mahler’s youth, most of which he destroyed himself. Of these early works the scherzo of a Piano Quintet and a Violin Sonata were performed in public, in end-of-term concerts at the Conservatoire. The scherzo of the Piano Quintet, played at the end of the 1875–76 academic year, won Mahler the first prize for composition. In the following year, while he took part again in the piano competition and, as already mentioned, won first prize for his performance of the Schumann Humoreske, he declined to enter the composition competition. In his third and final year, 1877–78, he withdrew from the piano competition but took part in the composition competition. The fact that on this occasion his Violin Sonata was played, one of his earlier and weaker student works, was not Mahler’s fault but happened entirely against his will.22 This incident, whose background was revealed for the first time in Bauer-Lechner’s interesting book Recollections of Gustav Mahler, sheds very clear light on his apprentice years at the Vienna Conservatoire and how the young Mahler stamped his personality on his relationship with teachers and fellow students. Having said before that both teachers and fellow students were full of admiration for the wealth of ideas in Mahler’s youthful compositions which he himself thought little of and destroyed, it must be added that the main reason for this admiration was the fact that he attended Conservatoire classes in harmony, counterpoint and composition with Professors Fuchs and Krenn only very irregularly, and yet always had brilliant command of all these subjects. ‘Mahler always played truant and yet there was nothing he couldn’t do’ said Fuchs when questioned by Alma Mahler.23 It was unanimously reported in all contemporary sources that Mahler was called ‘the new Schubert’ by all his colleagues.24 How little this affected Mahler’s distinctive and unwavering sense of 97

justice and self-knowledge is demonstrated by his attitude towards his friend and fellow student Hans Rott, an extraordinarily gifted musician who went insane while still a young man. Both Mahler and Rott had tried their hand at extended symphonic composition. Each of them had written a symphony for large orchestra as a piece of Conservatoire work and submitted it for the composition competition in the 1877–78 academic year. Mahler was enthusiastic about his friend’s work and declared over and over again that Rott’s symphony was much better than his own. To Mahler’s great astonishment, however, his own symphony was awarded first prize by the jury of professors, and chosen for performance in the end-of-year concert. Mahler’s mother even had tears of indignation in her eyes when Gustav told her about what he saw as the unjustified favouring of his own composition, and she repeatedly cried: ‘All the same, Rott’s work was better than yours’.25 In this darkened mood Mahler set about producing the materials for the performance of his symphony, which was to be played by the student orchestra directed by Joseph Hellmesberger. Since he received very little money from home and had to earn part of his living by giving lessons, he could not of course afford to pay a copyist to write out the parts from the orchestral score. He undertook this himself, writing day and night, in order to have the orchestral material ready in time for the rehearsals. The conductor Hellmesberger discovered several errors that had slipped in through overtiredness. He flung the score and parts at Mahler’s feet, yelling at him: ‘do you think that I’ll conduct something like that?’.26 Mahler then apparently behaved, as bureaucratic language would put it, in an ‘insubordinate manner’ towards the great musical authority, explaining that he did not at all care to have his symphony played, for in his view Rott’s symphony ought to be performed, and this was something he would particularly welcome. This of course had a fine effect. As punishment, Mahler’s symphony was removed from the concert programme and, evidently so as not to promote him as the ‘great genius’ on his departure from the institution, a performance of his earlier and poorer violin sonata was ordered.27 The question arises from this as to why Mahler, whose father was certainly not poor, did not think of asking his parents to pay for a copyist on such an exceptional and important occasion as the preparation of orchestral materials for his first symphony. There is no easy answer to this question. It was probably the case that his father, at least, believed Gustav could live as a Conservatoire student in Vienna with the same extreme degree of provincial temperance as that enjoyed by the family in their shared house98

hold in Iglau. They certainly did not want him to endure any hardship, even if he was kept so impecunious that, as mentioned above, in order to live he was forced to supplement his monthly income through teaching. He regularly received substantial food parcels from Iglau which would have been of great help to him had he not – again for economic reasons – shared rooms with two friends and colleagues, Rudolf Krzyzanowski and Hugo Wolf. The three room-mates felt entirely like members of a collective. Consumed between them, the food from Iglau quickly disappeared. Even when one Christmas Mahler received a green overcoat that was far too large because his father had bought it for him to ‘grow into’, he immediately gave it to Krzyzanowski. Of course he also shared in any ‘advantages’ of the collective economy. These consisted primarily of the successful implementation of so-called ‘emergency measures’. For example, when the three young musicians, supporting themselves mainly through giving lessons, ran out of money, one of them took it upon himself to give immediate notice to a pupil. In her memoirs Alma Mahler gives an amusing account of how the youngsters brought this off: ‘The plan was to ring the bell, say he was suddenly obliged to go away and request payment for the lessons already given. The ready money provided meals for all three for a day or two. On the other hand, a pupil was lost for ever.’28 The poverty in which Mahler spent his student years in Vienna had a peculiar and important effect on his artistic development. The multitude of artistic experiences and excitements that Viennese musical life had to offer at the time through the great partisan struggles around Wagner, Brahms and Bruckner, remained more or less unattainable for Mahler, as he could only very rarely find the money for a concert or opera visit. He therefore got to know many of the great masterworks not, like other students, from the actual sounds of regular performances, but purely from the score and by listening to the soundscapes aroused within him by the mute notation. So Mahler remained immune to all the current ‘interpretations’ hauled from one performance to another in an indifferent routine, which found their way into orchestral performance practice of the time and finally took on the patina of ‘tradition’. Every musical artwork in which Mahler immersed himself as a conductor he heard anew; that is, in a completely unprejudiced way and with the sole aim of doing justice to the artistic intentions of its creator. Similarly every performance, even if it was a repetition of a much-played work, was a new experience for him that demanded the exertion of all his intellect and powers. The result was that performances under Mahler’s direction revealed new beauties of an artwork in astonishing ways, showing it in all its hitherto unknown greatness. When Mahler 99

Hugo Wolf.

was reproached for taking passages differently from the usual practice, he used to retort impatiently: ‘What is called tradition is usually an excuse for slovenliness [Schlämperei]’.29 [The remainder of this paragraph is crossed through in the German typescript and does not appear in the draft English translation. It is translated here for its useful explanation of Mahler’s cited remark.] Of course he did not mean the ‘tradition’ that emerges from the style of an artwork and is necessary for its interpretation, but rather the entrenched interpretations and clichés resulting from the indifference and slovenliness of everyday activity to which the musical ‘lovers of routine’ [Routiniers] and the public had grown unthinkingly accustomed. Mahler’s work as a conductor will be discussed later in different contexts. A chapter of this book will be specially devoted to this.30 It would be wrong, however, to suppose that poverty completely prevented the young Mahler and his two room-mates from attending musical events. After all, there were the reduced student tickets available for a few Kreuzer that enabled students of the University, the technical Hochschule and the Conservatoire to visit the standing-room area or the fourth gallery of the Vienna Hofoper, and the Conservatoire additionally received free tickets that it could distribute for almost all musical events. A trip to the opera was nonetheless a great occasion in the life of the three young music students. Alma Mahler reports in her memoirs how the three discovered Wagner’s Götterdämmerung together and, drunk with passion in their room after the performance, they burst into the trio of Gunther, Brünhilde and Hagen. It was such an almighty din that the enraged landlady gave them notice on the spot and would not budge until they had packed their belongings and vacated the room.31 The early friendship between Mahler and Wolf had a tragic ending. The first seeds of discord sprang from an artistic proposal that Wolf talked over with Mahler. Wolf had the idea, long before Humperdinck composed Hänsel und Gretel, of writing a fairy-tale opera. They discussed this in detail, mulling over numerous subjects, and finally deciding that a setting of the fairy tale Rübezahl would be most suitable. Mahler was so enthusiastic about the idea that he drafted a scenario that same evening, even completing a libretto, which he showed Wolf straight away. But Wolf had had a different idea altogether: he considered the plan for such a fairy-tale opera to be his exclusive intellectual property and felt cheated by Mahler’s action. He also had begun work on Rübezahl in the meantime, but now the idea had been spoilt for him. He gave it up, while Mahler continued working on it until by 1882 he had set most of the text, though he was never to finish it.32 Almost all the Mahler literature agrees that together with the 100

manuscripts of his other juvenilia, including the Piano Quintet, Violin Sonata, the operas Herzog Ernst von Schwaben and Die Argonauten (whose text was drawn up in alliterative verse), the Nordic Symphony and other sketches for orchestral works, Rübezahl was destroyed on Mahler’s instructions.33 However, Alma Mahler reports in her memoirs that Mahler’s sister Justine secretly preserved the manuscript of Rübezahl and once out of curiosity even showed it to the stage designer Alfred Roller, Mahler’s closest collaborator at the Vienna Opera. When Roller casually remarked: ‘Justi gave me a youthful work of Mahler’s to read yesterday’,34 Mahler was deeply shocked and very embarrassed that Roller, so scrupulous in artistic matters, had managed to see one of the early works that he himself had disowned. This led to a serious dispute between brother and sister. Justine swore that she had burned the manuscript in the presence of her husband Arnold Rosé, but Mahler would not believe her and threatened to leave for America without saying goodbye to her. Shortly before Mahler’s departure for New York in 1908 Justine admitted to her sister-in-law Alma that she had not burned the Rübezahl manuscript, but had ‘sent it after him the moment he had left [for Bremen]’,35 where he would find it waiting for him before boarding the ship at Cuxhaven. Whether Mahler received the manuscript in this way, or whether he destroyed it or preserved it after all is not reported in Alma’s memoirs. There can be no doubt, however, that even in later years Mahler must have thought something of his libretto for Rübezahl, for in spring 1896 he wrote to his composer and musicologist friend Max Marschalk (music correspondent for the Vossische Zeitung since 1895, whose operas In Flammen, Lobetanz and Wichtelchen interested Mahler) that he would bring the libretto of his early opera Rübezahl with him on his next trip to Berlin. At the time, Marschalk was looking for suitable material for a fairy-tale opera, but could not warm to Mahler’s text, not that the latter thought badly of this: ‘Do not waste another thought on poor R[übezahl]!’ wrote Mahler to Marschalk in May 1896: I have quite grown out of him by now. It was just one of those momentary impulses that caused me to look it out from among my papers for you. I can quite imagine that you – coming to it with a fresh eye – also cannot warm up to that flight of youthful fancy.36 The correspondence with Marschalk, incidentally, reveals a characteristic of Mahler’s that was to have a decisive effect on the relationship with his early friend Wolf: his inability to approve completely of a musical work without being in profound spiritual harmony with the personality of its creator. The uncompromising honesty and integrity displayed by Mahler 101

here is remarkable. He was not afraid of explaining in a completely straightforward manner to the powerful music critic, a keen supporter of Mahler as composer, what was wrong with his operas; he wanted to stimulate and improve him through his criticism. And when Marschalk, who fully appreciated this, once wrote to Mahler that he should not be concerned that any criticism of his, however negative, could change anything in his own positive opinion of Mahler’s music, the latter admitted the following in a letter from Hamburg dated 24 April 1896: Dear Friend, In haste, another emendation! From the very beginning I assumed that any adverse criticism of your work on my part would not alter your opinion of my ability! And this being so, I should never have hesitated – whatever the risk – to open my mind to you with complete candour. But believe me, as a man of greater experience: a close relationship between two people is endangered in the long run if one of them has to take a negative, i.e. uncomprehending, attitude to the other’s work. For what, basically, does ‘I do not like it’ mean other than ‘I do not understand it’?37 That Mahler offered the Rübezahl text to his friend Marschalk may perhaps have been an unconscious reaction to the experience of losing Wolf ’s friendship over the same work. In fact, Wolf had never forgiven him for appropriating the Rübezahl idea. The friendship between Mahler and Wolf gradually cooled, not least because of Wolf ’s eccentric, over-excitable nature, but also no doubt because of his increasing sympathy for the greatGerman and anti-Semitic Wagner movement. Yet one cannot reproach Wolf for having brushed Mahler aside in the face of the anti-Semites. There were things that united them over and above all that divided them: their boundless enthusiasm for Wagner and their deep love of Bruckner, whom Wolf got to know personally a few years later than Mahler. It was somewhat symbolic when, after a separation of several years, the two former friends met each other on the festival hill in Bayreuth before the performance of Parsifal, passing each other with but a curt greeting. Memories of Wolf during his student years in Vienna nevertheless remained fresh for Mahler many years later in terms of the latter’s remark that he would only give up his independence and accept a post ‘when he was appointed God of the Southern Zones’.38 Walter reported in his book of recollections that during Mahler’s period at the Hamburg Theatre he inexpressibly longed for ‘his familiar Vienna and its incomparable musical climate’. When the doorbell rang he often used to call out: ‘Here comes my appointment as the God of 102

the Southern Zones!’39 That was 1895 and it would take another two years for his wish to be fulfilled. To begin with Wolf enthusiastically welcomed Mahler’s appointment at the Vienna Hofoper on artistic and personal grounds, and had great hopes for it. Just three weeks after the famous Lohengrin performance on 11 May 1897 – Mahler’s first appearance on the podium of the Vienna Opera – Wolf reported to his mother in a letter of 4 June 1897 that his opera Corregidor40 would certainly be performed in the coming season. ‘Today’, wrote Wolf, ‘I received explicit assurance from the new conductor Mahler (an old friend of mine). He is now all-powerful at the Vienna Opera. He himself is going to rehearse and conduct my work, which is all the more acceptable to me because Mahler is more capable than anyone else of familiarising himself with my artistic intentions’.41 Early in the new season after the summer holidays, when Mahler conducted the complete Ring cycle for the first time – an event that sent the whole of Vienna into raptures, and even had to be recognised by the Austrian Wagner faction (mobilised against Mahler by Hans Richter because, unlike Richter, he no longer permitted the cuts that were usually made in Vienna) – Wolf wrote an enthusiastic critique in the [Wiener] Salonblatt of 25 August 1897, saying amongst other things: ‘Here,42 as in the whole of the Ring, we were allowed to hear what we have never heard before and had already given up on, other than seeing in the score.’43 Wolf expressed similar enthusiasm about Mahler’s performance as conductor of the Ring tetralogy in a letter to Paul Müller of 1 September 1897, in which he prophesied that the Viennese performances of Wagner’s works would soon become the model for all other opera houses, and that one had Mahler to thank for all this because he had truly put an end to the old sloppy routine.44 The final break between Wolf and Mahler that took place just a few weeks later, in all probability on 16 or 17 September 1897, was therefore all the more tragically affecting. While he was in the middle of working on his second opera Manuel Vanegas,45 Wolf sent a letter on 15 September to his friend Haberlandt in which he described his creative fervour in high-flown language already bordering on insanity, and asked for his immediate visit so that he could play him the new work. Haberlandt found Wolf in a disturbing state of extreme excitation. To please Wolf he promised to arrange a party on one of the coming Sundays at friends of theirs in Mödling where he could play the music of Manuel Vanegas for the first time to a group of his closest associates. Either on the same day or the day after, Wolf presented himself to Mahler 103

at the Hofoper in this intense and clearly highly agitated mood. Mahler welcomed his former friend and room-mate into his office. Never did the contrasts between the two stand out more markedly and alarmingly: Mahler having risen brilliantly to reach the height of his achievements and career; and Wolf, pale and emaciated with a crazed look in his eye. What then actually transpired between the two great artists – both as yet unknown composers struggling for recognition – has been reported in various conflicting versions depending on whether the source in question represents Wolf ’s or Mahler’s viewpoint. Of course it was chiefly Wolf ’s friends, filled with excessive hatred for Mahler, who strove in words and print to blame him for Wolf ’s outbreak of madness. Since Wolf was no longer in a position to care for himself after the onset of his brain condition, which was quickly revealed to be paralysis, his friends, having founded the Hugo Wolf Society in 1895 in Vienna, paid for his maintenance in an asylum and looked after the interests of his works. The treasurer of the Hugo Wolf Society, which was closely connected to the Wagner Society, was the well-known jeweller Theodor Köchert at whose estate, ‘Puchschacher’ near Traunkirchen, Wolf had often stayed. Köchert was a radical great-German and anti-Semite who would later exercise a disastrous influence in republican Austria on the transformation of the Vienna Concert Hall Society [Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft] – of which he was president – into a cleverly disguised illegal Nazi organisation. One can imagine the kind of smear campaign that was carried out on the part of the Hugo Wolf Society against Mahler the opera director. In his book Der Hugo Wolf-Verein in Wien, Heinrich Werner described as follows how the last meeting between Mahler and the already deranged composer is supposed to have gone according to Wolf ’s information: In the middle of his work on Manuel Vanegas, that is, in a typical state of creative excitement, Wolf looked for Mahler in the Hofoper and found the score of Rubinstein’s Dämon46 lying open on his desk. The two of them fell into an argument about the merits of this opera, during which Mahler appears to have made [Mathis-Rosenzweig’s italics] some less-than-complimentary remarks about Corregidor, casting serious doubt on a performance in the immediate future. Extremely agitated by this latest disappointment, an embittered Wolf left the Director’s office, and that horrifically insane idea which was never to leave hold of him stuck its iron claws into his vengeful mind: he himself had become the director of the Opera and would drive Mahler away in disgrace.47 104

The Mahler literature has passed over this incident in silence, various writers such as Specht and Stefan suggesting in very general terms that Mahler’s judgements on contemporary musicians should never be taken seriously and that in conversation he often vehemently criticised Wolf ’s songs, considering that only in a few of them were ‘real melody and an organic unity to be discerned, while all the others remain glued to the rhythm of the text and are therefore determined by the poet, not the musician’.48 However, in her memoirs Alma Mahler gives an account of this last meeting between Mahler and Wolf that for the first time is derived from Mahler’s information. She claims that Wolf ‘imperiously demanded the instant production of Corregidor’.49 Anyone who knew Mahler would realise that he vehemently opposed any outside pressure, particularly any attempt to impose something on him in matters of his directorship. Wolf ’s friends nevertheless allege that a promise had been made by Mahler to perform Corregidor, and after studying the various letters and sources even the English biographer of Wolf, Ernest Newman, came to the conclusion that the performance was originally envisaged for January or February 1898. ‘For reasons that are not entirely clear’, writes Newman, ‘the work was nevertheless set aside, and replaced by Rubinstein’s Dämon’.50 If the true reasons for the postponement of the Corregidor performance have not been outwardly explained, one thing is absolutely clear: despite its hypothetical character (‘during which Mahler appears to have made some less-than-complimentary remarks about Corregidor’), the previously cited account of the clash between Mahler and Wolf given by Heinrich Werner – official historian of the Hugo Wolf Society – has completely clouded and misrepresented what went on in the director’s office, and even such a conscientious and serious musicologist as Ernest Newman could not escape the suggestive influence of this account. The main aim of Werner’s account was obviously to conceal the fact that an already mentally disturbed Wolf sought out the opera director Mahler in order to demand in an imperious tone the immediate performance of Corregidor. To this end, Werner lets the conversation between Mahler and Wolf begin with an argument over the merits or otherwise of Rubinstein’s opera Dämon, which must appear all the more plausible to the reader given the concrete assertion that the score of this work lay open on Mahler’s desk. This was supposed to have given the impression first and foremost that opera director Mahler imprudently favoured the work of the foreigner Rubinstein over the native composer Wolf. At the same time, it was difficult to cast doubt on the accuracy of Werner’s account given that Rubinstein’s opera Dämon was indeed per105

formed by Mahler, and the score therefore had to have been in Mahler’s office at some point for him to study. Whatever the case, even Newman could not escape the conclusion based on these details and presumptions that Corregidor was put to one side and Rubinstein’s Dämon performed in its stead. There is only one small snag. According to the list of new works and new productions under Mahler’s directorship compiled by A. J. Weltner, archivist of the Vienna Court Theatre, and published in Richard Specht’s Mahler biography,51 Rubinstein’s Dämon appears neither under 1897 nor amongst the new works performed in 1898, but was not premièred until 23 October 1899. If in fact a postponement of Corregidor in favour of Dämon took place – as the Hugo Wolf party tried to convince the public in order to confirm that the conversation between Wolf and Mahler began with an argument over the merits or otherwise of the opera Dämon (rather than with Wolf ’s brusque demand that his opera Corregidor should be put into production immediately) – then this is tantamount to acknowledging that by September 1897 Mahler’s promise, given in June, to perform Corregidor in January or February 1898 was no longer valid and had meanwhile been withdrawn and replaced by an alternative arrangement: Corregidor would now figure in the long-term plans for the coming 1899–1900 season.52 Therefore all the reproaches of the Hugo Wolf party that Mahler had not kept his promise, given in June 1897, to perform Corregidor in the 1898 season, would be completely invalidated.53 Let us now pursue Alma’s account further in order to see how Mahler reacted to Wolf ’s behaviour in ‘imperiously demand[ing] the instant production of Corregidor’: Mahler, knowing the work and its defects, made the usual evasions: no singers suited to it, etc. Wolf grew obstreperous and Mahler did not like the look of him. He had a special bell within reach for such occasions. He pressed it and his man came in with the prearranged message: ‘The Intendant wishes to see you at once, sir’. Wolf found himself alone. He rushed downstairs and along the Ring. His mind gave way; he thought he was the Director and on his way home. When he arrived at Mahler’s flat, Auenbruggergasse 2, he rang the bell; and when the servant opened the door, he shouted at her to let him pass – he was the Director. She slammed the door in his face in terror. He ran down the steps again and into the street.54 The smear campaign organised by the Hugo Wolf Society against Mahler not only considerably strengthened the great-German and anti-Semitic 106

opposition to his work at the Opera, but also led to Wolf universally going down in history as a martyr, as a victim of the opera director Mahler who drove him to insanity. This has always been viewed in the various publications purely from the standpoint of the Wolf party. Conclusive proof that Alma Mahler’s account is not only credible but also the only correct and feasible one is shown by new material on the mentally ill Hugo Wolf published by Robert Hernried in the January 1940 and January 1945 issues of the American music journal The Musical Quarterly. For the sake of brevity we will refer to the second of the two studies, which appeared in this journal under the title ‘Hugo Wolf ’s “Four Operas”, with Unpublished Letters from Hugo Wolf, Rosa Mayreder and Oskar Grohe’.55 Hernried remarked by way of introduction that although we regard Wolf ’s songs above all as the most valuable and characteristic part of his output, he nevertheless clung fanatically to his operatic plans, the first performance of his one and only opera [sic] Corregidor in Mannheim on 7 June 1896 representing for him the highpoint of his compositional career. Hernried then continued: Basing my account on unpublished letters, I have described in some detail (in the January 1940 issue of The Musical Quarterly) how passionate, how arrogant, and therefore unrestrained, the fervid artist’s behaviour was on the occasion of the opera’s première. It was not as a petitioner that he approached Director (Intendant) Bassermann; instead – with his friend Judge Oskar Grohe always acting as intermediary – he insisted on his rights in a way that is truly astounding. Thus, on April 26, 1896, he wrote to Grohe: ‘If the work is not definitely to be performed on May 22 but only on 31 May, I shall not appear at the première. I wish to be notified before May 12’.56 The demand, so emphatically expressed by Hugo Wolf, that his opera had to be performed on 22 May without fail and not a mere nine days later, is connected to the fact that the birthday of his beloved Richard Wagner fell on 22 May. Without regard for whether this was compatible with the technical preparations for the première of the opera, Wolf entrusted his gobetween with a dictatorial demand to the director of the Mannheim theatre that was simply impossible to fulfil. Corregidor could be staged neither on 22 May nor even on the date proposed by the theatre (31 May), but only on 7 June. Fortunately, Oskar Grohe seems to have recognised that passing on Wolf ’s completely unjustified demand to the Intendant Bassermann would have led to its certain rejection and perhaps even to a serious conflict with the management of the Mannheim theatre. So he intervened and managed 107

to pacify the composer who even then was no longer in complete control of his senses. A year later, in September 1897, when Wolf stood face to face with Mahler in the director’s office in the Vienna Opera, the situation was essentially the same, only the favourable conditions that in Mannheim had led to an amicable settlement of the matter were lacking: the mental illness, diagnosed long before by an ophthalmologist who was removing a small grain of coal dust from Wolf ’s eye, had meanwhile progressed; friends who could perhaps have calmed him down were not present; furthermore, Mahler was not just some theatre director unknown to him in a distant town like Mannheim but a former friend of his youth and also a composer himself, so that an element of jealousy was involved which, according to Max Auer in his biography of Bruckner, dogged Wolf even in his relationship with the old master he loved.57 It is therefore a tendentious falsifying of the facts on the part of Heinrich Werner and the Wolf faction not to admit openly that right at the beginning of the conversation, Wolf imperiously made the unrealistic and quite unreasonable demand for an immediate performance of Corregidor at the Vienna Opera. At this point the relations between Mahler and Wolf need to be examined in more detail because, as previously mentioned in connection with Marschalk, they show a certain side of Mahler’s nature that was strongly marked from his earliest youth until the end of his life: his uncompromising integrity in matters of artistic conviction. Just as he was able unhesitatingly to sacrifice the performance of his early symphony by the Conservatoire student orchestra, because the favouring of his own work over what he considered to be the better and more valuable work of his fellow student and friend Hans Rott seemed to him unfair (something that he even dared say openly to director Hellmesberger), so equally he could not, against his better judgement, perform a work such as Wolf ’s Corregidor, which he thought weak, at a time when a bad failure would jeopardise his substantial and farreaching plans for reform of the Opera. It has already been suggested that the human dimension played a specific part in this. Certainly he was an old friend of Wolf ’s, and Wolf was well aware of this. But he knew Wolf too well. He was the complete opposite to Hugo Wolf – as song composer and as symphonist. Just as Mahler privately rejected Wolf ’s opera Corregidor, so he also rejected his songs in spite of their magnificent qualities, because their basic formal principles did not correspond with his own. If Wolf called his songbooks ‘little operas’ when they consisted entirely of settings of a single poet’s work, then his opera Corregidor was not stage music but a songbook full of exquisite melodic flowerings. As lyricists, both Wolf and Mahler took 108

Schubert as their starting point. They each chose a particular type of Schubert song as their compositional model, extending it and taking it to its highest level of perfection: Wolf took the type of declamatory song in which the voice is completely subordinated to speech rhythms while the essential musical content is determined by the colouristic formulation of the accompaniment; Mahler took the through-composed song that had already been significantly developed by Schumann, and now in his hands was expanded into the symphonic. In contrast to Wolf ’s, his melodic writing is not primarily adapted to the accents of speech but grows out of the changing moods and emotional content of the poetry. The human and ideological opposition between Wolf and Mahler is revealed most clearly, however, in their attitude towards Bruckner, then a teacher at the Conservatoire and still the subject of controversy as a composer. Mahler was already a member of Bruckner’s closest circle as a Conservatoire student in the mid-1870s, while Wolf first met him at Corpus Christi 1884 in Klosterneuburg. From January of that year Wolf had begun to produce his famous music criticisms in the Wiener Salonblatt, and on 28 December 1884 his first impassioned critique appeared of a semi-public concert in which Ferdinand Löwe and Joseph Schalk performed parts of Bruckner’s symphonies as a piano duet. [The remainder of this paragraph is crossed through in the German typescript.] Although Wolf expressly highlights Bruckner’s originality and inventiveness, and compares the wealth of his imagination and the quality of his inspiration with Grabbe,58 even Shakespeare, he could not help but comment on the lack of continuity and the ‘formlessness of the development’, which meant that the consistently ‘glorious ideas’ did not support that masterful kind of structure that was admired so much in Beethoven. From then on, however, fanfare upon fanfare for Bruckner issued from Wolf ’s pen in the Salonblatt, together with simultaneous unrestrained attacks on Brahms. Wolf promoted Bruckner as representative of the New German School centred around Wagner and Liszt, in the same way that the Wagner Society tirelessly promoted the works of Bruckner and Wolf in its meetings, particularly from 1887 when Bruckner’s student Joseph Schalk took over as its director. About the time that Wolf began to write about Bruckner, at the end of 1884, the latter enjoyed a conspicuously favourable turn in his fortunes through his first great success: the first performance in 109

Portrait of Bruckner.

Leipzig of his Seventh Symphony under the direction of his student Artur Nikisch. Now the spell had been broken, Wolf could bang the drum for the Bruckner movement all the more effectively. He was richly rewarded for this by Bruckner, to whom he regularly played his latest songs, and who was one of the first to recognise Wolf ’s genius. ‘Where the devil did you get these chords from?’, the old master cried admiringly on hearing the trilled 6/5 chord in the introduction to Wolf ’s song ‘Seemanns Abschied’ for the first time.59 The world of romantic harmony through which Bruckner’s creative path threaded its way, approaching from far distances and leading to distant horizons, was the area in which Wolf could truly come close to the great symphonist. Whether he was completely open to the innermost mysteries of Bruckner’s symphonic world is a question that remains to be answered in spite of Wolf ’s passionate enthusiasm and his unswerving loyalty to him. It is known that Wolf ‘felt slighted’, according to Max Auer, when Bruckner finally began to have some success with his works.60 This may have contributed to the opinion of Ernst Kurth, the greatest and most profound musicological interpreter of Bruckner, who states in a footnote to his monumental study that ‘Hugo Wolf … always over-excited, could not help muddying his friendship with Bruckner’.61 Bruckner’s relationship with Mahler was quite different. The son of the Jewish distiller who left Iglau in 1875 to go to the Vienna Conservatoire where Bruckner was teaching (although he was not to become his student) seems to have come into personal contact with the master very quickly. So writes Guido Adler, a member of Bruckner’s closest circle of students and the first systematic biographer of Mahler, who describes the far-reaching historical significance of the friendship between the old master and the young Conservatoire student, calling Bruckner Mahler’s ‘adopted mentor’. In her memoirs Alma Mahler also includes important new material on Mahler’s attitude towards Bruckner, shedding further light on this relationship. Mahler arrived in Vienna in the same year that Wagner conducted the Vienna Philharmonic and personally brought to the orchestra’s attention the extraordinary qualities of Bruckner’s Third Symphony, of which he was the dedicatee. Despite or perhaps precisely because of these qualities, the Philharmonic had twice rejected the work as ‘unplayable’. The great Bruckner devotee Johann von Herbeck attempted to revise this judgment. Having fallen out with the Philharmonic and the Hofoper after working there for five years as director, worn down by intrigues and the incessant witch-hunt, and finally being forced to resign, Herbeck had returned to his former post as concert director of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde: 110

the man whom Bruckner had begged to bring him from Linz to Vienna so that he might gain a position as teacher at the Conservatoire and be able to devote time to composing, had now himself been treated cruelly by fate. Not realising his vocation as composer until he had reached a ripe age and concerned that he might never be able to complete his immense life’s task, Bruckner, the cathedral organist in Linz, addressed an emotional plea for help to the then director Herbeck: ‘I place my fate and my future in your hands. From the bottom of my heart I beg you to save me or else I am lost.’62 And Herbeck procured for him the post occupied by the Conservatoire’s eminent composition teacher Simon Sechter, who had recently died. Now, almost a decade later, Herbeck the formerly triumphant conductor was himself fulfilling the profoundly hopeless destiny of Austrian musicians in Vienna – capital of a collapsing empire that was riven by national struggles. He became doubly aware of the tragedy of Bruckner, a composer who had already completed his Fourth and Fifth Symphonies without the Third even having been performed on account of its dedication to Wagner. Every avenue was barred to Bruckner because Eduard Hanslick, powerful music critic of the Neue freie Presse, avid Wagner opponent and spokesman for the conservative music camp centred around Brahms, saw him as Wagner’s shadow. But Herbeck, a former pupil at the monastery of Heiligenkreuz, was better able to recognise that Bruckner stood outside and above the contemporary factional in-fighting into which he had been born; he accepted the Third Symphony, outlawed and ostracised by the Philharmonic, into his Gesellschaft concert series. However, fate again was not on Bruckner’s side. His supporter Herbeck died, and when the work was due to be performed in 1877 there was no conductor in the whole of Vienna, the great city of music, brave enough to conduct a concert containing the first performance of the Third Symphony. Bruckner himself had to take to the conducting podium to look after his woebegotten child, and with the derision of the performers during rehearsal the scene was set for the only case of a composer’s martyrdom in the whole of recent music history. As the symphony took shape for the first time in real instrumental sound, the peals of laughter ringing out from the players’ desks struck Bruckner full in the face. When the composer stopped the music and tried to make himself understood to the orchestra, witty remarks began to be muttered and the high-spirited antics escalated. Then came the notorious performance in the Great Hall of the Musikverein with the audience’s organised ‘mass-exodus’ during the finale, which actually consisted of the noisy departure of the Brahmsians followed by the public, because it was fashionable for the liberal bourgeoisie to favour Brahms against Bruckner – something that Hanslick 111

continually ensured in the elegant conversational tone of his Feuilletons for the Neue freie Presse. And the moment the symphony ended – in a completely empty hall – the musicians jumped up and left the platform as fast as they could, leaving Bruckner alone at the conducting podium with tears in his eyes, in the end collecting up the parts of his symphony from the desks. Kurth, who gave a masterful account of Bruckner’s life and work down to every last subtle detail, describes this moment as follows: Bruckner – with what feelings must he have conducted to the end – stayed behind amidst a small number of pupils and followers; how he stood there at last in the empty hall, arms stretched out disconsolately, tears and misery in his face; here was his martyred existence summed up in a single moment. It also seemed as if it might mark a decisive moment in his destiny, offering him a glimmer of hope, however much despair overcame him in this moment of darkness. For immediately after the performance the publisher Th. Rättig expressed interest in the symphony, and this could have proved significant for the future because the existence of a printed work by Bruckner would have considerably increased his recognition. Providence saw to it that among the disciples standing around the despairing man to comfort him after the public had left was one of the most brilliant of those who would help spread his fame: the 17-year-old Gustav Mahler.63 The first publisher brave enough to bring out a symphony by Bruckner, and what is more a ‘rejected’ one, the Viennese Rättig thus entered into the life of the master and through such a courageous deed became the first to publish a work of Mahler also: the four-hand piano arrangement of the second version (the first printed edition) of Bruckner’s Third Symphony in D minor, entitled ‘Wagner Symphony’ by the composer in the manuscript because of its dedication. This was also an auspicious turn of fortune. For while Rättig took the first step towards publicising Bruckner’s works at one of the worst points in the master’s life – in addition to the Third Symphony Bruckner gave him his Te Deum for first publication – among the Bruckner disciples it was none other than Mahler who, 33 years later in summer 1910, made a decisive contribution to the more recent Bruckner movement (threatened at the time by a serious crisis) in an act of devotion to the master that was kept secret through a curious set of combined circumstances and remained unknown until 1940 in spite of its incomparable sincerity and sensitivity. Before we can fully evaluate this decisive contribution of Mahler’s to the Bruckner movement with all its consequences extending deep within the 112

fascist cultural crisis, we must understand Bruckner’s relationship with the seventeen-year-old Conservatoire student Mahler, who was not his pupil yet whom he entrusted with the preparation of the piano edition of the Third Symphony. In the Bruckner literature there are only a few truly penetrating examinations of this relationship. Apart from Kurth’s monumental work, only the excellent book Anton Bruckner: das Werk, der Künstler, die Zeit by Alfred Orel contains a significant, scholarly contribution to the Bruckner–Mahler question.64 There is hardly any author within the Bruckner movement whose work does not demonstrate the tendency, if not to overlook Mahler’s membership of Bruckner’s closest circle completely, then at least to attribute no historical importance to it. On the other hand, in several popular scholarly music histories that appeared in Wilhelminian Germany and achieved vast circulation, for example that of Naumann,65 Gustav Mahler is described as a ‘pupil and also to some extent the spiritual disciple of Bruckner’ without further substantiation. The obvious tendency here is to represent Mahler as a covert writer of programme music and thus as a kind of derivative of the ‘new German’ school of Liszt and Wagner, whilst Bruckner, despite all the respect for his powers of melodic invention and considerable contrapuntal ability, is represented as a Wagner epigone, indeed sometimes as the ‘Wagner of the symphony’. This is the typical great-German annexing technique transferred to the sphere of musicology which aims to demonstrate the global hegemony of German culture in all areas of music and therefore attempts at all costs to wipe out the impression that, from Schubert onwards, there was a separate Austrian development of the post-Beethovenian symphony, which is linked with the names of Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler. The consistent application of this great-German annexing technique in innumerable books and publications from the turn of the century up to the present-day Nazi literature on music history is essentially predicated on a wholly unscrupulous falsification of historical facts, and has led to the infiltration of great-German thought processes into the foreign literature on music history as well. In many French, English and American works the Viennese classical masters Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, like Bruckner and Mahler, accordingly appear under the stamp ‘Made in Germany’.66 The music of Bruckner and Mahler is rejected by some English writers because of its allegedly typical ‘Germanic’ or indeed ‘Teutonic’ monstrosities. As befitted a young man from a good family, the English composer Sir Arnold Bax spent some of his student years abroad (he lived in Dresden in 1906 and 1907), and in his memoirs of 1943, Farewell My Youth, he 113

described his particularly curious experience of hearing two movements from Mahler’s Sixth Symphony and ‘a’ symphony by Bruckner at the famous Dresden Hofkapelle concerts. (The nature of this description indicates unequivocally that he was dealing with Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony!) Thoroughly good natured and full of youthful freshness, the Englishman Bax reported that apart from the ‘heavenly length’ of the symphony – meant ironically of course – he had no other recollection of the work except the Finale. This recollection is described as follows: The finale was cast in the shape of a formidably dull fugue, and as it showed signs of approaching its peroration I thought to myself that seldom or never had I heard any orchestra pile up such a prodigious volume of sound. It was at this precise moment that an army corps of brass instruments, which must have been crouching furtively behind the percussion, arose in their might and weighed in over the top with a chorale, probably intended by the pious composer as an invocation to ‘Der alte deutsche Gott’.67 To emphasise this all the more, in the original English text of his memoirs Bax uses the actual German words ‘Der alte deutsche Gott’ in quotation marks. He called Mahler an ‘eccentric, long-winded, muddle-headed, and yet always interesting composer’ and described his music as follows: The restless perversity of the very individual orchestration excited me tremendously. I marvelled at the strange juxtaposition of the driest Kapellmeisterlich formulas and heartwrung melodies and harmonies which might have been the outpouring of a Promethean grief. And those gawky scherzos, interminable Ländlers, with knobs on (and indeed, spikes!). These works of the oddly laboriously minded Jew are still a matter for squabbling amongst amateurs of the art, and I doubt if they will ever be fully understood, or even whether the composer himself had any vision in continuity of what he was driving at.68 It should be stressed that Bax’s memoirs, from which these citations are taken, were published in 1943 and so were presumably written in 1942 – in any case in the middle of the war against Hitler’s fascist Germany – and that we are dealing here with the statements of a notable English composer in the exalted position of ‘Master of the King’s Music’ whom one certainly cannot accuse of unpatriotic Germanophilia. Nevertheless, the effect of National-Socialist music propaganda, as it developed from the earlier great-German annexing technique, was so strong that even an intelligent and well-meaning Englishman such as Bax unconsciously came under its 114

influence and spoke its language without giving a thought to the fact that Bruckner and Mahler embody the quintessence of an Austrian musical culture whose innermost substance is often diametrically opposed to imperial Germany’s, and in any case is completely independent of it. One can therefore see how even widely accessible and verifiable facts of music history can easily be falsified and concealed, let alone such a minute biographical detail as the amicable relationship between Bruckner, a composer often misunderstood even by his own followers, and the Conservatoire student Gustav Mahler. How significant was it that, as some books pointed out, Mahler was often to be seen dining with Bruckner and his students in the back rooms of certain Viennese restaurants; that the master mostly appeared at his university lectures in the company of the young Mahler and left again with him? It was also striking that among the countless Bruckner anecdotes in circulation, one never heard Decsey’s report of how Bruckner would discuss the Jewish question with his students (who needless to say were under the powerful influence of Wagner’s writings, especially Das Judentum in der Musik69) and out of consideration for Mahler and several other Jewish students present would always refer to Jews as the ‘Honourable Israelites’.70 For the fact that the deeply religious Catholic Bruckner could never be anti-Semitic suited neither his German nationalist followers in the Wagner Society nor his Brahms-loving opponents from the liberal camp who particularly wanted to view him, and attack him, as a chauvinistic Wagnerian. Several other inconspicuous accompanying circumstances have not been properly considered, and this may have contributed to the deliberate obscuring of the relationship between Bruckner and the young Mahler. As mentioned previously, Mahler was recognised among the Conservatoire students as one of the greatest compositional talents, and this had even led to his nickname ‘the new Schubert’. With the exception of his piano professor Epstein, his relations with his teachers were very lax: he distinguished himself in lessons with professors Robert Fuchs and Th. Krenn through frequent absence, although as Fuchs remarked, ‘there was nothing he couldn’t do’ in the theoretical subjects.71 On the other hand there was Mahler’s particularly close friendship with the young Hans Rott, a pupil of Bruckner who had a similarly marked talent for composition. The young Mahler was probably introduced to Bruckner by Rott.72 His relationship with Bruckner must have begun in his very first years at the Conservatoire, otherwise he would not have been found among the small group of supportive and comforting disciples surrounding Bruckner in his deep despair after the first performance of the Third Symphony in the empty hall of the 115

Musikverein. And besides, Bruckner must already have been on particularly close terms with Mahler at that time, and must have been convinced of the latter’s extraordinary gifts to have conferred upon him the distinction of preparing the four-hand piano transcription of the Third Symphony for publication by Rättig. Piano versions of the master’s symphonies had hitherto been the exclusive privilege of his own students, in particular the brothers Joseph and Franz Schalk, later joined by a third Bruckner pupil, Ferdinand Löwe. These three formed Bruckner’s closest ‘bodyguard’; they were always around him, trying to make themselves useful to him – a man who lived only for his music – occasionally tyrannising him over material matters and jealously guarding his every step in their youthful devotion. There can be little doubt that the distinction Bruckner bestowed on Mahler in assigning to him the completion of the piano edition was felt as a snub by the master’s ‘bodyguard’ and aroused considerable jealousy towards the ‘Jewish intruder’. Based on Mahler’s own information, Alma Mahler describes this in her memoirs as follows: Bruckner had two pupils who made all the piano scores of his symphonies but seem to have bullied and tormented him. They were two brothers called Schalk. Bruckner was very fond of Mahler and entrusted the piano-duet edition of his Third Symphony to him. When Mahler brought him the first movement Bruckner was childishly pleased and said with a roguish smile: ‘Now I shan’t need the Schalks any more!’ This saying became a household word with us and was dragged in on all possible, and impossible, occasions. In those early days he used often to foregather with Bruckner at midday. Bruckner stood the beer and Mahler had to pay for his own rolls; but as he generally had no money, he had to make his midday meal on beer alone. Bruckner was always surrounded by large numbers of young musicians, to whom he talked with childlike unrestraint. But if there were Jews present, he always – if he had occasion to say anything about Jews – gave them the courtesy title of ‘the Honourable Israelites’.73 However, in view of the course of Mahler’s development, Bruckner’s friendly attitude towards the young composer must be attributed with yet further significance. In the private conversations between him and the master – and Adler has confirmed that Mahler made frequent visits to Bruckner’s apartment in Hessgasse – Bruckner’s works were certainly the main topic. In his profound isolation in the vast city where he felt like an outsider at a time when his music was still very much doubted, Bruckner 116

had a particular fondness for anyone he presumed not only to be enthusiastic about his music but also to have a deeper understanding of it. This was certainly the case with his own students, the Schalk brothers and Löwe. But theirs was merely the understanding of sound, practical musicians. With the young Mahler, who was already recognised at the time as an extraordinary compositional talent without having written a single work that truly bore the stamp of genius, Bruckner stood before an as-yet-unknown creative musician who was destined to be the only one of his era to continue Bruckner’s artistic heritage as a symphonist. We do not know exactly what took place in the conversations between Bruckner and the Conservatoire student Mahler. We do not know whether the master opened up completely to the young musician, whether as a mystic who strove for the redeeming, all-encompassing God in his music he seized upon words for once to introduce a disciple to the innermost substance of his symphonic conception, or whether from the beginning there existed in the young Mahler a special understanding of Bruckner’s new kind of symphonic practice that was mistaken by his contemporaries and by several subsequent generations for an artistic defect. Whatever the case, Mahler’s artistic development clearly showed that at some point he recognised the true significance of Bruckner’s unique symphonic technique as a new symphonic Will to Form [Formwille] to which was assigned not only the creation of wide-ranging architectonic connections between the individual parts of a movement – one part compellingly preparing another and allowing what follows to grow organically out of what has gone before – but also the formation of a new overall coherence between the individual movements of a symphony. Wherein lay the historical significance of Bruckner’s new symphonic Will to Form? We must realise that within the development of the classical symphony from lesser masters in Vienna and Mannheim,74 and only a few years after being raised to the height of universal musical perfection by the first of the great Viennese masters, Joseph Haydn, potent forces began to bring about a process of gradual change in its construction. In the case of Mozart and Haydn the main weight of the symphony lay in the first movement with its sonata-form structure and the organisation of its thematic material; then the second, slow movement brought lyrical relaxation; the third provided lively contrast, originally in the form of minuet dance rhythms but later extensively re-developed and transformed by Beethoven into the scherzo; and the fourth movement finale brought the symphony to a joyous conclusion initially in rondo form. However, it was already clear from Mozart’s last symphonies that such an excess of weight attached to 117

the sonata-form construction of the first movement must have been felt by composers as a constraint. For in his Jupiter Symphony in C Major Mozart reduced the traditional predominance of the first movement and increased the finale’s significance through the unusually bold and novel combination of sonata form and fugue. Built on no fewer than five themes, the finale’s fugue unfolds before us as a sonata movement, and Mozart crowns his work with unrivalled mastery through this entirely unique structure. Standing out even more sharply and unambiguously was Beethoven’s attempt to confer heightened importance on the symphonic finale. This reorganisation of symphonic form was no doubt associated with those new compositional ideas inspired by the ethical ideals of the French Revolution, which Beethoven was the first to articulate. He no longer wrote his symphonies for the music rooms of princes’ palaces, but for a mass audience united by the idea of democracy, for a newly forming bourgeois society. This demanded a re-orientation of the symphony as an art form. The stereotypical character and succession of the old four types of movements were being questioned. Almost all of Beethoven’s symphonies formulated a new solution to this problem. In the Third Symphony, the Eroica, but also in the Fifth and Seventh Symphonies, it was already quite clear that Beethoven was striving for a new type of finale by creating concluding movements for these works that formed the crowning apotheosis of the symphony as a whole. Beethoven also made far-reaching changes to the character of the other movements. However, as his then little-understood piano sonatas and string quartets clearly demonstrated, he was also aware that the entire progression of the four symphonic movements had to undergo a radical transformation so that thematically the individual movements were organically unified. In one instance towards the end of his life Beethoven highlighted this problem with demonstrable clarity, pursuing a solution that revealed itself in the form of a musico-poetic idea: this was the finale of his Ninth Symphony in which he used the human voice for the first time in the context of an instrumental symphony. Shortly before the entry of the first bass solo summoning the orchestral instruments to intone mankind’s Hymn of Joy – and one must remember that the text of Schiller’s poem (altered purely for reasons of censorship) read ‘Freedom, bright spark of divinity, Daughter of Elysium’ [Freiheit, schöner Götterfunken, Tochter aus Elysium] – Beethoven unexpectedly has the themes from the preceding movements parade past. There was only one composer in the whole of Europe at this time, Franz Schubert, still in the prime of youth and yet already marked by death, who recognised the problem of the finale posed by Beethoven, and who 118

tried to solve it in an architectonic sense, although he could not yet find the spiritual strength to reach the necessary exalted heights and intellectual intensity. This is the mysterious reason why Schubert left the famous Symphony in B Minor unfinished. After the immense impact of the first movement with its shattering collapse, and after the blissful transfiguration of the slow second movement, to follow with a scherzo and finale would only be anti-climactic unless they could successfully be assigned a new kind of architectonic significance. Schubert shrank back from this final and greatest task. Nevertheless, many of his works show that he was aware of this crucial problem and strove to find a solution to it. The development of the entire thematic content of the four-movement Wanderer Fantasy op. 15 from a single motivic germ-cell is as much an expression of this struggle as are the ‘heavenly length’ of the finale of the great C Major Symphony and the re-emergence of the theme of the first movement in the finale of the posthumous Piano Sonata in A Major. Although Schubert’s creation of thematic connections between individual movements did not yet signify a real transformation and recasting of the classical symphony’s entire formal tradition, his music nevertheless contains certain individual traits, essentially derived from Haydn and Beethoven, which should be seen as kernels of a new symphonic Will to Form. Initially Schubert went beyond Beethoven in the areas of harmony and instrumentation. These new elements consisted of a strong preference for harmonic progressions based on third relationships, and the use of the brass section, including the trombone, as melodic instruments. From within the external sounds of this loosened harmony and rich instrumental colouration – themselves forming both the substratum and canopy for an inexhaustibly rich melodic process – emerged the aforementioned embryonic beginnings of a new symphonic Will to Form. These beginnings could clearly be seen in Schubert’s typical practice of expanding the transition between first and second subjects developmentally during the presentation of the first movement’s thematic material, in order to create a more homogeneous relationship between the two contrasting themes and the concluding epilogue. The essential element of this was the surrounding of a theme with newly introduced melodic material, which inevitably affected the course of the symphonic form in that it was given individual character by the composer and began to play an architectonic role. To begin with, however, these new possibilities of developing symphonic form heralded in Schubert’s music would remain unrecognised and unused for quite some time. After the deaths of Beethoven and Schubert the symphony developed along lines that drifted away from Beethoven’s ideological 119

Franz Schubert.

aims. It was no longer a question of creating a new musical form in the sphere of absolute music, born from the spirit of romanticism. A conservative trend, linked to the Leipzig circle around Mendelssohn and Schumann, strove above all to preserve the old classical symphonic structure. This group of ‘middle-German symphonists’, culminating in Brahms, tried to reconcile romantic expressiveness with classical form. New revolutionary forces sprang up no longer in the sphere of absolute music but from the romantic dictum of unifying all the arts. The cradle of this new trend was Paris, where Hector Berlioz emerged as the founder of a new artistic genre, the programme symphony, whose structure was determined by the realistic portrayal of extra-musical models usually providing the whole plot. The musical symbol in the form of a specific melody pervading the whole work, characterising a particular person or dramatic action and appearing in countless variations, became for Berlioz a central element in the structure. This principal melody, which he called an idée fixe, had a similar function in Berlioz’s programme symphony to that of the Leitmotiv in Wagner’s symphonic music dramas. If in his native country Berlioz went unrecognised during his lifetime, in Germany he nevertheless exerted a strong influence on Liszt and the musicians gathered around him in Weimar, the so-called ‘New German’ school. Liszt took from Berlioz not only the idea of programme music but also the new sound world of his enormously expanded orchestral apparatus, whose colouristic element played as prominent a role as the chromatic colour [Chroma] of a harmonic language freed from the concept of tonality in the traditional sense. In a radical break from conventional notions of symphonic form Liszt in fact went even further than Berlioz. If Berlioz had extended the number of symphonic movements to five in the Symphonie fantastique and to seven in Romeo and Juliet, Liszt developed the genre of the symphonic poem from the romantic piano sonata in which the different movements of the symphony were combined into a single movement. Although the colouristic and harmonic richness of Berlioz’s and Liszt’s programme music is at odds with its comparative poverty of part-writing, which both masters generally employed to homophonic and chordal effect, it nevertheless exerted a powerful influence on the development of Wagner, whose personality and work were very closely identified by contemporaries with the aims and theoretical artistic debates of the ‘New German School’ because of his friendship with Liszt. Although Berlioz and Liszt represented the epitome of cosmopolitan world citizenship, the ‘New German School’ took on a pronounced political character through the membership of Wagner. It was regarded as the standard-bearer of a new, radical German nationalism born 120

from the spiritual revival following the wars of freedom against Napoleon and foreign domination by the French. In fact, for many the radical artistic nature of the ‘New German School’ allowed German nationalism to continue to appear in a favourable light even at a time when it had long since lost all radical qualities in the ‘German misery’ following the defeat of the revolution in 1848, and had become the principal basis for reactionary PrussianHohenzollern imperialism. The struggles for and against Wagner and the ‘New German School’ that took place during Mahler’s youth in an Austria uprooted by national conflicts must be viewed in this light: it was a battle for and against the artistic ambassadors of a Prussian imperialism, which was vastly strengthened after the victorious war of conquest against France, viewed the decaying Habsburg Empire as its sphere of influence, and was passionately celebrated by the great-Germans and by Schönerer’s ‘Free from Rome’ movement.75 They considered the Habsburgs no longer capable of maintaining the German ‘master race’s’ vulnerable position of supremacy over those other peoples of the Dual Monarchy who were awakening into national self-awareness and who were in turn vehemently opposed by the liberal bourgeoisie who had secured useful economic positions for themselves during the period of rapid capitalist expansion in Austro-Hungary. The degree to which these party struggles involved the erection of artificial barriers not only is shown by the large number of Wagner disciples amongst the circles of ‘radical’ Austrian Jews who unreservedly recognised the genius as well as the artistic and politico-cultural revolutionary in him – long after he had become a renegade and had devoted himself to Treitschke and to the racial doctrine of Count Gobineau – but also is demonstrated by the identification of the Austrian symphonist Bruckner with the affairs of the Wagner party and the ‘New German School’. For at precisely the same time as the great factional struggles around Wagner were raging most violently in Vienna, when the politico-cultural centre of gravity had shifted from Vienna to Berlin and Wagner’s music had engulfed the Austrian world like a storm flood burying the proud edifice of Vienna’s great eighteenth-century operatic tradition, and when Berlioz and Liszt stood at their most dazzling in the public spotlight as the renewers and creators of a new symphonic art form, the activities of Bruckner had begun in the tranquillity of the upper-Austrian countryside, far away from the tumult of the wider world. It had taken decades for the hitherto unrealised new symphonic Will to Form, heralded so promisingly in the work of Schubert, to be given a new lease of life by an Austrian musician who was exactly three-and-a-half years old when Schubert died. One-and-half years later it transpired that 121

in the tiny hamlet of Ansfelden, Bruckner’s birthplace, the five-year-old boy was called to the deathbed of the 77-year-old local priest because he wanted once more to bless the one ‘whose truthfulness and sensitivity [Ergriffensein] before God deserved his special praise’, the ‘one chosen from the large number of children in the village’.76 Then the schoolteacher’s son from Ansfelden, who was already accompanying the singing in the local church at the age of eleven, made his ascent to choirboy in the Benedictine Abbey of St Florian, to schoolteacher, to organist, and to composition pupil of the famous music theorist Simon Sechter in Vienna, whose instruction Bruckner enjoyed for a full six years until he had himself attained an unparalleled virtuosity in the command of counterpoint and fugal composition. He was 36 years old and held the respected position of cathedral organist in Linz but was not yet aware of his vocation. During this time he became acquainted with the score of Wagner’s Tannhäuser through Otto Kitzler, conductor at the theatre in Linz, and this was an overwhelming experience for a man who until then had heard almost nothing but church music. Now he realised that though he was a master on the organ and in counterpoint, he would have to become a student once again in order to study the classical masters, composition and orchestration. After two years of further study the final obstacles that had barred the way to the full development of his genius were overcome, and at the age of 40 Bruckner wrote his first great masterpiece, the Mass in D Minor, composed for the consecration of the new cathedral in Linz and first performed there on 20 November 1864 under his personal direction. Later Bruckner conducted the work again in the concert hall, after which only a few more performances took place in church. The next performance was given exactly 29 years later on 31 March 1893 in a concert hall – this time in Hamburg and conducted by Mahler. After the Mass, however, Bruckner began to wrestle compositionally with symphonic form, and between 1865 and his death in 1896 his nine great symphonies appeared, although he did not live to finish the last of these, completing only the first three movements of this mighty work and leaving sketches of the finale. How did it come about, then, that Bruckner the upper-Austrian rustic, recumbent in his own special world of organ sounds and Eucharistic splendour, and who had humbly devoted himself to music in order to lend elaborate expression to his feelings of intense mystical inspiration in the face of God, was dragged into the party struggles of a romantic age completely alien to him to such a degree that arguments continually raged about his life’s work as a symphonist, which, reinforced with every new intervention, created a Bruckner controversy that has lasted until the pres122

ent day? The event that apparently brought this about began in the summer of 1865 when Bruckner travelled to Munich to attend the first performance of Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, which was to take place on 15 May. Since the première had to be postponed until 10 June, however, Bruckner had the opportunity to come into contact with Wagner and Hans von Bülow. By that time he had completed the first two movements of his Symphony in C Minor and he took the manuscript to Munich with him to continue the work, during which, according to his own assertion, as a result of studying Wagner’s music he ‘felt like a chained dog which had broken free’.77 The deep love and humblest reverence felt for Wagner by Bruckner and expressed in touchingly naive ways declared itself thus. But despite every encouragement, he could not yet be persuaded to meet Wagner face to face and he would never have dared to show Wagner the manuscript of his symphony. Nevertheless, according to his biographer August Göllerich,78 Bruckner played the two completed movements and the scherzo of the symphony written during this time in Munich to Hans von Bülow who was completely astonished by the music of this completely unknown talent. Several times he exclaimed ‘How magnificent!’, and then ‘How daring of you! This is so dramatic!’ whereupon Bruckner merely said ‘It’s of no consequence’ [Dös is’ ganz gleich]. According to Göllerich, Wagner came in straight after this, and, as Bülow excitedly reported his impressions, said ‘You must show it to me too’. But the horrified Bruckner refused to do this, later commenting that he did not dare to play Wagner his symphony. Von Bülow’s favourable opinion of Bruckner’s musical abilities appears to have made an impression on Wagner. For when Bruckner, who additionally held the post of director of the Linz choral society Frohsinn, approached Wagner some years later with the request to have a work of his for male choir performed at a great festival concert given by the society, Wagner replied in a very cordial letter of 31 January 1868, pointing out that although a work for male voices was hard to find amongst his oeuvre, since Bruckner had informed him that the festival concert included orchestra and a female choir, I believe I can draw your attention to something very appropriate: the final chorus of my latest dramatic work, Die Meistersinger. … The score of the third act should be ready by now, so that you may be able to obtain at least a proof-sheet of this final chorus. … I look forward with pleasure to further information. I warmly reciprocate your kind sentiments and remain respectfully your faithful Richard Wagner79 123

The Frohsinn choral society gave the première of the final chorus of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg in the festival concert that took place on 4 April 1868 – that is, three months before the première of the whole work in Munich on 21 June; and from that day on Bruckner was considered a favourite of the master by the Austrian Wagner party and in particular by the Wagner Societies. After that, Bruckner’s cause became the concern of all Wagnerian organisations, and accordingly opposition to Bruckner became the battle-cry of the conservative faction that had set Brahms up as a rival king on the escutcheon. It was then that the misrepresentation and ideological distortion of Bruckner the man and the musician began – something that he had to put up with from friends as well as from opponents. The misrepresentation on the part of Hanslick, who described Bruckner’s works as ‘giant symphonic serpents’ in one of his articles, or on the part of Brahms who coined the phrase ‘Bruckner swindle’ [Bruckner-Schwindel]80 was no worse than the misrepresentation on the part of one of his oldest students and disciples, Joseph Schalk, who wrote a Nordic mythological commentary to the Eighth Symphony.81 All tried to account for him in terms of some kind of dependence on different aspects of his environment: on Wagner or on a fusty clericalism to which he had been subjected during a youth spent in lowly positions within the provincial world of an upper Austria dominated by episcopal rule. There was hardly anyone who tried to experience and understand Bruckner from the point of view of his independence from the cultural mindset of his romantic surroundings. At best, those closest to him recognised, as the saying went, that the Holy Trinity for Bruckner consisted of the loving God, his patron the Bishop of Linz, and Richard Wagner. They knew that for Bruckner, Wagner was above all the great innovator of musical language whose harmony and orchestral palette he made his own. The majority nevertheless believed that this was an end in itself, and did not see that Bruckner took up the romantic musical language of his time only in order to master it technically and to create something new from his profoundly individual artistic sensibility, something that at the same time represented the fulfilment and the surpassing of romantic artistic principles. Even in the periods between his laborious work, when the man who could only fully express himself in his music indulged in relaxed conversation with his students and followers mostly about his compositions, some of his innocent remarks contributed to the misunderstandings that attached themselves to his name and his work. For example, when he described the famous horn motif at the beginning of his Fourth Symphony in E-flat major as the solemn call with which the New Year was heralded from the tower in mediae124

val Linz, such a remark circulated all the way to the opposing camp. Then the claim was repeatedly made that his symphonies were an incoherent combination of Wagnerian tone-paintings – bombastic, extravagant and not even fulfilling the most basic demands of structure and design. Even by this time only very few – and the young Mahler may certainly be counted amongst this close circle of chosen ones – were able to see clearly that the principle of realistic tone-painting that played such a significant role in Wagner’s music dramas and in the programme music of Berlioz and Liszt, could offer no conclusive answer to Bruckner the symphonist, and that on the contrary Bruckner’s main strength was the architectonic element, the formal design of his symphonies. For though Wagner’s nature motifs, set above an undercurrent of delicate string tremolos, are a characteristic feature of Bruckner’s symphonic themes, and though Bruckner’s orchestral palette in part contains Wagnerian sound effects, these are only isolated aspects of a symphonic practice that drew the source of its power from two quite different worlds: the world of organ sonorities filling the domes of the two baroque churches of St Florian and Linz so intimately bound up with Bruckner’s life, one moment with gentle atmospheric tones, the next with majestic peals; and the world of the Austrian countryside pulsating with the torrid, earthbound life of its people in sturdy, native dance rhythms but also replete with that magical lyricism whose mood found its immortal expression in the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert. As Schubert’s successor, Bruckner imparted to music something of great significance and profundity out of this Austrian world: an architectonic development of the post-classical symphony, which Beethoven himself had already foreshadowed in the formal experiments of his Ninth, and to which Schubert’s work had pointed the way with prophetic genius. It was Bruckner’s destiny and vocation to travel further down this path and to open it up more and more through his intensive struggle from one work to the next, until Mahler was able to continue along it and lead across into the border regions where the music of the post-romantic era ebbed away. Therefore, alongside the post-classical symphony’s two lines of development as interpreted by Paul Bekker, who traced these connections for the first time in his book Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien (1921) – the Leipzig circle of ‘middle-German symphonists’ Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, and the Weimar circle of ‘New German programme symphonists’ centred on Liszt – a third line of development emerges that alone took up the problem of furthering the architectonic development of the post-classical symphony and offered a decisive solution: the ‘Austrian finale-symphonists’ Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler. 125

At first this conception of Bekker’s – that the crucial formal and architectonic advancement of the post-Beethovenian symphony had been carried out by a separate Austrian development – was met with icy silence in German musicological literature. It took five years until finally in 1925 a serious scholarly attitude was adopted towards Bekker’s thesis. Both Kurth and Orel have essentially confirmed the existence of this separate Austrian development of the post-classical symphony, and established its fundamental details. ‘The Austrian symphony … is a symphony of growth and germination’, claimed Bekker. ‘It draws its power not from the given but from the promise of the goal’.82 Its historical and developmental significance lay in the fact that its three main representatives, Schubert, Bruckner and Mahler, worked towards establishing a new, overall architectonic coherence across the four rigidly categorised movements of the classical symphonic cycle. This led to a re-orientation of the symphonic process in the sense that its centre of gravity, hitherto bound up with the sonata-form opening movement, was shifted more and more towards the end of the symphony so that the finale gained increased significance and weight in relation to the other movements. If Schubert had shown the way to this by thematically interlocking the beginning and end of a work through the introduction of the principal theme from the first movement into the finale, or, as in the Wanderer Fantasy, by developing the thematic content of all four movements from a single motivic germ-cell, then Bruckner took up these methods and deepened their effect. He developed on a particularly large scale Schubert’s initial method of expanding the transition between first and second subjects developmentally during the first movement’s thematic presentation, and thereby introducing new melodic material. The sharply contrasted gestures, moulded by the sound world of the organ and typical of Bruckner’s musical sensibilities, played a significant role here in that he often introduced new melodic material immediately after the presentation and polyphonic treatment of the first main idea, greatly intensifying the significance of the entry. In addition to this, Bruckner often used signal-like motifs built from arpeggiated triads as symphonic germ-cells, which are less suited to organic development [Fortspinnung] than to the unfolding of a polyphonic interplay of motifs from which the structure of the thematic idea emerges and gains shape. Thus in Bruckner’s music everything is in a state of flux and becoming, unfolding within a movement in several symphonic groupings usually arranged into three sections, in each of which the intensity increases powerfully and then fades away. A movement of a Bruckner symphony is thus 126

built from a series of extended harmonic sequences, mostly progressing by thirds, which provide the subsoil for a wonderfully rich polyphonic play of motifs and melodies. The old tripartite structure of classical sonata form (exposition of the thematic material–development–recapitulation with coda) is retained by Bruckner but expanded into something monumental. The way that the individual symphonic sub-groups swell to a climax and then sink down again, bringing them into architectonic relation with each other so that in an ingenious sense of artistic unity one last closing ascent emerges as the high point after a series of large-scale intensifications to crown all that has gone before, demonstrates the great power of Bruckner’s formal design, which was of vital importance to Mahler the symphonist. It was Bruckner’s great skill in the technical construction of movements that enabled him in the first place to clear the way for resolving the finale problem. He strove with every conscious means to present the finale as the ultimate goal and crowning of the symphonic process. Mahler took up this idea. As Paul Bekker explains, he approached the symphony with the same naivety of the natural musician as Bruckner. But he had two advantages over the latter: he combined the naivety of the Austrian musician with the penetrating, superior organizational intellect of the Jew; and Bruckner’s work already lay before him when he began. How deeply this work must have spoken to him is evident not only from the fact that he was a disciple of Bruckner … Bruckner’s profoundest effect on Mahler rather lies in the fact that his work pointed Mahler towards the only structure which would enable further development of the symphonic genre: the finale symphony.83 Based on this approach, Bekker undertook a historical classification of the symphonists Bruckner and Mahler, which constituted the severest challenge to great-German ideology. Fundamentally irrefutable, it nevertheless could not be acknowledged completely uncritically by the serious musicology of scholars such as Kurth and Orel, because in the arguments adduced for representing Schubert as the ‘herald’, Bruckner as ‘the strongest elemental force’ and Mahler as the ‘consummator’ of the Austrian finale symphony, the concept of development is employed in too formulaic a fashion. Bekker’s opinion that whilst Bruckner certainly aspired to solve the finale problem, he never succeeded in elevating the finale to be the ‘actual life source of the symphonic whole’ because he mostly lost himself in the great torrents of emotion and inexhaustible melodic riches filling his slow movements, is countered by Alfred Orel in his Bruckner volume with weighty 127

arguments that are fully corroborated in Ernst Kurth’s comprehensive analysis of Bruckner’s finale technique and in his individual descriptions of the master’s nine final movements. Orel’s attitude towards the separate Austrian development of the post-classical symphony is noteworthy. He sees the line of development from Schubert to Bruckner as a complete antithesis to the romantic culture of Schumann and Brahms. The Austrian symphonists Schubert and Bruckner were prototypes of a popular/national and nature-like [volkstümlich-naturhaften] trend and therefore their music was completely bound up with the character of the Austrian landscape. This leads to the question of Mahler’s Austrian identity [Oesterreichertum]. Mahler was certainly an Austrian but not in the same sense as the schoolteachers’ sons Schubert, from the Viennese suburb of Lichtenthal, or Bruckner, from the upper-Austrian village of Ansfelden. ‘Mahler is an Austrian, but … the house of the merchant from Kalischt stood in a different relationship to the people from that of the schoolmaster’s house in Ansfelden or the Lichtenthal schoolhouse in the Viennese suburbs’.84 To begin with, therefore, in his attitude towards nationality [Volkstum], Mahler was far more like the highly educated intellectuals Schumann and Brahms for whom folk music was only material they occasionally made use of in order to imbue it with their individuality. However, even here Mahler fundamentally differentiated himself from Schumann and Brahms, and ultimately this had a decisive effect on his inclusion among Austrian symphonists. Orel formulated these subtle, ostensibly rather hair-splitting distinctions as follows in the above-cited passage from his Bruckner volume: Mahler approaches the people from the outside, but thanks to his greater adaptability he manages to identify more closely with them; his longing for nature allows him to eavesdrop on the peculiarities of the people, which those other artists did not recognise at the time because of their different personal attitudes, or which they did not want to perceive as the purpose of their art; for Schumann and Brahms seek the sensitive, the warm-hearted, the ideal in the people; Mahler in addition to this grasps the coarse, the realistic, the worldly.85 Although it is possible to read into Orel’s statements a disguised kowtowing to the National-Socialist ideology of racial anti-Semitism, it should nevertheless be made clear that he emphatically supports Mahler in his subsequent discussions, illuminating the historical interconnections between his development and Bruckner’s with great objectivity. He vigorously rejects the view, developed at some length in the great-German-orientated music literature, that the significance of Mahler’s music rested only on the 128

ever-present aura surrounding his fascinating personality as a conductor. He had become convinced of this on two occasions: in November 1907 when he heard Mahler’s famous performance of the Second Symphony with which he bade farewell to the Viennese public; and on 12 September 1910 at the first performance of the Eighth Symphony in Munich. And in a forceful polemic, Orel revealed the deficiencies of the earlier Bruckner biographer Rudolf Louis, who characterised Mahler’s Second Symphony as follows in his essay ‘Deutsche Musik der Neuzeit’ [‘German Music of Recent Times’]: To take this symphony seriously in the fullest sense of the word requires lack of certainty in the most basic functions of artistic judgement: in distinguishing the genuine from the counterfeit; and this is only possible on the basis of complete artistic blindness or the total corruption of ones ‘perceptual instincts’.86 In his monumental Bruckner volume Kurth affectionately described Mahler’s conductorial support for his deeply revered master Bruckner and, naturally, also addressed the influence of Bruckner’s symphonic practice on Mahler as a composer. What he says about this was framed by his wellknown conception of ‘Bruckner’s remoteness’ [Fernstand]. If the romantic spirit forged ahead, isolated in time and within unknown expanses, reflecting the past in the new and in the individual self; if romanticism was very much ‘an age of conflicts, of tragedy, of the unredeemable, one that had lapsed into world-weariness’, then Bruckner was ‘a spirit of timeless tranquillity’. Kurth defined this as ‘the primal repose of the mystic who exists in a state not of the phenomenal world but who nevertheless feels all its movements from the depths of his world-view and is therefore almost incomprehensible to all those caught up in it, despite embracing all their experiences’.87 This also distinguished Bruckner from other romantics, who set their sights on the unreal and the fantastic, on alien worlds and horizons beyond their own confines: These wanted to go into the distance, but he was in the distance. In his tranquil existence, he was in fact opposed to the endless all-consuming desire and restless activity of the developing times. He was like one submerged, but not so much that he sank into an isolation and eternity outside of his own time; from the outset he remained rooted in his origins and from there met the incoming tide of the times. Yet, unlike virtually all other artists, he remained detached from the world. He was not consumed by the surrounding 129

world of romanticism. He was conditioned by, and thrust against, his time; he was the consummation of romanticism and at the same time its conqueror, in the way that these always co-exist. Bruckner must be viewed not in terms of his dependencies but in terms of his independence, and the manner in which he strode out against his surroundings. To be at peace with Bruckner or to distort him, these are the only possibilities.88 With this conception of the Bruckner phenomenon, Kurth examines the influence of his music on the following generation of composers and concludes that many of Bruckner’s technical features were adopted and developed by the three greatest musicians of the neo-romantic [neuromantische] era: Mahler, Reger and Strauss. A substantial gulf nevertheless separated them all from Bruckner’s world, for each one of them was completely caught up in the relentless headlong development of their times. Bruckner did indeed lie nearest to Mahler, a member, of course, of his most intimate circle, whose rise Bruckner was able to follow closely until his appointment to the directorship of the Vienna Hofoper. But Mahler’s was a thoroughly romantic nature, all fierce determination and tragic inner turmoil. It should also be noted that Mahler had written a considerable number of songs as well as his first three symphonies during Bruckner’s lifetime but was still virtually unknown as a composer, and that there is also absolutely no indication in the entire extant literature as to whether he showed Bruckner his works and what he might have thought about them. It is well known, however, that in summer 1896 Brahms expressed the wish through a mutual friend to become acquainted with the score of Mahler’s Second Symphony. This happened a few months before Bruckner’s death. According to Ludwig Karpath’s memoirs, Brahms’s opinion of the symphony was as follows: ‘It is not at all clear to me why Richard Strauss is hailed as the revolutionary in music: I consider that Mahler is the king of these revolutionaries’.89 However, one should not forget that Bruckner had been seriously ill for a considerable period and was preoccupied at that time with only a single thought: to complete his life’s work. Bauer-Lechner reports in her memoirs that Mahler visited the old master regularly and that, on leaving, Bruckner ‘not only unfailingly accompanied him to the door of the flat … but would then embark on the stairs with him, making his way down from the third floor, through the second and first until finally they were at the bottom, insisting on honouring his guest in this way’.90 On his penultimate visit he found Bruckner in a great deal of suffering. He was presumably writing the finale of his Ninth Symphony at this time, 130

something he would not live to complete. On this occasion Bruckner said to Mahler: So, dear friend, it’s a matter of getting down to things now. I must at least get the Tenth finished, or I’ll cut a poor figure when I appear before the Good Lord, as I soon shall, and he says to me: ‘Well, my boy, why did I give you so much talent, if not to sing to my honour and glory? But you’ve done far too little with it!’91 In conversation with his brother Otto, Mahler declared that he was not guilty of one-sided over-estimation of Bruckner and that in some respects he even considered Brahms to be the more accomplished, but that he found it deeply tragic that justice was not done to Bruckner while he was still healthy and able to enjoy life, and he, Mahler, would always put all his efforts into supporting him. So Bruckner’s work accompanied Mahler throughout his life like an inheritance, and although by nature he was neither religious nor a true believer, it ultimately became crucial for his worldview and for the development of his powers of inner experience. As Walter explained, although Mahler never achieved a ‘definite outlook’ that ‘might have stilled his restless heart’,92 in the end it was music alone that offered him answers to the ultimate questions about the nature of our existence. In this sense his musical creativity gained for him a Brucknerian kind of religious significance, and so it was no wonder that in the final analysis the Bruckner experience formed the key to Mahler’s symphonic composition. Only from this perspective can one appreciate the true greatness and symbolic significance of Mahler’s act of devotion towards the posthumous recognition of Bruckner through which, in complete secrecy in summer 1910 a year before his own death, he created the finest monument to his deep veneration and friendship for the late master. It should first be noted that in his initial year of office at the Vienna Hofoper he was invited to sign the public appeal for a Bruckner monument to be erected in Vienna, a request that he turned down in a speech to the assembled orchestra: ‘Let us rather perform Bruckner. Wherever there were people who misjudged and persecuted Bruckner while he was alive, there is no place for me!’93 In 1910, however, long after the Bruckner monument had been erected in the Vienna Stadtpark, support for the master and the dissemination of his works in general faced almost insurmountable obstacles. The first editions of the symphonies – which (like the Masses and choral works) had been published by small Viennese houses such as Th. Rättig, A. Guttmann, C. Haslinger and the printers Jos. Eberle & Co. – could no longer be bought or hired by orchestras and concert societies interested in performing 131

Bruckner’s works, because they had long been out of print and could not be reprinted due to peculiarly complicated circumstances of legal ownership. Although Bruckner only twice received a publisher’s fee during a lifetime’s work (50 Gulden and 150 Gulden), and was happy when any firm was prepared to print one of his works, the rights of ownership and sale of Bruckner’s works changed hands many times partly as a result of monopolisation amongst music businesses and the buying up of smaller firms by larger ones. So it transpired that works by Bruckner were often in the hands of two or three publishing firms at the same time, with the owner of the rights, from whom agencies expected payment for the placing and marketing of the works, themselves hampering distribution because they would not commit themselves to print material at their own cost but rather expected to share the costs with their partners since they shared the profits. For example, Bruckner’s Third Symphony, of which Gustav Mahler made a four-hand piano reduction,94 had been published in 1878 in its first printed version by the firm of Rättig & Bösendorfer. In a contract dating from 13 July 1901, this firm sold the joint copyright to the publishers Universal Edition, which had been founded by the merging of several smaller music dealers in that same year. This large publishing house accordingly had the right to include the symphony in its catalogue and to sell it, although it had to pass on the revenue from the ownership rights to Rättig & Bösendorfer. Rättig & Bösendorfer then sold their entire enterprise to the publishing house Schlesinger-Lienau in Berlin, which thus also acquired the ownership rights to the Third Symphony (together with the Te Deum, which had earlier been published for the first time by Rättig & Bösendorfer), and while Universal Edition retained the copyright, it was not in a position to reprint material for performance without the agreement of the new owners. Yet more complicated were the publication terms of the First, Second, Fourth and Sixth Symphonies, as well as some works for male chorus that the master only managed to get printed in 1892, four years before his death, and then only by the music printers Josef Eberle & Co. in Vienna, who were not themselves a publishing house and therefore handed over the works on commission to the firm of C. Haslinger. Several years later Eberle & Co. merged to become a joint-stock company, Waldheim-Eberle A.G., which in practical terms meant a change of ownership. The expensive printing plates of Bruckner’s works ended up in a basement where they lay unused for nearly two decades. In the meantime the firm Haslinger, which owned the commission rights for the above-mentioned works, was also bought by Schlesinger-Lienau in Berlin and set up as their Vienna branch. With that, Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, previously published for the first time 132

by C. Haslinger, also passed into the hands of the Berlin firm, which now had ownership rights to the Third and Eighth Symphonies as well as the Te Deum, and owned the distribution rights to the works formerly published by Josef Eberle & Co., while the distribution rights to the Third Symphony were in the hands of Universal Edition. The Fifth and Seventh Symphonies had originally been acquired from Bruckner and published for the first time by the Viennese publishing house A. Guttmann. This complicated publishing situation made the task immensely difficult for those few conductors who were eager at the time to act as pioneers for Bruckner’s works. There was no longer any orchestral material of these works available to buy but only a few sets of parts, which were lent out for rehearsal and performances; there was no inspection material through which new conductors and concert organisations could develop their interest in Bruckner’s works. Through the founding of Universal Edition, however, the publishing of music in Austria took on new impetus, particularly when the young Emil Hertzka, with all his business acumen, idealism and liberal thinking, became managing director of this great enterprise in 1908. The young director was one of the few who saw his job primarily not as a business but as a cultural mission. In buying the publisher Josef Aibl he gained works by Strauss; he showed interest in the young, still completely unknown Czech composer Leosˇ Janácˇek, and in Mahler’s symphonies, whose distribution rights he had acquired from Waldheim-Eberle A.G., Mahler took an interest in Hertzka’s publishing plans and immediately recommended Schoenberg and Zemlinsky to him. Then he urgently appealed to him to acquire the entire rights to all of Bruckner’s symphonies and to organise a new edition of these works, which would enable the coherent and wideranging promotion of the master’s music. But Hertzka backed away from this plan again and again. He remonstrated with Mahler that the acquisition of all Bruckner’s symphonies and their printing would cost so much that he would have to give up part of his publishing programme since no substantial earnings could be anticipated in the near future from investing in such a new edition. Mahler, however, stuck to his guns, repeatedly pointing out that in the hands of several competing publishers Bruckner’s works would not be taken care of and were as good as lost, and that it was the duty of the leading Austrian publishing house to remedy this. Mahler’s advice was not wasted. Starting in 1909 and carrying on through 1910, Universal Edition began acquiring the complete rights of all Bruckner’s works from their former owners, or to be precise, buying up 133

Schoenberg’s portrait of Emil Hertzka.

whole publishing firms, such as A. Guttmann, who had Bruckner’s works on their books. This amalgamation of Bruckner’s works by Universal Edition was completed when a contract was signed on 21 June 1910 with Waldheim-Eberle A.G. to transfer the complete rights of those works formerly printed by Eberle & Co. to Universal Edition. At the same time Universal Edition purchased Mahler’s first four symphonies from Waldheim-Eberle. Since Hertzka knew that Mahler, the idealistic instigator of the new Bruckner edition, was not immediately dependent on royalties from his works because of his current conducting activities in America, he felt able to ask him for certain further practical support. As Alma Mahler reports in her memoirs, he visited Mahler in Toblach during summer 1910 to pass on the welcome news that he had acquired his first four symphonies from Waldheim-Eberle for Universal Edition. The four symphonies, printed at a cost of 50,000 Krone (10,000 dollars), were almost beginning to show profit: only 2500 Krone were still outstanding. Now Hertzka had fulfilled Mahler’s dearest wish by acquiring all Bruckner’s works in one go in preparation for the new edition. What Hertzka expected from Mahler in return, and the way in which the latter received this proposal, is described by Alma as follows: Hertzka went on to ask Mahler to forgo his profits until a second sum of 50,000 had been earned, on the grounds that Universal Edition would like to take over the works of Bruckner also and advertise them at great expense. Mahler agreed at once. He thought it only right that he should sacrifice his profits for another fifteen years out of love of Bruckner, without of course receiving, or expecting, a penny from the sale of Bruckner’s works. This was a great sacrifice to make to Bruckner’s memory and shows how deeply he revered him.95 Alma cited two further small matters of interest that shed light on Mahler’s attitude towards Bruckner: Mahler’s love of Bruckner was life-long. He gave performances of all his symphonies one after the other in New York, although they had a very bad press. In Vienna he proclaimed his merits as a matter of course. In the title-page of his copy of Bruckner’s Te Deum, he crossed out the words: ‘For solo voices, chorus and orchestra, organ ad libitum’, and wrote: ‘For the tongues of angels, heaven-blest, chastened hearts, and souls purified in the fire!’96 134

A letter from Mahler dated 16 April 1892 was found in Bruckner’s estate in which he reports to the master as follows on the performance he had given of the Te Deum the day before in Hamburg: The participants as well as the entire audience were most profoundly moved by its powerful structure and truly sublime conception, and at the end of the performance I experienced what I consider to be the greatest triumph of a work: the audience remained silent and motionless in their seats, and only when the conductor and the performers began to leave their places did the thundering applause burst forth.97 This portion of the letter is cited in the monograph Anton Bruckner, sein Leben und Werk by Max Auer, the collaborator of August Göllerich whom Bruckner himself appointed as his biographer. It is one of the few places in this extensive, otherwise extremely valuable book where the author does justice to the activities of Mahler in serving Bruckner’s music – at least indirectly through quotation, evidently so as not to have to use his own words. The first performance of the Mass in D Minor, conducted by Mahler in Hamburg on 31 March 1893, was specifically hailed by Kurth as the ‘reclaiming of the work for the concert hall’.98 The Mass had been performed only once outside the church, in Linz twenty-nine years earlier under Bruckner. Nevertheless it is recorded in Auer’s Bruckner volume in a dry and insignificant way in relation to other events apparently of far more importance to the author, giving a clear illustration of the embarrassed and resentful attitude of the Austrian Bruckner movement’s leading personalities towards Mahler. The passage reads: The spring of 1893 saw the performance of the Third Symphony in Munich under Levi, who also went on to give a deeply moving performance of the work in Berlin in October. Further performances took place of the Te Deum in Hamburg, Düsseldorf, and of the Mass in D in Hamburg under G. Mahler and in Steyr under the master’s student Franz Bayer, who from then on performed the work regularly during the Easter Sunday service.99 Mahler’s pioneering work carried out on behalf of Bruckner through performing all nine symphonies in numerous American cities received no mention at all in Auer’s book. Instead he describes the first complete performance of the Sixth Symphony on 26 February 1899 in a Vienna Philharmonic concert under Mahler as ‘barbarically cut’ on account of a few deletions, although he had to concede the ‘almost universal public and critical success of the work’.100 135

It is worth noting that a sensational propaganda campaign was waged by the National Socialists directly against the new edition of Bruckner’s symphonies facilitated by Mahler, whose newly printed material after 1924 had been based exclusively on the results of Ferdinand Löwe’s performance practice in the Vienna Concert Society [Konzertverein]. This was directly linked with increased interest in the master’s work prompted by the 1924 centenary celebrations, and to the manuscripts he had earlier bequeathed to the Court Library [Hofbibliothek], which had never been made accessible to the public and were preserved in the Vienna National Library. It was known that Bruckner’s estate contained manuscripts of the original versions of his symphonies, which never went to print because the master revised each of his works at least once in an attempt to draw on the experience of the first performances. However, he often allowed himself to be advised by his friends and followers when preparing his scores for subsequent printing. For decades Bruckner’s symphonies were played in the printed editions of Universal Edition, and several generations became accustomed to hearing the works in this form. If the aura of a tradition formed around Bruckner’s music, then this was a result of Universal Edition’s printed versions. At a time when the rich, intensely colourful sounds of the romantics had lost their acoustic charm in the post-war period and a new post-romantic sensibility had emerged in which harsh dissonance and astringency were not just commonplace but even passed for positive qualities, the attention of conductors and musicologists began to turn to those elements of Bruckner’s music that were considered important constituent parts in the personal style of a composer who had spent his vital years of development, up to the threshold of mature adulthood, in the service of the church: in a world filled with the sacred choral music of antiquity and the baroque and ancient art of the organ. It was correctly assumed that the unpublished posthumous manuscripts of the original versions must afford a deeper insight into Bruckner’s inner compositional workings than the known printed versions whose style of orchestration, derived from the organ’s sharp contrasts of sound, no longer retained its original pungency but was softened in tone according to current turn-of-the-century taste, its severities masked and re-worked by a blend of romantic sonorities. The numerous cuts in the printed versions also led to the conclusion that the original structure of the symphonies had been altered through subsequent interventions that were not always entirely satisfactory. For these reasons, the Leipzig conductor Georg Göhler, a distinguished musician who can be counted among the friends and champions of Gustav 136

Mahler, had already discussed the problem of cuts and instrumental re-touchings in Bruckner’s symphonies in an article of 1918 [sic] in the Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft,101 and similarly a few years later in his book of 1925 the Viennese musicologist Orel advocated publishing a complete critical edition of Bruckner’s works that would also contain detailed notes and commentaries on the variants between the different versions of each work. Thus when the customary period of copyright expired thirty years after Bruckner’s death, the time came for the implementation of such a critical edition and for the opening up of the manuscripts in the Vienna National Library containing the hitherto unknown original versions of the symphonies. The scene was then set for posterity to pass judgement on a bygone but chronologically very close musical era, some of whose protagonists were still alive or only very recently dead. It was clear that the scholarly preparation of a complete critical edition of Bruckner’s works had first of all to be placed in the hands of the director of the Vienna National Library’s music collection, Robert Haas, who was officially responsible for making the manuscripts of the master’s estate accessible. He also formally took charge of the publication, initially together with Orel, whose first undertaking was to edit the original version of the unfinished Ninth Symphony using all the handwritten sketch material. It had long been known that the printed version of this unfinished work consisted of a revision of Bruckner’s score by Ferdinand Löwe, the conductor of the first performance. No one knew how far-reaching his revision was until the publication of the original manuscript by Orel. With the other completed symphonies, however, it was much more difficult to determine how far the divergences between the original versions and the Universal Edition printed versions were down to Bruckner himself (who was of course known to have re-worked almost all of his works several times) or how much these alterations derived from the ‘re-structurings’ of conductors who made cuts and instrumental re-touchings on their own initiative. A third possibility was that these cuts and instrumental re-touchings had been suggested to Bruckner by conductors and by his students and friends, that he was eventually persuaded to accept them, and that through this they were carried over into the printed editions. The task of the editors was accordingly to clarify the process by which Bruckner’s symphonies came to print, and to ascertain whether the manuscripts to be published were conveyed directly to the printing office by Bruckner, whether he personally corrected the proofs and signed them off, and whether these corrections had been carried out accurately. 137

In view of the fact that Bruckner entrusted the first publication of his symphonies to various small firms, some of whom no longer existed, in most cases nothing concrete could be ascertained about the publication process. Only with those works published by Josef Eberle or its successor Waldheim-Eberle was it established in a statement from the former head of the firm’s engraving department, Josef v. Wöss,102 that he personally collected from Bruckner’s apartment the manuscripts intended for printing and brought them to the printing office. He also took the proofs to Bruckner, collected them again after they had been corrected by the master, and personally checked that the corrections were carried out to the highest level of accuracy. Evidence that the proof corrections were exclusively made in Bruckner’s hand could obviously not be produced because corrected proofs were never preserved. Yet in his highly informative study ‘Anton Bruckner and the Process of Musical Creation’ published in the American music journal The Musical Quarterly (vol. 24, no. 3, 1937) [sic],103 Egon Wellesz reports that Bruckner’s friend and student Friedrich Eckstein informed him in 1937 that he possessed the proofs of Bruckner’s String Quintet. Eckstein explained that Bruckner’s innumerable handwritten corrections to the proofs conclusively established how little the master considered a composition completely finished even when he submitted the manuscript for printing. It was also part of the task of the Complete Critical Edition’s editor to make accessible all available contemporary sources, and thereby to establish how Bruckner’s conductors and friends arrived at the cuts and instrumental re-touchings that they recommended to him as appropriate. It was as much a question of judgement as of scientific accuracy both to ascertain the purely technical divergences between original and printed versions, and to examine the aesthetic and historical reasons why individual conductors made certain alterations or rather suggested them to the master and asked for his approval. It was all a matter of the spirit in which the editor of the Critical Edition carried out the investigation as to whether the pioneering work of the first Bruckner conductors Josef and Franz Schalk, Ferdinand Löwe, Artur Nikisch, Hermann Levi, August Göllerich, Hans Richter and Gustav Mahler was analysed as a temporary phenomenon of music history or whether the editor felt himself to be a public prosecutor appointed by posterity to have Bruckner’s friends and champions tried and convicted of the falsification of his work. Robert Haas, the director of the music collection in the Vienna National Library and editor of the Critical Edition, chose the latter path. It did not seem at all satisfactory to him that insight into Bruckner’s creative work138

ing practice should be offered in unproblematic scholarly terms through the Complete Critical Edition by publishing the various drafts, sketches and versions of a work. From the very beginning the most important thing seemed to him the discrediting of Universal Edition’s hitherto unanimously accepted printed versions, and their elimination from concert usage in favour of the original versions of the symphonies in the process of being published. The discrediting of Universal Edition’s printed versions, however, necessitated a polemical attitude towards the first conductors of Bruckner’s works who had emerged from his close circle of friends and students, and who, according to Haas’s theory, made adaptations and cuts in the first performances of the symphonies that were accepted into the printed versions but misrepresented Bruckner’s original artistic intentions. The question of why, if the alterations suggested by his conductors did not correspond with his actual artistic intentions, Bruckner then accepted them into the printed editions of his symphonies, was answered by Haas with reference to the master’s overly modest nature and submissive inclinations, which led him to be persuaded, indeed almost coerced, by his students and friends to carry out these alterations; that is, if such alterations in the printing of the scores had not been undertaken by a third party without the master’s knowledge or approval. Before Haas went public with these outrageous accusations – directed above all towards Löwe and his revision of the unfinished Ninth Symphony, but in a wider sense also towards Franz Schalk, Nikisch, Levi and the other conductors of first performances of the symphonies – he and the representatives of the Bruckner movement who were launching the Complete Critical Edition tried to enlist Franz Schalk to conduct the première of the original version of the Ninth Symphony, which had meanwhile been published. An attempt was made therefore to induce one of the last great Bruckner conductors from the master’s circle of friends publicly to acknowledge the validity of the original versions and thereby to discredit Universal Edition’s printed editions. This attempt failed. Franz Schalk categorically refused to direct the proposed première because, as he explained, he considered performances of the first versions of Bruckner’s symphonies to be a serious offence against the master who left them unpublished not without good reason and never submitted his symphonies for printing without thoroughly revising the first versions of the scores often two or three times. After that, the instigators of the Complete Critical Edition turned to the Austrian conductor Siegmund von Hausegger, then working in Munich, who gave a private performance of the original version of the Ninth 139

Symphony with the Munich Philharmonic Orchestra on 2 April 1932 in the Munich Tonhalle to members of the press and invited guests. The far-reaching divergences between the original version and the familiar printed version of the work astonished the experts. But at the same time it clearly emerged that the average listener would not have noticed whether alterations in sonority through instrumental re-touchings had been implemented or not. This emboldened Haas to begin his academic offensive against the friends and champions of Bruckner on the occasion of the Bruckner festival held in Vienna from 19 to 23 October 1932, during which the Vienna Philharmonic under Clemens Krauss gave the first public performance of the original version of the Ninth Symphony. This generated bad feeling amongst the Viennese public, leading to vicious polemics against performing the original versions, and ultimately to a bitter controversy that aroused the intense anger of many people. It was striking that, in contrast to other Viennese newspapers, two of them, the great-German orientated Wiener Neuesten Nachrichten and the organ of the National-Socialist Party, the Deutschösterreichische Tageszeitung, were by then already stirring up opinion in favour of Haas and of introducing the ‘original versions’ of Bruckner’s symphonies universally into concert practice. Through this attention was drawn to the previously unnoticed venture that had been established in inconspicuous offices in Vienna under the impressive-sounding name ‘Musicological Publishers of the International Bruckner Society’ in order to pursue the active development of this plan. The firm consisted solely of the proprietor, the engineer Georg Furreg, and his daughter who acted as a clerical assistant. This, then, was the publication and distribution centre that was supposed to transmit Bruckner’s music to the world in its ‘true form’, for the first time rid of all ‘falsifying distortions’. It would be a mistake to assume that the wider Austrian public and particularly musical circles in Vienna had any detailed idea about the inner workings of the Bruckner movement that had led to the founding of this ‘Musicological Publishers’. The way in which this firm was connected to the ‘International Bruckner Society’ – and how the Society was in turn related to the general management of the National Library in Vienna with which it jointly gave the ‘Musicological Publishers’ the ‘contract’ to publish the Complete Critical Edition of Bruckner’s works and who financed this edition – all paled into insignificance before the aggressive behaviour of Haas and his defamatory attacks against the earliest Bruckner conductors such as Löwe, Franz Schalk, Nikisch and others who played a not inconsequential 140

role in the arguments surrounding attempts to institute the original versions. Hardly anyone knew that efforts had been going on since the 1920s to found an international association of all Bruckner supporters, which was to secure the financial means to restore and maintain the famous Bruckner organ left to decay in the Collegiate Church of St Florian. The architects of the plan were the university professor Ernst Kurth (Berne), who pointed out right from the beginning that the society would have to be an international one, Max Auer (Vöcklabruck), Franz Gräflinger (Linz), Karl Grunsky (Stuttgart) and Franz Moissl, director of the church music department of the Klosterneuburg foundation near Vienna. This group, chiefly made up of officials from the ‘Austrian Bruckner League’ set up after the war, made contact with the ‘Berlin Bruckner Society’, founded earlier by Nikisch, and invited them to join the proposed international organisation. A joint conference took place in the monastery of St Florian on 4 November 1925 under the chairmanship of the abbot Vinzenz Hartl, during which the decision to found an international Bruckner society was formally registered. The next step was to form groups in different countries. These were established in Switzerland, France and even in the USA, where a Bruckner Society was founded on 5 January 1931, its journal Chord and Discord dedicated to supporting Bruckner and Mahler. It was evident, however, that the principal interest in Bruckner remained in Austria and in the German Reich. Prior to Hitler’s assumption of power on 30 January 1933, two major organisations, the ‘Upper-Austrian Bruckner League’ and the ‘Bruckner League for Vienna and Lower Austria’ had been founded in Austria, whilst in Germany four great societies emerged: the ‘Würtemburg Bruckner League’, the ‘Baden Bruckner League’, the ‘Westphalian Bruckner League’ and the ‘Rhineland Bruckner League’, along with a dense network of local groups in Munich, Hamburg, Berlin and numerous other German cities. To this was added the ‘Bruckner Community for the Cultivation of Sacred Music’ in Munich. On 9 October 1927 all these separate groups, the overwhelming majority of which were situated on imperial German soil, were amalgamated into one vast organisation called the ‘Bruckner Society’. This amalgamation resulted from a meeting in the Book-Trade House in Leipzig which had come about because the Leipzig publishers Breitkopf & Härtel had declared itself ready to take over the preparation of the Complete Critical Edition of Bruckner’s works. The imperial German predominance in this ‘Bruckner Society’ was so overwhelming that Austrian institutions, above all the National Library in Vienna, owner of all the manuscripts in Bruckner’s estate, could not consent 141

to the publication under these circumstances, since not only the Austrian but also the international character of the whole enterprise would be stifled. Negotiations with Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig were broken off and they withdrew, terminating their association with the ‘Bruckner Society’. A different arrangement was made instead, which, although outwardly giving greater prominence to the Austrian character of the enterprise and simultaneously emphasising its international flavour, in reality did nothing to reduce the imperial German predominance within the organisation. 1. The new arrangement that finally obtained the agreement of the general management of the National Library in Vienna made provision for the following changes: 2. The headquarters of the proposed Bruckner Society, which is to be given the name ‘International Bruckner Society’, will be transferred to Vienna. 3. The publishers Dr Benno Filser in Augsburg are entrusted with taking over arrangements for the Complete Critical Edition of Anton Bruckner’s works but for their part must forgo public recognition as publisher of the edition. 4. The publication of the Complete Edition will take place through a firm to be established in Vienna under the auspices of the general management of the National Library in Vienna and the ‘International Bruckner Society’. 5. The publishing firm to be established in Vienna, which is assigned with the production of the Complete Critical Edition, is to be given the title ‘Musicological Publishers of the International Bruckner Society’. 6. The professors of the University of Vienna, Dr Robert Haas, director of the music collection in the National Library, and Dr Alfred Orel are to act as editors of the Complete Critical Edition. 7. The title page of the Complete Edition is to read: ‘Anton Bruckner, Complete Works. Complete Critical Edition on behalf of the General Management of the National Library and the International Bruckner Society, edited by Robert Haas and Alfred Orel. Musicological Publishers of the International Bruckner Society, Vienna’. 8. The engineer, Robert Furreg, is appointed to manage the ‘Musicological Publishers’, and at the same time to function as treasurer and manager of the Vienna office of the ‘International 142

Bruckner Society’. Additional treasurers of the ‘International Bruckner Society’ are Dr Benno Filser, Augsburg, and the manager of the Leipzig office, Dr Karl Krieser. These arrangements were confirmed at a meeting held on 2 December 1928 in the Augsburg Town Hall and put before a plenary assembly of members convened on 17 February 1929 in Vienna, which approved and ratified the necessary changes to the Society’s constitution. The following individuals were elected to the governing body of the ‘International Bruckner Society’, which had its headquarters in Vienna I., Bäckerstrasse, old University (editorial office of the Wiener Zeitung) and described itself in the first paragraph of its statutes as ‘non-political, non-denominational, international’: Honorary President: general music director Prof. Franz Schalk, Vienna (who died on 3 September 1931 and exerted no practical influence on the Society’s affairs, but in fact later adopted an extremely sceptical attitude towards it). Presidents: Prof. Max Auer, Vienna-Vöcklabruck (colleague of the conductor August Göllerich, who was appointed by Bruckner as his biographer and whose unfinished multi-volume biography of the composer was completed by Auer after his death); Prof. Walter Braunfels, director of the Hochschule für Musik in Cologne; University Professor Dr Ernst Kurth, Berne. Secretaries: Government Councillor Prof. Franz Moissl, ViennaKlosterneuburg; Prelate Dr F. X. Münch, Cologne. Treasurer: Dr Benno Filser, Augsburg; Dr. Karl Krieser, Leipzig, manager of the Leipzig Office; engineer Robert Furreg, manager of the Vienna office. When one surveys this list of functionaries, which included several eminent individuals, and when one reads the highly respectable aims of the Society outlined in the statutes, it becomes clear that an organisational apparatus was set up under the cloak of internationalism and of reverence for a great musical master who lived and worked in Austria, whose funding was nevertheless supplied by imperial German capital (from the Filser publishing house in Augsburg working anonymously in the background). As a result of this, while two Viennese musicologists found work as editors of the new Complete Edition, at the same time a position was created for an imperial German publishing concern in Austria that was able to develop extreme 143

ideological propaganda in the name of Anton Bruckner with methods that were quite different from those usual for a commercial venture. When one considers that apart from Franz Schalk, who belonged to the governing body in a purely nominal sense as Honorary President, the managing committee of the ‘International Bruckner Society’ contained only two outstanding individuals, Kurth in Berne and Braunfels in Cologne, and that they were far from the scene of the action and therefore rarely took an active part in the organisational work of the society, then it becomes clear that the real initiative behind implementing the programme of activities lay in the hands of the President Max Auer from Vöcklabruck in Upper Austria and the imperial German financial supporters. The sense in which Auer understood his office as President of the ‘International Bruckner Society’ emerges from his book Anton Bruckner. Sein Leben und Werk, published by the ‘Musicological Publishing House’ in 1934 [sic], a separate chapter of which is devoted to the post-war Bruckner movement. This begins as follows: When Mars reigns, the muses are silent. The truth of this sentence was demonstrated during that great global event which overtook Europe in the form of the Great War. Only that kind of unhealthy, distorted, and convulsive artificiality could have emerged from this arena of murder and conflagration, from this release of all emotion, and begun to crystallise into the hyper-modernity that followed the war; an art that was being prepared in the extreme materialism and naked intellectualism of the pre-war years and which stereotypically swore allegiance to catchwords such as ‘linear’, ‘atonal’ and so on. Above this chaos, this Bolshevism in music, the forward-looking art of the master from Ansfelden, which progressed from the material to the metaphysical [Uebersinnliche], began to glow in tranquil splendour, visible to all who sought redemption from the wasteland of materialism in a higher spiritual existence. To them, Bruckner became the leader, the saviour of a new spiritual world, the dragon slayer Michael! Already the demons of musical demagogy were retreating before the flaming sword of the Archangel Michael, the guardian of the most sacred treasures of the German nation. Thus the last great German master of the twentieth century opened up a new era, illuminated the path and pointed the way.104 It was completely obvious that behind this whole arrangement stood nothing other than Nazi propaganda directed from Munich and Berlin, and that this was the real motivating force behind the campaign to bring to 144

fruition a new ‘Complete Critical Edition’ in opposition to the universally adopted printed versions of Universal Edition; and this became abundantly clear when one observed the co-ordinated actions of different groups and individuals from the great-German and National-Socialist camp who played active parts in the controversy in one way or another, whether it be through adopting a public position in word or print, forming committees to explain certain factual findings, or merely through engaging in whispering campaigns to promote particular slogans. When one examines Nazi propaganda activities in the musical life of imperial Germany during these years, it is obvious that this NationalSocialist propaganda was by no means concerned just with Bruckner, but not least with striking a blow against Universal Edition, hitherto the disseminators of Bruckner in ‘falsified form’. For Universal Edition was the leading Austrian music publisher, which thanks to Emil Hertzka’s wide-ranging support for contemporary music – and particularly contemporary opera production – had built up a dominant position in this field. The influence Universal Edition had on shaping programmes of new productions amongst imperial German opera stages became so great in the post-war years that it assumed politico-cultural importance. If republican Germany was able to develop a new post-romantic opera culture then it was largely due to Universal Edition, which had brought a wealth of new composers and new works to its opera stages. This in itself, however, was a disquieting development for nationalist reactionaries in Germany who were preparing a counter-revolution. Clearly the republican regime could be culturally and politically strengthened, and international influence in German music life increased, through a new flowering of German operatic culture. For that reason, as early as the mid-1920s, National-Socialist propaganda began its so-called ‘purification campaign against influences of foreign races in German musical life’, which operated along approximately the same lines as the ‘purification campaign against filth and trash in German cultural life’. In addition to an entire network of concerted press propaganda, this led in practical terms to the organisation of disturbances at important opera premières. Reports of these great scandals in German opera houses clearly showed that Nazi propagandists tried hard to frighten theatre directors away from accepting works published by Universal Edition. Whether it concerned a thoroughly conventional opera such as Franz Schreker’s Der ferne Klang, a musically and textually pioneering new opera such as Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, or an opera that addressed historically important musico-dramatic problems such as Darius Milhaud’s Christoph Columbus, it was always National145

Socialist propagandists who staged demonstrations of varying proportions at the premières of these works published by Universal Edition. The National-Socialist smear campaign against Universal Edition became an important plank in the ‘fight against cultural Bolshevism’ at a time when Ernst Krenek’s contemporary operatic satires, particularly Jonny spielt auf, were beginning their triumphant procession across German opera stages, and when two other composers on Universal’s books, Hanns Eisler and Kurt Weill, in collaboration with the poet Berthold Brecht, were developing new forms of opera (Dreigroschenoper, Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny, Die Bürgschaft) and amateur plays with music (Der Jasager, Die Massnahme, etc.) ideally suited to taking that artistic struggle against the ever-increasing danger threatened by the advance of Fascism to those broad masses of workers and middle-class circles who took an active interest in German operatic life. Seen from this perspective, the National-Socialist campaign for the ‘true Bruckner’ contained in the original versions was certainly a welcome tag under which they could strike a blow against the reviled Universal Edition by exposing the printed editions as ‘falsifications’ of Bruckner’s music. At the same time, by spreading the ‘falsification theory’ amongst Austrian circles of the Bruckner movement, the possibility arose of exploiting the sharp divisions that had already developed between Vienna and the Austrian provinces in the years of the democratic republic, and which had grown much more marked in the period of the clerical–fascist dictatorship after 1934. In Linz and Upper Austria, Bruckner’s immediate homeland, where the ‘[Upper-]Austrian Bruckner Society’ had its headquarters, it was not difficult to incite local patriotic feeling against the ‘falsification’ of Bruckner’s scores perpetrated in Vienna by the ‘cultural Bolshevist’ music publishers Universal Edition, and to persuade them to join the systematic campaign for the promotion of the original versions published in the Complete Critical Edition. This propaganda was supported and reinforced in Upper Austria from the Bavarian side, where the ‘International Bruckner Society’, to which the ‘Austrian Bruckner Society’ was annexed, had its base in Regensburg. [The draft English translation differs from the original German text, and has the end of this sentence thus: ‘where the ‘International Bruckner Society’ in Augsburg had its office, to which the two large Austrian Bruckner Leagues (the Upper Austrian and the one for Vienna and Lower Austria) were annexed as local groups’.] A precondition of this, of course, was that the editors of the Complete Critical Edition repeatedly raised the subject of the ‘falsification theory’ in subsequent volumes as well, albeit in new variations. According to this the146

ory, which was advanced by Haas, Bruckner was intellectually violated and compelled against his better judgement and conscience by friends and students (principally conductors of the first performances of his symphonies such as Löwe, Franz Schalk, Nikisch and others) to accept into the printed editions those cuts and instrumental re-touchings carried out by these conductors on practical grounds. Thus the ‘true Bruckner’, to be found only in the scores of the original versions, had not been heard at all until now. The way in which Haas supported the ‘falsification theory’ in the introductions and commentaries of the Complete Critical Edition and in his other verbal and written statements, all too obviously trying to construct a criminal musical case around Anton Bruckner, contrasts so strongly with the scrupulousness and wealth of information in his other musicological works that one cannot possibly mistake his role as an illicit, clandestine agent of National-Socialist propaganda. It is scarcely credible that he would otherwise have neglected to examine more closely the personal relationships between Bruckner and his friends and the various conductors of his first performances as they appear in several contemporaneous sources – particularly the correspondence between Bruckner and his conductors relating to questions of cuts and alterations – and that he would have overlooked the conclusions arising from this in his historical-critical introductions and commentaries to the Complete Critical Edition. Instead, Haas attempted to represent each divergence between the original and printed versions as an act of sacrilege committed against Bruckner’s music by his conductors and friends who had imposed their will on the old master. The huge intellectual energy with which Bruckner pursued his goal of complete mastery, fulfilling his intentions whether initially as an organist, later as a composer of counterpoint and fugues, or finally as a symphonist, demonstrates that it is unacceptable to portray him as a weakling who was not in full possession of his mental powers. And in fact several letters show that conductors from among Bruckner’s circle of students such as Nikisch and Franz Schalk took great pains to come to an understanding with the master about every detail of the first performances they were directing. This was the case both with the insertion of the cymbal crash in the Adagio of the Seventh Symphony for which Nikisch obtained the master’s consent through the mediation of Joseph Schalk, and with the disposition of the chorale passage for separate wind group in the close of the Fifth Symphony’s finale for which Franz Schalk had the express permission of Bruckner. On the other hand, an exchange of letters between Bruckner and Levi, who much to Bruckner’s annoyance had initially refused to conduct a performance of the Eighth Symphony in Munich, shows that the master took to heart the 147

Poster for a workers’ symphony concert, 1928.

famous conductor’s criticism and immediately began an extensive revision of the score of the Eighth Symphony, as he informed Levi in a letter of 20 October 1887, writing: ‘I will do whatever is possible to the best of my knowledge and conscience’.105 In a further letter of 27 February 1888, Bruckner reported on the progress of this revision of the Eighth Symphony with the words: ‘It looks different already’.106 It is significant that this material containing important arguments against Haas’s falsification theory and refuting the assumption that Bruckner’s conductors and students exerted pressure on him or that he acted under any coercion when deciding to revise and alter his scores for printing, was published by none other than Alfred Orel, co-editor of the Complete Critical Edition, in his seminal study, ‘Original und Bearbeitung bei Anton Bruckner’ [‘Original work and revisions by Bruckner’],107 though only after Haas had succeeded in forcing Orel out and appropriating the sole editorship of the Complete Critical Edition for himself. Whether this repudiation of Haas’s falsification theory was merely an act of personal revenge on Orel’s part for his unprofessional treatment at the hands of Haas, or whether as a musicologist he believed he could no longer be responsible for advocating something that had nothing to do with scholarship but had revealed itself simply as a cunning trick of National-Socialist propaganda, need not be more closely discussed here. The brazen anti-Austrian propaganda with which the National Socialists inundated the two International Bruckner Festivals of 1936 and 1937 held in Linz and Upper Austria demonstrated that Orel had every reason to recoil from the political consequences of continuing involvement with the campaign for Bruckner’s original versions. On these occasions, the principal slogan of this large-scale, organised whispering campaign ran: ‘The true Bruckner has never existed in Austria at all, but only a falsified distortion [Zerrbild] of his music has been heard. The true Bruckner, who was never at home in the former Austria, has been discov148

ered and brought to light only through National Socialism.’ It was in this sense that the official annexing of Anton Bruckner by fascist great Germany followed in summer 1937, on the occasion of the unveiling of the Bruckner bust in the Valhalla at Regensburg, at which Adolf Hitler personally gave the festival speech. Just as the ‘true Bruckner’ was then openly celebrated as the discovery of the Third Reich and assigned his place of honour among German musical heroes by the Führer and Reich Chancellor, so National-Socialist propaganda laid its cards on the table: the ‘Musicological Publishers’ in Vienna received a subsidy of 100,000 marks from the government of the German Reich for the further publication of the Complete Critical Edition of Bruckner’s works. The ceremony in the Valhalla at Regensburg was the culminating point of the distortion to which the Bruckner phenomenon had been subjected at the hands of posterity. In complete contrast to the monstrous clamour of this political propaganda, which ended up with the annexation of the Austrian symphonist Bruckner by the Third Reich and the granting of a 100,000-mark subsidy to the ‘Musicological Publishers’ by the Hitler regime, stood Gustav Mahler’s secret act of devotion whereby twenty-seven years earlier in summer 1910 he allowed his first four symphonies, in which he had continued the master’s artistic heritage, to be used as security for 50,000 Krone, making it possible for Universal Edition to produce a new edition of the printed versions of Bruckner’s symphonies. Imagine if one of the few cognoscenti had been called as chief witness to explain the publication process of Bruckner’s symphonies before the ‘tribunal’ of posterity, and had had the courage to counteract the feelings of hatred – fanned by the propaganda of triumphant Hitlerite fascism – towards those guilty of an alleged falsification of the master’s music with a clear admission of Mahler’s great act of devotion! If only, for example, Josef v. Wöss, director of the music department of Waldheim-Eberle A.G. who had been admitted to the board of Universal Edition and who was fully conversant with all the transactions shared by both firms, had openly declared: We should not be in a position today to sit in judgement over whether Bruckner was justified in re-working his symphonies as often as he thought fit, or the extent to which he accepted advice from his disciples and first conductors and accepted their proposed cuts and instrumental re-touchings into the printed editions of his works, if the pioneering work of these early conductors and disciples had not prevailed in the face of a world of hostility and lack of understanding. With complete faith in their mission and in difficult conditions, 149

with orchestras that were still barely equal to the technical demands of this new symphonic style, they repeatedly performed Bruckner’s works until their fame gradually spread across Europe and new artists took up their cause. The fact that this was possible, that the chain of performances did not break and Bruckner’s work did not fall into oblivion when the first editions of the symphonies had long been out of print and, due to a peculiar combination of circumstances, material could no longer be reprinted, can be put down to the act of devotion of one of the master’s followers who in 1893 in Hamburg reclaimed for the concert hall the Mass in D Minor, not given since its first concert performance in Linz under Bruckner; who in 1899 conducted the first ‘complete’ performance of the Sixth Symphony – albeit with cuts – in a concert of the Vienna Philharmonic; and who finally, despite vigorous opposition, gave first performances of all Bruckner’s symphonies in America: Gustav Mahler. He made possible the new edition of Bruckner’s symphonies on which all the more recent cultivation of the composer depended, by renouncing the royalties from his first four symphonies. Hitler at the unveiling of the Bruckner bust at the Regensburg Valhalla, 6 June 1937.

But neither Wöss nor the composer Friedrich Klose, a survivor from Bruckner’s most intimate circle who had been called to Vienna to give his opinion on whether a third party could have had a hand in the printing of Bruckner’s manuscripts, dared to speak up, let alone throw into the debate – alongside Löwe, Franz Schalk and Nikisch – the name Gustav Mahler, which appeared on the list of composers outlawed by National Socialism. Nothing more stood in the way of the annexing of the ‘true’ Bruckner by the Third Reich, of his nomination as ‘German hero of music’. And thousands of grateful Bruckner supporters looked to the Reich in whose Valhalla the Führer had personally unveiled the bust of their master. The blow against the separate Austrian development of the post-classical symphony, so disagreeable to great-German ideology, had succeeded.108

Chapter 3

In the Lowlands of Day-to-Day Operatic Life (1880–83) End of student years – the lost Piano Quartet – Wagner psychosis and Wagner experience – new areas of creative expression: fairy tale and folksong – at the summer theatre in Bad Hall – Laibach and Vienna – Olmütz: ‘suffering for the masters’ and earliest youthful songs – conducting rehearsals in Kassel – pilgrimage to Bayreuth (Parsifal)

I

n 1878 Mahler left the Vienna Conservatoire and continued his studies in this and the next year at the University of Vienna. Two semesters earlier he had enrolled there for lecture courses on philosophy, history and music history, but during this period, as he wrote in a letter to Max Marschalk, ‘instead of going to lectures’, he ‘spent time in the Vienna Woods’.1 He had particular success at this time with a Piano Quartet, which so impressed Hermann Grädener (recently appointed to the teaching staff of the Vienna Conservatoire) that he had it performed at the house of the eminent surgeon Theodor Billroth, a very close friend of Brahms. The manuscript of this Piano Quartet, sent by Mahler to the jury of a composition competition in Russia, was lost. Otherwise it would almost certainly have survived to be published as the first and only work of Mahler’s youth that he would have acknowledged in later years.2 The great success of this composition at its performance in Billroth’s house may have contributed to Brahms’s particular interest in Mahler and his subsequent influential support of the composer. But in other respects the conduct of the young musician would hardly have appeared particularly congenial or promising to the composer of the German Requiem and the Four Serious Songs. Mahler moved almost exclusively in Bruckner circles and according to reports took part in activities of the Academic Wagner Society, one of whose founders was his childhood friend Guido Adler. There can be no doubt at all, however, that at the time the young Mahler consciously avoided playing a personally conspicuous part within the Wagner movement, and was content in the role of a keenly observant and unusually receptive onlooker. For within the Academic Wagner Society, what Ernst Kurth called ‘the chaotic power struggles of the time, and a humankind driven to confusion by feelings of triumphalism’3 struck him with full intensity. 151

Although the undeniable merits of the Academic Wagner Society lay principally in organising public and semi-public concerts in which works of Bruckner and Wolf were performed alongside those of Wagner, the activities of the Society nonetheless had their negative side too. As with all other Wagner societies, it spread propaganda derived from principles laid down by Bayreuth with the aim of forming troops of agitators in support of that kind of radical, pan-German Wagnerianism from which the French composer Camille Saint-Saëns – one of the most enthusiastic champions of Wagner in France – distanced himself in his essay ‘Bayreuth und Der Ring des Nibelungen’ as follows: For a Wagnerian there was no music at all before Wagner, or rather it was still in its infancy. Wagner raised it to the heights of an art form. Sebastian Bach, Beethoven and to a degree Weber had prepared the coming of the Messiah; their reward was to be precursors. The others counted for nothing at all: Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Mendelssohn did not write one useful note; the French and Italian schools never existed. The Wagnerian figure expresses profound disdain for listening to any music other than Wagner’s. But no matter what music of the master is being performed – even if it is only the ballet from Rienzi – he is plunged into a state of ecstasy that is difficult to describe.4 The most familiar, and apparently most popular, form of these propaganda activities were lectures explaining Wagner’s theories of art and his doctrine of regeneration, which stimulated audiences to the study and exegesis of Wagner’s writings in small discussion groups. During these same years Wagner published his ‘Offenes Schreiben an Ernst von Weber’ in which he pursued his violent polemic against vivisection and preached the gospel of love for animals to physiologists; as well as his essays ‘Religion und Kunst’, ‘Was nützt diese Erkenntnis?’, ‘Erkenne dich selbst’ and ‘Heldentum und Christentum’.5 In these works Wagner attributes the general decline of humanity to the following set of circumstances which are unsustainable and therefore in need of reform: 1. The deterioration of the blood as a result of unnatural nutrition founded on the murder of animals. 2. The demoralising influence of Judaism on life and society. 3. The inequality of human races in which, of course, the nobler races rule over the lower ones, and yet are forced to interbreed because of their smaller numbers. The result is a constant degeneration of 152

the blood of the noble races which in every case far outweighs the improvement in the blood of the lower races. With the exception of the third item, adopted by Wagner from the theories of Count Gobineau whom he had first met in Rome in 1876 after the first Bayreuth Festival, these were a collection of decidedly old ideas, which he had expounded three decades earlier in the writings of his Zürich period. The problem of reforming human nutrition by changing from meat to vegetables had already appeared in 1850 in his correspondence with Theodor Uhlig and Franz Liszt, whilst he discussed the Jewish question in the essay ‘Das Judentum in der Musik’, first published in the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik in 1850.6 In this famous article, Wagner, then still under the influence of Ludwig Feuerbach, developed very similar ideas on the Jewish question to those of the late-Hegelians: the only solution was the complete assimilation of the Jews who had hitherto formed the ‘corrosive element in the economic and cultural life of Western nations’.7 From 1864, however, when King Ludwig II of Bavaria became Wagner’s patron, the anarchist-revolutionary flavour of Wagner’s Feuerbachian and late-Hegelian writings completely disappeared. Instead, a critique of the ‘error of degrading materialism’ became more and more evident in the essay ‘Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik’ [1867]. Wagner declared open war on socialism because for him it ‘lack[ed] a cultural and ethnic-national [national-völkisch] orientation’. This work, published in 1868, was based on an unpublished essay written by Wagner in Munich in 1865, ‘Was ist deutsch?’ Here Wagner set out his theory that the German spirit was being threatened and supplanted in every respect by Judaism and democracy. The remainder of the manuscript, not used in ‘Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik’, appeared in the Bayreuth Blätter in 1878. The idea of Germanness [Germanentum] as the basis for the re-formation of German [deutschen] existence pervades Wagner’s writings in the most diverse ways and conceptual contexts. It appears most frequently in connection with the notion of the primacy of the German people, who were destined for spiritual and cultural hegemony, and whom he calls the ‘ennoblers of humanity’ in ‘Heldentum und Christentum’ [1881]. Invoking German [germanischen] myth, Wagner developed his theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk – his symphonic music drama. He ascribed to this the same sociological significance for the kind of German [deutsche] nation he hoped for in the future as that which tragedy had held for ancient Greek society. The opera reformers of previous centuries, Monteverdi and Gluck, likewise sought to justify to their contemporaries the unfamiliar and novel in their works as elements that 153

Barricades in the 1848 Revolution, Berlin.

corresponded with, and revived, the spirit and practice of ancient tragedy. Wagner followed them in this – one only has to think of the correlation he asserted between the function of the orchestra in his music dramas and the chorus of Greek tragedy – but went a step further: he not only tried to support his theory of the Gesamtkunstwerk through an imagined revival of the Hellenic festival idea, but also boldly projected this idea into the future of a Germany fundamentally renewed through victorious revolution. The failure of the 1848 democratic revolution in Germany and with it the ending of Wagner’s hopes of furthering his artistic plans which had depended on victory, not only had a crushing effect on him, but also precipitated a break in his artistic development. It now became obvious that he had participated in the Dresden uprising of May 1849 not on the basis of conscious political conviction but because he saw the revolution first and foremost as a means of achieving his artistic aims. Thus the revolutionary energies that had accumulated in Wagner during the two decades leading up to 1848 condensed into a philosophy of tragic compromise that corresponded almost exactly with the attitude of that part of the German bourgeoisie, the national-liberal ‘reconcilers’ [Vereinbarer] who betrayed the revolution and, at the cost of reforms, made their peace with the ruling feudal classes. In a wide-ranging essay written for the 120th anniversary of Gottfried Keller’s birth, published in 1939 in the Moscow journal International Literature, the literary historian Georg Lukács pithily described the changes resulting from the defeat of the 1848 revolution as follows: Politically, the change can be characterised in the briefest terms by the fact that whilst pre-’48 democracy aimed to bring about the national unity of Germany by fighting for freedom, now the ideologues of a bourgeoisie developing more and more strongly towards national Liberalism, gave ‘unity’ absolute priority over ‘freedom’. That is, they prepared the ground for the capitulation of the German bourgeoisie to the Bismarck-Hohenzollern Prussians. These developments culminated in the patriotic celebration of the victory over the French. Nevertheless, if one pursues the ideological developments of this time more closely, then one sees that this celebration was in fact objectively justified in that the Hohenzollern military victories actually brought about the fulfilment of the central aim of the bourgeois revolution 154

in Germany: the creation of national unity; however, the manner in which this desire was fulfilled meant at the same time abandoning the best social, as well as ideological, political and artistic German traditions. Therefore the ideology which prepared for this victory was partly an unprincipled accommodation with Hohenzollern-Prussia, and partly a deeply depressive and wholly embittered resignation on the part of the best and most sincere ideologues of that time. It was no accident that the decades after the revolution were the time of Schopenhauer’s philosophical domination.8 Wagner’s life and work are a reflection of the retrograde movement that followed the defeat of the 1848 revolution. This is immediately obvious from a comparison with his Italian contemporary Giuseppe Verdi, artistically entirely his equal but far superior to him as a man and in his character. Ideologically the two masters Wagner and Verdi were on the same footing before 1848. In principle they followed the same path and had the same aims in mind: the liberation of their homelands from the yoke of autocratic feudalism (and, in Italy, from foreign domination), and the achievement of a bourgeois-democratic social order. From 1842 onwards Verdi placed his creative powers actively in the service of the revolution. In his third opera Nabucco, first performed in that year at La Scala, Milan, the twenty-eight-year-old composer gave voice for the first time to that hymn which powerfully expressed the longing of the oppressed for freedom. From then on his works were exclusively dedicated to the spiritual and psychological preparation of the Italian people for the ‘Risorgimento’, as whose harbinger he wrote no fewer than thirteen operas charting the emotions of the unfolding situation. There were profound reasons for this turn of events, and for the fact that Verdi emerged triumphant from the struggle against autocratic censorship authorities and against publishers and theatrical entrepreneurs who commercially exploited not only this boom in Risorgimento opera but also the whole of Italian music culture. Verdi’s operatic music could never have proclaimed the revolutionary spirit of the Risorgimento so powerfully had opera not been such an important part of Italian life, a national art form so anchored in the consciousness of the people. For this reason, even when his courageous 155

Giuseppe Verdi.

powers impelled him towards musical liberties and far-reaching innovations, Verdi always remained within the boundaries prescribed by national tradition. The reason why Wagner could not place his creative powers as actively as Verdi in the service of the revolution, or rather its preparation, lay in the current condition of German opera as a whole. German opera performance of this period was not an artistic practice anchored in the people’s consciousness but rather a feeble provincial imitation of what was appreciated, and consequently valued, abroad. Grand opera, an art form developed in Restoration France and also Wagner’s point of departure, dominated the stage conventions of German opera theatres. In order to create a new form of German opera, Wagner could not cling to a pre-existing national operatic tradition as his contemporary Verdi could in Italy. The way first had to be cleared for this by combating French operatic conventions and the influences exerted by Italian opera on German music theatre. Wagner led this battle with unparalleled energy and triumphantly won it with a display of strategic and propagandist methods previously unheard of in the history of music. The magnitude of this victory can be seen in his almost legendary rise from political fugitive wanted for arrest, to intimate friend and favourite of the young King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and, after the opening of the Bayreuth national Festspielhaus, to state composer of German imperialism whose work the German imperial family officially began to identify itself with from 1876. Kaiser Wilhelm I, father of Wilhelm II, personally appeared at the opening of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, a duty necessitated not on grounds of personal taste but by political considerations. This was expressed quite plainly as follows by Julius Kapp, the Wagner biographer often noted for the remarkably independent manner of his writing: Kaiser Wilhelm I himself had arrived among the cheering populace. This was all the more credit to the old gentleman since strictly speaking he had no particular love or understanding of music, especially Wagner’s. Nevertheless he believed that he owed such a sacrifice to the national interest and attended the first two performances.9

Wilhelm I, King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany in 1881.

If one examines the separate phases of the battle Wagner was compelled to wage against his times before becoming Germany’s national composer after the realisation of the Bayreuth Festival, one can get an idea of the strategies and propaganda methods he employed. One is immediately struck by the 156

easy flexibility with which he seized on the most diverse contemporary currents of thought and managed to re-model and adapt them to his specific propaganda and polemical ends. These were the transformations of a deeply histrionic nature overflowing with prodigious determination, of a man who shrinks from nothing, who made use of any practicable means to realise his artistic plans. Twenty-seven years before Kaiser Wilhelm I took his seat in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, Wagner had proclaimed in the essay ‘Der Mensch und die bestehende Gesellschaft’ published in the Röckel Volksblätter in February 1849, that ‘mankind’s fight against contemporary society has begun’, and that this fight was ‘the most sacred, the most sublime’ that had ever been fought. A few weeks later Wagner’s essay ‘Die Revolution’ appeared in the same journal. It contained the following stirring confession: I wish to destroy the order of things completely because it has sprung from sin, its flower is misery, and its fruit is crime. But the harvest is ready and I am the reaper ... Man’s own will must be his master, his own desire his only law, his own power the whole of his possession, for the most sacred thing of all is the free man and nothing is higher than he … and since you are all equal I wish to destroy every kind of domination of one over another … The one I shall lead to happiness, the other I shall tread over and crush, for I am the revolution, I am the eternally creating life, I am the one God whom all beings recognise, who encompasses, enlivens and blesses everything that exists! In 1864, twelve years before the opening of the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, and having had the favour of King Ludwig II of Bavaria bestowed upon him, Wagner became the herald of the principle of monarchy, ascribing a ‘super-human’ role to the King as supreme individual leader in his essay ‘Über Staat und Religion’: In no state is there a more important law than that which depends for its stability on the highest power of a special family neither connected nor mingling with any other blood. There has not yet been a political constitution in which, after the fall of such a family and after the abolition of royal power, a similar power has not been reconstructed of necessity, and usually shabbily, through transferences and substitutions of all kinds. It is therefore retained as an essential basic law of the state, and just as it forms a guarantee of stability, so the state attains its true ideal in the person of the king … Distinct from the real interests of the king, which in truth can only be that of the purest patriotism, his unworthy substitute, public opinion, reveals itself to comprise the 157

interests of the egotistical vulgarity of the masses; and yet the need to attend to their demands becomes the principal source of that higher suffering which only the king experiences in a truly personal way. If pseudo-socialist, Teutonic-mythical, racist, anti-Semitic and monarchistauthoritarian tendencies had characterised Wagner’s writings up to that time, then from about 1867 or 1868 a new note sounded in his journalistic pronouncements: hatred of the French and propaganda for new German imperialism. In the previously discussed essay ‘Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik’, Wagner marched robustly into the field, pen in hand, against the French arch-enemy, anticipating the bloody events of the Franco-Prussian [deutsch-französichen] war of 1870–71: ‘France today stands at the summit of European civilisation, and reveals precisely through this the profoundest degeneracy in intellectual output’. Against this decayed French spirit Wagner mobilises the entire arsenal of the German cultural spirit in a single long paragraph: Hail to thee, Schiller, for giving the reborn spirit the form of ‘German youth’, for opposing proud Britain and Parisian sensual allure! Who was this ‘German youth’? Did one ever hear of a French or English youth? And with what unfailing clarity and palpable understanding do we instantly recognise this ‘German youth’! This youth who shamed the Italian castrati in Mozart’s chaste melodies, who in Beethoven’s symphonies acquired the courage for bolder, worldredeeming deeds. After the weapons began to roar, Wagner wrote war-poems, on the one hand singing of the heroic deeds of the German army in Paris, and on the other hand accusing the German public of not feeling sufficiently enthusiastic about them and of not having grasped their true greatness, while Verdi wrote that famous letter of 30 September 1870 to Clarina Maffei in which he prophetically sketched a picture of the German people and its imperialist rulers that remained valid until the time of Hitlerite fascism: This catastrophe of France drives me as well as you to despair! Yes, the blague, the impudence, the arrogance of the French are (despite all their misfortune) unbearable; but France did after all give the modern world its freedom and civilisation. And if she falls, let us not fool ourselves, so too will every freedom for us all, and our civilisation with it. Let us hope that they know this, our men of letters and politicians who extol the culture and even (may God forgive them) the art of that conquering nation. But if they looked a little deeper inside them they 158

would notice the old blood of the Goths still flowing in their veins; that they are excessively proud, hard, intolerant, boundlessly greedy and despise everything that is not Germanic [Nichtgermanische]. They are intellectualists without heart; they are a strong people but have no finesse. And this king who is always talking about Divine Providence with the help of which he is destroying the better part of Europe!10 He believes he has been chosen to reform morals and to punish the vices of today’s world! What a type to be God’s emissary! Old Attila (also a messenger from God!) halted before the majesty of the capital of the Old World. This one allows the capital of the New World to be shelled! And now, while Bismarck wants us to believe that Paris will be spared, I fear more than ever that at least a part of it will lie in ruins. Why are they doing this? I could not say. Perhaps so that there will no longer be such a beautiful great capital, since they themselves will never have one of equal beauty. Poor Paris! And I saw it so serene, so radiantly beautiful only last April … What now? … I would have preferred our government to follow an open-handed political course; we should have paid a debt of gratitude. A hundred thousand of our people perhaps might have saved France. In any case, I would have preferred, together with the defeated French, to have struck a peace rather than idly look on. That we are doing this will one day expose us to contempt … We shall not avoid a European war, and it will devour us. It will not come tomorrow, but it will come. An excuse will soon be found … perhaps Rome … the Mediterranean … and then what about the Adriatic, which they have already called a German [germanisches] sea?11 In the Vienna of 1880, where the young Gustav Mahler was living, Verdi was of course known and esteemed, although more as a stalwart opera composer than as the great master of an ‘enlightened realism which was only later recognised, and became the enduring attribute of his modernity’.12 Words were never written of such hysterical rapture about Verdi’s entire life’s work of thirty-three operas and vocal music – including at its peak the glorious Requiem composed for Manzoni – as those in the following outburst from a certain Edmund Hagen, inspired by the poetry of just the first scene of Wagner’s Das Rheingold: Look up, dust-born humanity, to the sunny heights! There in blessed solitude stands Plato, there stands Kant, there Schopenhauer – behold, there they stand, the lonely geniuses of mankind – all-powerful, gigantic. Above all of them towers the genius of Richard Wagner. 159

Hail to thee Plato, hail to thee Kant, hail Schopenhauer. Hail to you geniuses all – but three times hail to thee, Richard Wagner!13 This was the result of the Wagner propaganda directed from Bayreuth and of the campaigning in Wagner societies, whose activities cultivated hysterical enthusiasm and Byzantine worship of the master of the Ring tetralogy, and at the same time anti-Semitism and national German racial arrogance. The young Mahler, too, could not escape the overwhelming influence of this propaganda. If the Bruckner experience did have an effect on him, then it was a process that was played out in his subconscious and one which only became outwardly visible years later in the works of Mahler the symphonist. What filled his consciousness was the Wagner experience. He immersed himself in Wagner’s music and artistic doctrines with a love and devotion that were unflinching in their inner readiness to serve this work. However, Wagner’s art works and artistic precepts were not the entire life-substance of organised Wagnerianism. Discussions of the Bayreuth master’s so-called philosophy were also a part of it. Not for nothing did the propaganda of the Wagner societies attach so much weight to dealing with the master’s writings. For here anyone could find the key to understanding Wagner as man and artist according to their own ideological inclinations. Young socialists and liberals could become intoxicated with the anarchistrevolutionary phraseology of the early Dresden and Zürich writings; for more conservative natures the essays written for King Ludwig II offered the gratifying confirmation that Wagner entirely shared their sympathy for the crown as the principle that stabilised and supported the state; the widest field for reading and exegesis was meanwhile open to followers from the national camp, the great Germans, the anti-Semites, those in support of racial preservation, enthusiasts for the Teutonic past, and those who dreamt of a future filled with a super-humanity [Uebermenschentum], a master-race ideology and plans for world conquest. Indeed all hope had not been abandoned of even the violently ostracised Jews being able to gain acceptance and advancement into the highest rank of the great Wagnerian army. Had not Wagner himself accepted Jews amongst his closest and most loyal circle of friends? Was he not then just about to confer on the Jewish conductor Hermann Levi the conductorship of the première of his last work, the sacred stage work of the festival [Bühnenweihfestspiel], Parsifal? And did not the much-maligned ‘Aufklärungen über das Judentum in der Musik’ of 1869 (the foreword to the second edition of the earlier work of the same name) contain just such a passage in which the anti-Semitic Wagner expressly acknowledged these Jewish friends? For here it says: 160

so I also took notice of the great gifts of the heart as well as of the mind which to my genuine delight came to me from the circles of Jewish society. I also firmly believe that everything from that quarter which oppresses the true German nature weighs on the intelligent and sensitive Jew himself to a much more fearful extent.14 Therefore it can be safely assumed that the young Gustav Mahler even by then had developed that attitude towards the Wagner problem which was to become a prominent characteristic of his later activity as a Wagner conductor and founder of a new era of Wagner production: a complete separation of the person and work of Richard Wagner from the activities of a Wagnerianism utterly incompetent in artistic matters, which acted self-confidently in the name of the master and pursued factional struggles without knowing exactly what they were all about. He immersed himself even more avidly in Wagner’s works, in various aspects of his theory of regeneration, in the new ethos that the operatic stage acquired through the idea of the festival, in Wagner’s return to the myths of ancient society and in his conception of the purely human. He sketched the poem for a fairy tale adapted from the Grimm story ‘Der singende Knochen’.15 Originally conceived for the stage but later re-worked as a cantata for soloists, choir and orchestra, it is the first of Mahler’s youthful compositions to have been preserved: Das klagende Lied. The first operatic version was completed in 1880. Only in 1888 did Mahler conclusively revise it into a choral work with orchestra. By this time he had already finished his First Symphony and begun the first movement of his Second. A further re-working of Das klagende Lied followed in 1898 as a result of which he deleted the first part of the earlier version. Now in two parts, the work was published in 1899, although in the following year Mahler undertook further revision of the instrumentation, so that the work was not fully completed until 1900.16 Das klagende Lied shows Mahler’s intimate familiarity with folk poetry and his empathy with the simple mood of the fairy tale, which he was able to imbue with profound humanity. The poem is almost more powerful than the music, which still retains certain operatic features. But the Mahlerian weight of the later works is already revealed here: the dark and the gloom, the expression of grief and mourning, the sharp contrasts. In March 1880 Mahler wrote the first of his songs to have survived, ‘Hans und Grethe’, which is labelled a ‘folksong’.17 It was taken to be such for decades until in an essay ‘Unbekannte Jugendlieder Gustav Mahlers’ [‘Gustav Mahler’s Unknown Early Songs’], which appeared in 1921, Rudolf 161

Stephan Hoffmann pointed out that Mahler had written the words himself. Within the narrow confines of the song Mahler therefore created for himself those same conditions for unifying word and music that Wagner demanded in his Gesamtkunstwerk: through the experience of folksong, words and music were shaped simultaneously. And that first song ‘Hans und Grete’, as whose poet he remained anonymous like the creators of the folk tunes handed down from ancient times, was fostered by the dance music of his Moravian homeland. Undoubtedly the Wagner experience led Mahler towards the fairy tale, and his innate affinity with folksong gave him closer access to this than to the myths of antiquity. Yet the fact that he also felt drawn to music drama itself was demonstrated by his opera Die Argonauten begun at the same time, whose poetry he sketched in alliterative verse, true to Wagner’s principles. This work, part of which was also set to music, remained unfinished and was destroyed by Mahler.18 The weeks following the completion of ‘Hans und Grethe’ on 5 March 1880 led to a crucial turning-point in Mahler’s life: the decision to pursue a conducting career and to begin practical work in the theatre as soon as possible. It was the publisher Theodor Rättig who persuaded the twentyyear-old music student to go to an agent and take on a theatre engagement. And certainly neither he nor Mahler himself could have anticipated the far-reaching significance that this decision would have. Had Mahler not taken up a conducting career then those great operatic reforms that gave the Vienna Opera one of the most glorious and brilliant chapters in its history might never have been accomplished nor a new era in European music theatre been inaugurated. On the other hand it should be noted that Mahler’s development as a composer was profoundly affected by this given that the huge workload in the theatre necessarily confined Mahler’s creative work to his limited free time and to the summer holidays. The interruption in the composition of a work at the end of the summer holidays and the resumption of work the following summer presented Mahler with considerable difficulties on several occasions. An example of this was the summer of 1900 when he was busy working on the Fourth Symphony, the initial sketches for which he had made in the previous summer. A contributory factor may have been that these first sketches were written in Aussee while the resumption of the composition in the following year took place in the completely unfamiliar surroundings of Maiernigg on the Wörthersee, where he was staying for the first time in the new villa that would be the setting for his summer creative work until 1907. Mahler’s opponents, to whom his indisputable 162

world renown as conductor was only a pretext for the claim that, compelled as he was to engage in the interpretation of other people’s music all year long, he was unable to produce original compositional ideas, repeatedly and contemptuously emphasised that he was only a ‘summer composer’. The validity of this argument is easily disproved when one considers the careers of such important composers as Weber, Strauss, Nicolai and so on, all of whom were active as opera and concert conductors. Mahler’s visit to the agent resulted in the offer of an engagement as conductor in the summer theatre at Bad Hall, Upper Austria. His parents and friends were horrified that the young musician, friend of Bruckner and with great ambitions, was to offer his services to such a lowly provincial theatre. But Professor Epstein was completely in favour of him accepting the engagement, and this decided the matter. Mahler was soon to recognise very clearly how right he had been to start practical work in the theatre, no matter what the circumstances. Later he would often recount with great amusement how acceptance of the conducting post in Bad Hall meant that he was obliged by his employer to perform the duties of an orchestral assistant, that is, to distribute the music on the stands and to collect it up again after the performance. He also had to dust the piano and look after his employer’s infant daughter by walking her pram round the theatre during his breaks. This child was Mizzi Zwerenz who later became a famous operetta singer. Her father, the theatre director, also demanded that Mahler undertake small walk-on parts – something that Mahler indignantly refused to do. He subsequently regretted this, since, as he often said, he could have learned ‘much that was never likely to come his way again’.19 For this job in Bad Hall Mahler received 30 Gulden per month and an additional fee of 50 Kreuzer for each performance he conducted. In the autumn he was back in Vienna, and since he had no prospect of a new position for the time being, he busied himself with the first version of the nearly completed fairy tale Das klagende Lied and the draft of the opera Die Argonauten. He also became passionately involved as a witness 163

Summer theatre in Bad Hall.

to the tragedy of his friend and fellow student Hans Rott, then in the post of organist at the Piarist monastery. Mahler often visited him in his tiny monastic cell, occasionally staying overnight. Ten years later, in summer 1900, he told his friend, the viola-player Natalie Bauer-Lechner, how desperately miserable things had been with Rott at that time and how he could never afford regular meals on his meagre wages but only bought a ring of sausage ‘when he was in the money’, which he hung on a nail in his room and ate his way through little by little. Rott composed a symphony in this monastery cell, which Mahler rated as one of the most important works of the time and whose first performance he considered giving as conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic, an intention that was never fulfilled. In her book Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler, Bauer-Lechner reported Mahler’s following comments on this work and on his youthful friend who by that stage had already died: What music has lost in him is immeasurable. His First Symphony, written when he was a young man of twenty, already soars to such heights of genius that it makes him – without exaggeration – the founder of the New Symphony as I understand it. It is true that he has not yet fully realised his aims here. It is like someone taking a run for the longest possible throw and not quite hitting the mark. But I know what he is driving at. His innermost nature is so much akin to mine that he and I are like two fruits from the same tree, produced by the same soil, nourished by the same air. We would have had an infinite amount in common. Perhaps we two might have gone some way together towards exhausting the possibilities of this new age that was then dawning in music.20 Not even a modest existence at the Piarist monastery was granted to the genius composer Rott. One day it was discovered that books were missing from the monastery library, and since Rott was among the worst-paid employees at the monastery and moreover was viewed as a ‘Bohemian’, the suspicion of theft immediately fell on him. Although no concrete evidence of his guilt could be produced, the monks began to harass him and through subterfuge tried to ruin his work as organist. It was made increasingly clear to him that he was being accused of stealing and selling books from the library. Despite indignantly protesting his innocence, he was faced with increasing hostility from the monks who eventually dismissed him. Soon after losing the post, signs of mental disturbance became apparent and he was committed to an asylum. Only much later was he proved to have been completely innocent. 164

Mahler had of course always believed in his friend’s innocence. We learn of his intense concern for Rott’s tragic fate from a letter he wrote to Emil Freund on 1 November 1880. At about this time Mahler had become a vegetarian under the influence of Wagner’s theories of regeneration, and all his pain and suffering had found their way into the music of the fairy tale Das klagende Lied, the first version of which he had just then finished. Mahler’s letter, which clearly revealed his dejected spiritual state, was written in answer to Freund’s report of the suicide of a young girl, victim of a tragic love affair. The eighteen-year-old Mahler had met this girl at the house of Freund’s parents in Seelau (some hours’ distance from his home town of Iglau). She had become fascinated with the young musician, who was often to be heard playing the piano, and he, too, was not unmoved by her affections. Although the opportunity to enter into a brief romantic liaison with her could easily have arisen at the time, the young man felt it was his duty to warn her in a friendly manner to beware of passion as one day great suffering might befall her. They parted the best of friends. And now what Mahler had foreseen had actually happened. He had to respond to the report of her suicide with the bad news of the fate of his friend Rott, who had gone insane, writing the following in the aforementioned letter: This news reached me at the same time as your letter – and at a time when I myself was in dire need of comfort. Misery is at home everywhere, and clothes itself in the strangest guises, as though to mock poor human beings. If you know one happy person on this earth, tell me his name quickly, before I lose the last of what courage remains in me.— Anyone who has watched a truly noble and profound nature struggling against the most shallow meanness, and perishing, can scarcely suppress a shudder when he considers the chances of saving his own poor skin. Today is All Saints.— If you were here by this time last year, then you will know in what mood I greet this day. Tomorrow will be the first All Souls’ Day I have ever known! Now for [me] too there is a grave on which to lay a wreath. For a month now I have been an out-and-out vegetarian. The moral effect of this way of life, with its voluntary castigation of the body, causing one’s material needs to dwindle away, is enormous. You can judge for yourself how utterly I [am] convinced of it, when I tell you that I expect of it no less than the regeneration of humanity. All I can tell you is: let yourself be converted to a natural way of liv165

ing, but one in which you eat suitable food (compost-grown, stone-ground, wholemeal bread) and soon you will see the fruits of your endeavours. My fairy play is finished, at long last – truly a child of sorrow, more than a whole year’s labour.— But it has turned out to be worth it. The next thing is to use all means at my disposal to get it performed. Do write again to your faithful Gustav Mahler21

Provincial theatre in Laibach.

For the 1881–82 season Mahler was engaged at the theatre in Laibach,22 which differed from his first engagement in Bad Hall in that not just operettas but also operas were performed there. The young conductor threw himself zealously into his work without realising that the wretched provincial stage in Laibach was not exactly the most suitable arena for such starry-eyed endeavour. During rehearsals his eyes would flash through his enormous horn-rimmed glasses at the humble theatre folk, rousing them from their indolence. They never forgave him for this. For how could the singers take seriously a conductor as young as he was ambitious, when even the theatre director did not take his own activities seriously, putting on a performance of Gounod’s opera Margarethe (Faust) under Mahler, for example, in which the soldiers’ chorus ‘Feste Burgen’ was sung by a single soldier. The disgust and contempt which Mahler felt for his work in this second-rate theatre can only be gauged when one recognises how much he was pervaded even then by that new spirit which had been given its first and greatest expression in the Bayreuth Festivals. Having returned to Vienna, Mahler began work on the fairy-tale opera Rübezahl, whose origin and subsequent fate have already been discussed in the previous chapter. From information provided by Mahler’s early friends, Stefan has given us a more detailed description of the character of this opera’s music and text: ‘The vivid wit and the darkness, acuity and twists in the manner of Callot that we know from the songs and symphonies were already present in Rübezahl. A procession of suitors was particularly memorable, its music sparkling with absurd humour.’23 Sudden distraction from this creative work was brought about by a call from the agent who had to fill the post of first conductor which had become vacant at the Stadttheater in Olmütz, and he offered the engagement to Mahler. This seemed to be a great step forward, for the Olmütz Stadttheater had the reputation of being a very good provincial theatre. 166

When Mahler arrived there things certainly seemed different from what he had been expecting. The world of these small provincial theatres in old Austria, and especially in Bohemia and Moravia, the most intellectually and culturally active crown lands in the monarchy, is familiar enough from innumerable descriptions. In later years an astonishing amount would be achieved there. However, at the beginning of the 1880s, when Mahler worked in Olmütz, conditions seemed to have become quite restricting. The artistic ambitions of the director were always greater than his financial and artistic resources. Mahler appears to have recognised this discrepancy immediately. So he did his best to prevent performances of Mozart and Wagner operas that were dear to him, for neither the singers nor the orchestra seemed equal to the task. He therefore conducted Meyerbeer and Verdi, and concentrated all his efforts in preparing Méhul’s opera Joseph in Aegypten, which gave him a degree of satisfaction since he managed to bring off a very fine performance of what is a charming work. A high point of his activities in Olmütz was the first performance of Bizet’s Carmen. The source of various authors’ accounts of Mahler’s Olmütz period was a letter written to his old friend Fritz Löhr dating from 12 February 1883. In this Mahler pours out his heart to his friend, venting all the anger he felt towards the Olmütz theatre. Nowhere is a clearer image given in self-portrait of a young musician carrying the marshal’s baton in his knapsack, than in this letter. Any other theatrical novice would have been happy just once to be able to experience the romance of the theatre so palpably from the conductor’s podium. But Mahler, the born master of the theatre, felt from the very beginning an instinctive loathing of the theatricality and play-acting manifested in half-measures, unreliability and inadequacy. Contact with the world behind the wings held no excitement for him; on the contrary, he felt ‘soiled’ by it. In rehearsal a distance was immediately established between him and the others on the stage and in the orchestra; he observed and controlled them with undivided attention. Nothing escaped his notice, not even when, despite their ‘incredible lack of sensibility’, these people suddenly 167

Royal Municipal Theatre in Olmütz.

came out of their shell and genuinely tried to follow him and go along with what he wanted. Yet it could not have escaped his unfailingly keen observation that even this was not induced by true absorption in the work but was, as he wrote, ‘only a way of showing they’re sorry for this “idealist” – a very contemptuous epithet, this’. For when the music finally started and he wanted to immerse himself totally in it, he was sensitive to the fact that the resistance of the material, though reduced, had not been fully eliminated, so that he was forced back to reality again and into casting his eye over the orchestra and singers. What he then must have perceived is described in the aforementioned letter in the following deeply moving terms: At times, when I’m all on fire with enthusiasm, when I’m trying to sweep them along with me, give them some impetus, I see these people’s faces, see how surprised they are, how knowingly [they] smile at each other – and then my boiling blood cools down and all I want is to run away and never go back. Only the feeling that I am suffering for masters’ sake, and that some day perhaps I shall kindle a spark in these poor wretches’ souls, fortifies me, and in some of my better hours I vow to endure with love and understanding – even in the face of their scorn. – You will smile at the dramatic tone in which I speak of these trivialities. – But isn’t this actually the prototype of our attitude to the world? Only here it happens to be concentrated on one single point.24 For other reasons, too, he did not feel happy. He ate his vegetarian meal in solitude at the inn and left again still hungry, for in Olmütz the cooking was in the savoury Bohemian style in which meat occupied a place of honour equal to the famous puddings which were considered national dishes. Servings of vegetables were therefore not very large. [The remainder of this paragraph does not exist in the German typescript, but only appears in the draft English translation, which is used as the basis for the text presented here.] To adhere to a really strict vegetarian diet, Mahler had to come to an arrangement with the cook of the restaurant in the Hotel Lauer, where he went at noon, to have his food cooked separately. Therefore he always had to order what he wanted to eat on the previous day, and the members of the theatre who also ate there were well aware of this. The vegetarian conductor who always kept his distance from the theatre people and openly displayed his dissatisfaction with the whole organisation of the Olmütz theatre, had long been the butt of jokes and was given the nickname ‘Grünzeugpepi’ [‘the herbivore’]. In turn Mahler showed his utter contempt for the stage folk, who with excessive pleasure indulged in the wildest culinary delights, 168

by calling his fellow diners ‘Aasgeier’ [‘carrion-crows’]. On one occasion, the principal stage manager, a particular buffoon, heard Mahler order a vegetable soup from the cook for the next day. This gave him the chance he had been looking for to play a joke: he curried favour with the cook through a generous bribe so that she agreed to enhance Mahler’s soup by boiling a chicken in it. Full of malicious glee, the expectant company watched Mahler innocently spoon up the supposed vegetable soup the following day, singing the praises of the dish and of vegetarianism in general. Everyone now wanted to taste the soup, and so Mahler passed his bowl around and ordered a second one for himself which he enjoyed thoroughly. He had not yet finished the soup when a singer, the comic bass, started to bellow in his ear that famous passage from Marcel’s aria in Meyerbeer’s opera Les Huguenots, paraphrasing the text: ‘Piff, paff, puff, murder who? Murder cock-a-doodle-doo!’ Everyone burst into raucous laughter while Mahler, shocked by the spiteful trick played on him, escaped in horror.25 [The German typescript resumes here.] Back at home – Mahler was lodging on the first floor of no. 1 Michaelergasse in Olmütz – he regularly found that two piano owners in the neighbourhood played for hours in competition with each other, adding considerably to his bad mood. It is thus all the more astonishing that several of the songs comprising the first volume of Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit26 were written in Olmütz. A precise chronology of these songs, composed before and around 1883 and published in 1885, cannot be established.27 In his excellent dissertation ‘Gustav Mahlers Lieder’, (published in vols 16 and 17 of Studien zur Musikwissenschaft, supplement to Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Oesterreich, edited by Guido Adler),28 Fritz Egon Pamer reports that a manuscript was still in the possession of Mahler’s sister Justine entitled ‘Fünf Lieder für Tenorstimme von Gustav Mahler’. Three of these – ‘Im Lenz’, ‘Winterlied’ and ‘Maitanz im Grünen’ – were complete and their sequence specified within the cycle. The last song of this manuscript was evidently identical to the now well-known ‘Hans und Grethe’ which, although composed earlier (5 March 1880), was the only one of these very early songs to be published in the first volume of Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit, where it is placed third. The texts of the first two songs, ‘Frühlingsmorgen’ and ‘Erinnerung’, were written by a doctor friend of Mahler who concealed his identity under the pseudonym ‘Leander’.29 The texts of the other two songs, ‘Serenade’ and ‘Phantasie’, were taken from Don Juan by Tirso de Molina.30 Apart from ‘Hans und Grethe’, which was inspired by the dance music of his Bohemian-Moravian homeland, the other four songs in this volume betray the influence of Schumann.31 169

Royal Theatre in Kassel.

One day Mahler read in the papers that the second conductor of the Kassel Hoftheater was leaving his post. Without saying a word in Olmütz he took the next train for Kassel and offered his services to the director. The latter asked him if he would be able to conduct Flotow’s opera Martha that very evening without rehearsal. According to Alma Mahler’s memoirs, Mahler said yes ‘although he had never seen a note of it’ and ‘asked if he might have the score just to refresh his memory in the course of the afternoon. During that afternoon he learned the whole score by heart, and conducted so brilliantly at night that he was engaged on the spot’.32 This was all the more fortunate since his objectionable engagement in Olmütz was coming to an end in summer 1883. This summer presented him with a life of magical richness: first an interesting professional experience in a brief engagement as choral director of an Italian ‘Stagione’ company engaged for a guest season at the Carltheater in Vienna; then he finally set out on his long-desired first pilgrimage to Bayreuth to hear Parsifal, the sacred stage work of the festival [Bühnenweihfestspiel] which had still not been released to any other opera house. Mahler’s curious, almost symbolic meeting with Wolf on the way to the Festspielhaus when the two student friends walked past each other with a curt greeting, has already been noted in a different context. But as he sat in

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the Festspielhaus and the sound of the invisible orchestra floated up from the ‘mystical depths’ and merged in perfect balance with the singers’ voices on stage, and, after the deeply stirring prelude to the third act portraying Parsifal’s wanderings, as nature itself began to resound in the orchestra during the magical Good Friday scene, illuminated and transfigured by the awe-inspiring events, this must have struck his innermost soul, and he must have felt it to be the confirmation of the path he must take, and a symbol of the goals for which he would strive both as conductor and as creative musician in the future: as a conductor who struggled in the name of Wagner against the daily routine of the opera and towards the realisation of the festival idea in the music theatre; and as a creative musician who, like Parsifal, looked at Nature and sensed her in all her diversity reverberating passionately and majestically in his innermost soul. The following passage from a letter he wrote to his old friend Fritz Löhr in July 1883 on returning home from Bayreuth to his parents in Iglau, cannot be explained in any other way: It would be hard to describe what is going on in me. When I walked out of the Festspielhaus, incapable of uttering a word, I knew I had come to understand all that is greatest and most painful and that I would bear it within me, inviolate, for the rest of my life. So I returned home, only to find those whom I love so poorly, so dulled – … my beloved parents with those three iron rings around their chests and their poor tormented hearts – and I myself am so hard and cruel to them – yet I can’t help it, and I go on tormenting them to the utmost.— And I am supposed to leave in three weeks, in order to start work in my new ‘profession’!— 33 This agonising inner turmoil, evident in his relationship with his parents, and inflamed by an experience of love that was soon to enter his life in Kassel,34 formed the spiritual subsoil from which his first works of lasting significance emerged. The unbending stubbornness of his father, the patient suffering of his mother, who could affectionately forgive and smile through tears of deepest sorrow like no one else – all this lived on in him, in the spirit of his activities as a conductor, and in his music. He had now developed the inner maturity to achieve these things. The apprentice years in small provincial theatres had come to an end. The time of his unstoppable rise had begun.

Chapter 4

Kassel (1883–85) Tragic experience of love: Johanna Richter — the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen cycle — the New Year letter of 1 January 1885 — the germ-cell of the First Symphony in D major — the growth of the Symphony from song — the programme subsequently added to the First Symphony and then withdrawn — music for tableaux vivants in Scheffel’s Trompeter von Säkkingen — the great music festival in Münden, 29 June to 1 July 1885

O

n 11 August 1883 Mahler broke off his summer vacation at his parents’ house in Iglau and went off to Kassel, the city where he would take on his new role as ‘Royal Music and Choral Director’ at the Hoftheater. It was his first engagement at an important theatre and his first taste of the bitter competitive rivalries of theatrical life. Work at the theatre was both strenuous and unpleasant. As the title suggests, it included not only directing operatic performances but also leading all the choral training. Very soon after taking up his appointment Mahler realised that it offered extremely limited opportunities for development. The hostile attitude of his superior, court conductor Wilhelm Treiber, who was unwilling to give his far-younger colleague a ‘chance’, was all-too obvious. ‘Herr Hofkapellmeister has an option on all the classics’ wrote Mahler on 19 September 1883 to his friend Löhr; ‘he is the cheerfullest 4/4-beat man ever to come my way. I, of course, am the “most stiff-necked young man in the world”, who absolutely refuses to be initiated into the mysteries of art by him’.1 The theatre management did not give Mahler much support either. The Hoftheater was then under the direction of Intendant Freiherrn von und zu Gilsa who always sided with Hofkapellmeister Treiber and tried to enforce the latter’s view in official business. Treiber could look back on many years of conducting activity: after working in his native city Graz for twelve years, he took over directorship of the ‘Euterpe’ concerts in Leipzig in 1876, remaining there until 1880. On 1 January 1881 he joined the Kassel Hoftheater and took part in the reconstruction of the opera ensemble in progress at that time. This led to the continual enhancement of Treiber’s position and influence within the theatre management until they far exceeded his musical and artistic capabilities. Thus Mahler’s work in Kassel involved him in constant struggles against 173

(Opposite) Mahler, 1883–84, Kassel.

two powerful theatre officials, the Intendant and the Hofkapellmeister, in which he frequently came off worst. Because of this, the sense of distance he had immediately managed to extend around himself in previous engagements, tended not to appear in such a natural and obvious way in Kassel. From the orchestra, who hated him for his protracted rehearsals, he knew that he could gain complete respect precisely as a result of his uncompromising strictness, which forced every single musician to give of his best. A more cordial relationship developed with the vocal soloists, not least because Mahler fell in love with a member of the ensemble, the coloratura soprano Johanna Richter, who had arrived at the Hoftheater from Bremen in the same year (1883). This love affair embroiled Mahler in passionate spiritual struggles and was a profoundly moving experience in his life, which shook him to the core. It was an unhappy passion from which he tried in vain to flee but which repeatedly ensnared him. Several of his letters written in 1884 and 1885 to Löhr clearly reflect how something had happened on Christmas Day 1883 that led to a tragic turning point in his life: ‘and … with that day there began a period of unceasing and intolerable struggle to which there is as yet no end in sight, a struggle I have to endure day in, day out, indeed hour by hour’.2 During the summer holidays of 1884 with his parents in Iglau, he took refuge in books, in the world of Goethe whose Dichtung und Wahrheit he had read before, but into which he now tried to gain new insights by studying the works of Sulpiz Boisserée, the art historian from Cologne and friend of Goethe.3 He derived much pleasure from reading the comedy Ponce de Léon by Clemens Brentano, whereas he felt a deep aversion for the Schlegels (‘it is whenever they adopt a cordial note that I don’t trust them’).4 When he was back in Kassel after the end of the holidays, things nevertheless continued on their effusively romantic course. In an undated letter to Löhr of autumn 1884, Mahler wrote: I arrived here yesterday and already have my first rehearsal behind me. I had scarcely set foot in the streets of Kassel when the same terrible old spell befell me, and I don’t know how to regain my balance. I have seen her again, and she is as enigmatic as ever! All I can say is: God help me! You will have noticed, in the last days of the time we spent together, how now and then some sombre forces took hold of me – it was my dread of the inevitable. I am going to see her this afternoon, ‘I am going to call on her’, after which my situation will at once take on definite shape.5 174

For the first time a person from the professional world of the theatre had found entry into the innermost world of his imagination and dreams. And the aura from this woman was so strong that it completely forced aside all the other imaginative ideas and burgeoning artistic plans that had formerly preoccupied him. ‘Mountain spirits are not visiting me at present for they know they would be sent away again’, Mahler wrote in a letter of 10 October 1883 to Löhr, in reference to his work on the planned fairy-tale opera Rübezahl.6 A new world opened up for him, the world of love’s burning pain whose anguish cast murky shadows over the young man’s soul until the wonders of nature broke their dark power and dissolved them into nothing; and this world formed itself into a personal confession in music that released all the intensity of his emotions and miraculously transfigured what he was given to sing and say in the simple folksong manner familiar from his earliest youth. Thus it was in Kassel that Mahler’s first genuine masterpiece was born: the song cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, as announced to Löhr in his important New Year letter of 1 January 1885: My signposts: I have written a cycle of songs, six of them so far, all dedicated to her. She does not know them. What can they tell her but what she knows. I shall send with this the concluding song, although the inadequate words cannot render even a small part.— The idea of the songs as a whole is that a wayfaring man, who has been stricken by fate, now sets forth into the world, travelling wherever his road may lead him.7 When Mahler wrote these lines the song cycle had not yet taken on its final form. He mentions here ‘six of them so far’, while in the published version which did not appear until 1897, the cycle contains only four songs: 1. ‘Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht’ 2. ‘Ging’ heut’ morgen über’s Feld’ 3. ‘Ich hab’ ein glühend’ Messer in meiner Brust’ 4. ‘Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz’ We can approach the solution to this puzzle by comparing the four Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen with the suggestions of folksong they contain. These folksong reminiscences are a vivid expression of distantly echoing times, filled with the innumerable melodies of unknown folk musicians experienced and absorbed by Mahler from his earliest youth, which became an inexhaustible source of musical and poetic inspiration for him. Thus the poetry of the first of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, ‘Wenn mein 175

Schatz Hochzeit macht’, was inspired by two folksongs: the beginning by the folksong ‘Horch, was kommt von draussen rein’, and the middle section by the folksong from Posen, ‘Ach Blümlein blau’. This is not to say that Mahler tried to approximate folk poetry in the content of his poem, down to its individual textual idioms. On the contrary, folk poetry in its complete naturalness and simplicity was for him a pristine material of which he felt himself to be an anonymous bearer: a link in the chain of unknown masters of folksong whose words and melodies, transmitted orally from generation to generation, rang out through the ages as the elemental sounds of life and nature. The frequent literal correspondences between folk poetry and Mahler’s song texts can be accounted for by this spiritual kinship, although even more astonishing is the profound affinity evident in those passages where the composer’s specific melodic articulation obliges him to make textual insertions of his own for reasons of vocal phrasing: Folksong

Wenn mein Liebchen Hochzeit macht Hab ich meinen Trauertag: Geh dann in mein Kämmerlein, Trage meinen Schmerz allein.

[When my darling has her wedding-day I have my day of sorrow: Then I go into my little room, And bear my grief alone.

Ach Blümlein blau Verdorre nicht, Du stehst auf grüner Heide Du bist einmal mein Schatz gewest Jetzt aber muss ich Dich meiden.

Oh little blue flower Do not wither, You stand on the green moors You were once my love But now I must leave you alone.]

Mahler

Wenn mein Schatz Hochzeit macht, Fröhliche Hochzeit macht, Hab ich meinen traurigen Tag! Geh’ ich in mein Kämmerlein, Dunkles Kämmerlein, Weine, wein’ um meinen Schatz Um meinen lieben Schatz.

[When my love has her wedding-day, Her joyful wedding-day, I have my day of sorrow! I go into my little room, My dark little room, And weep, weep for my love For my dear love.

Blümlein blau, Blümlein blau, Verdorre nicht, verdorre nicht, Vöglein suss Du singst auf grüner Heide.

Little blue flower, little blue flower, Do not wither, do not wither, Sweet little bird You sing on the green moor.]

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It can be seen from this that the first of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen combines the two folksongs. Curiously, this same combination appears in a poem from Achim v. Arnim’s and Clemens Brentano’s folksong collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which, according to all the evidence, Mahler did not get to know before 1888.8 He therefore unwittingly trod the same path as one of the unknown folk poets. Pamer, who first uncovered this connection in his dissertation ‘Die Lieder Gustav Mahlers’, makes the following comment: ‘That he already knew many of them from his youth, some having been passed down to him in person, is also revealed by melodic figures in his songs that conform closely to the original folk tunes.’ While Pamer finds no similarity with folksongs in the other three songs of the cycle, Mahler nevertheless seems to have planned once again to combine his own text with a folk melody in the fourth song. This is evident in the dream-like major-key conclusion of ‘Die zwei blauen Augen von meinem Schatz’ which had begun in the minor, whose melody is a variant of his setting of the folksong ‘Und nun Ade mein herzallerliebster Schatz’,9 here transfigured by the deepest emotional intimacy. In the folksong the youth calls down these words to the grave of his dead bride: Ei du mein herzallerliebster Schatz, Mach’ auf dein tiefes Grab! Du horst kein Glöcklein läuten etc. [Hey there, my dearest darling, Open your deep grave! You can hear no little bell ringing etc.] Mahler’s own text for the more profoundly expressive variant of this melody in the fourth song of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen is as follows: Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum, Da hab’ ich zum erstenmal im Schlaf geruht! Unter dem Lindenbaum! Der hat seine Blüten über mich geschneit. Da wusst’ ich, wie das Leben tut, War alles, alles wieder gut! Alles! Alles! Lieb, und Leid, Und Welt, und Traum! 177

[By the road stands a linden tree Where I first found peace in sleep! Under the linden tree! Its blossoms fell like snow on me. I no longer knew of life’s troubles And all, yes, all was well again! Everything! Everything! Love and sorrow, And world and dream!] This is the part that contains the melody of the sixth [sic] song in embryo. The first and fourth songs of the cycle were therefore arranged by Mahler in very similar ways: as contrasting juxtapositions of two song melodies, conflicting in mood. The first part of Mahler’s New Year letter to Friedrich Löhr, in which he adopts a Jean-Paul-like tone, is even more informative about the close connection between his life and his artistic creativity. Directly out of this Jean-Paul-like atmosphere emerges the first announcement of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen cited above: My dear Fritz, On this morning of New Year’s Day let my thoughts be devoted to you. It was a strange way indeed that I spent the first minutes of this year. Yesterday evening I was alone with her, both of us awaiting the new year’s arrival almost without exchanging a word. Her thoughts were not bent on the present, and when the bell chimed and tears gushed from her eyes, it overwhelmed me that I, I might not dry them. She went in to the adjacent room and stood for a while in silence at the window, and when she returned, still weeping, the nameless grief had risen up between us like an everlasting partition-wall, and there was nothing I could do but press her hand and go. As I came out of the door, the bells were ringing and the solemn chorale resounded from the tower. Ah, dear Fritz – it was all as though the great dictator of the universe had meant to stage-manage it perfectly. I wept all through the night in my dreams.10 From the innermost depths of this portrayal of his spiritual condition arises a memory from youth: Anton Bruckner sketching for his students and friends the picture of mediaeval Linz where the New Year was rung in from the tower, as it were, by the opening horn fifths of his Fourth Symphony. 178

Without doubt, one of Mahler’s strongest youthful artistic impressions must have been tied up with these horn calls. For here, in the polyphonic treatment of these fifths in the form of a question and answer between horn and woodwind, Bruckner inaugurated that new type of symphonic introduction in which the birth of the symphony’s main theme unfolds before the listener. On New Year’s Day in Kassel, 1885, ‘the bells were ringing and the solemn chorale resounded from the tower’. This is how Mahler described it in his letter. Just as Bruckner had heard the ‘horn’ fifths ringing from the tower in his New Year’s Day vision from mediaeval Linz and they became his symphonic introduction, so in Kassel Mahler heard a call of a fourth which he conceived as the germ-cell of the main thematic idea of his First Symphony in D major. Whether the bells were really tuned to the interval of a fourth, and whether the chorale melody chiming down from the tower actually moved in fourths, does not matter. Whatever the case – perhaps because the interval of a fourth was especially familiar to him from the military signals he so often heard in his childhood – Mahler heard a pure fourth, which for him symbolised the sounds of nature from which his First Symphony grew. [The following paragraph and the beginning of the paragraph after that are crossed through in the German typescript. They do not appear in the draft English translation, but are translated here.] Two further factors support the claim that the idea for the First Symphony arose at precisely this time. In the first place, as the addressee pointedly suggests,11 the style of the New Year letter is reminiscent of Jean Paul, one of Mahler’s favourite authors. Jean-Paul-like language offered an appropriate expressive medium for Mahler’s exuberant spiritual state on this New Year’s Day. Fourteen years later in June 1894 the First Symphony was performed for the first time in Weimar, under Mahler.12 On that occasion it bore the title of Jean Paul’s novel Titan and a programme was accordingly attached to it by way of explanation for the listeners. Although the title and the programme added to the Symphony after the event were of a completely secondary nature – Mahler later withdrawing them because he felt them to be inadequate – it is nevertheless highly significant that he endeavoured to express the spiritual moods of the music in the style of Jean Paul, just as in the New Year letter. Secondly, in the middle part of the third movement – the so-called ‘Funeral march after Callot’ – the dream-like major-key melody from the fourth of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen appears … [this sentence is incomplete]. The basic characteristic element of Mahler’s creative process 179

thus appears for the first time: the development of symphony from song. [The section crossed through in the German typescript ends at this point.] From the germ-cell of the interval of a fourth develops the Symphony’s introductory theme, ‘wie ein Naturlaut’ [‘like a sound of nature’] whose fanfare-like transformation to the major will precipitate the climax of the final movement; and the cuckoo call sounding from within the cosmic web of the Symphony’s introduction anticipates the main theme that will dominate the first movement: the melody from the second of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, ‘Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld’. Furthermore the fourth interval forms the germ-cell of the energetic Ländler theme of the second movement, and the stubborn bass figure underpinning the spectral canon on the folksong ‘Brüder Martin, schläfst du noch?’ in the third movement. With its underlying mood of dark, brooding despair eventually undergoing a highly intense transformation into grotesque irony, the only glimpse of light in this latter movement is a contrasting middle section. Marked by Mahler in the score ‘Sehr einfach und schlicht wie eine Volksweise’ [‘Very simple and artless, like a folk tune’], the violins begin to play the dream-like major-key melody from the last of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, where it is sung to the words ‘Auf der Strasse steht ein Lindenbaum’. The resumption of the canon brings the movement to an end. But this is not a true ending, for immediately after the last sound has faded away a huge orchestral outburst follows at the beginning of the finale. In a letter to Marschalk, Mahler himself once compared the mood of the third movement with a ‘thundercloud’ from which the fourth movement springs ‘suddenly … like lightning’, like ‘the outcry of a heart deeply wounded’.13 It follows from this that the use of song melodies in Mahler’s symphonies does not provide a clarification of the symphonic content and mood through lyrical reminiscences, but rather constitutes a purely musical and architectonic creative process: many musical impressions manifested themselves to the composer initially in conjunction with words, and so in the first instance they developed into songs without their ultimate content having been entirely exhausted through this process; the full development of such musical ideas was then only achieved in the symphonic domain, where they attained definitive shape, were simultaneously raised to that higher level of coherence within the whole, and fulfilled their structural significance. One must therefore ask whether the unhappy love affair during the Kassel period lay at the root of both the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and the First Symphony. The answer to this question is important because it will clarify the extent to which Mahler allowed himself to be directed by 180

a specific extra-musical programme during his first encounter with largescale symphonic form. There can certainly be no doubt about the connection between the love affair and the song cycle. The first indication of Mahler’s relationship with Johanna Richter is found in his letter to Löhr of 10 October 1883, in which he writes in relation to his work on the fairy-tale opera Rübezahl: ‘Mountain spirits are not visiting me at present for they know they would be sent away again’.14 In the letter of April 1884 we find reference to ‘a period of unceasing and intolerable struggle’ to which there was as yet no end in sight.15 Only in a letter from autumn 1884 does Mahler reveal to his friend that ‘the same terrible old spell’ had seized him again and that he did not know how to restore his balance.16 Darkness had descended over him in recent days – ‘dread of the inevitable’.17 Then, in the published correspondence there follows the New Year letter discussed in detail above, which contains the announcement of the ‘six’ songs ‘so far’ – collected into a cycle and all dedicated to ‘her’, although she did not know of them – as well as this description: ‘the idea of the songs as a whole is that a wayfaring man, who has been stricken by fate, now sets forth into the world, travelling wherever his road may lead him’.18 [The following incomplete paragraph is crossed through in the German typescript and only appears later, slightly amended, in the draft English translation.] Guido Adler is therefore correct to assume that the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen date from December 1884, although from correspondence and information obtained from the Mahler family, Fritz Egon Pamer concluded that work on the cycle had already begun in December 1883.19 In the same letter, he finally writes: I spent Christmas Eve all alone, although she had invited me to her place. Dear Fritz! All that you know about her is mere misunderstanding. I have begged her forgiveness for everything, casting my pride and egoism from me. She is everything that is lovable in this world. I would shed every drop of my blood for her. But I do know that I must go away. And I have done everything to that end, but still see no way out.20 The next news about this great spiritual crisis and the beginnings of its overcoming, which Mahler yearned for in a way that found artistic expression in the fourth of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, appears in a letter to Löhr dated ‘Kassel, April 1885, Sunday afternoon’: 181

Much has happened since I wrote to you in Starnberg; the most grievous thing was still to come. When we are together again you shall learn all. For the present it suffices to say that I was near to the loveliest fulfilment and then at a stroke lost all – through no living being’s fault.— For a long time I did not know where to turn – there was one sole sombre wish in me: to sleep – and not to dream! With the coming of spring all has grown mild in me again. From my window I have a view across the city to the mountains and woods, and the kindly Fulda wends its amiable way between; whenever the sun casts its coloured lights within, as now, well, you know how everything in one relaxes.21 That the process of overcoming and release from pain was making headway, gaining an ever increasing distance from the affair for Mahler, is shown in his next letter of 28 May 1885 in which he writes: If I wrote to you recently that my relationship to ‘her’ had entered into a new and final stage, that was nothing but the ruse of a cunning theatre manager who announces a ‘last performance’ only to offer, the following day, a very last one. What was final has now given way to the definitely final. But since there are now only three weeks between me and our parting for ever, it doesn’t seem very probable that there will be any ‘widespread demand’ leading up to yet another very – very last.— But I cannot vouch for anything.22 The final mention of Johanna Richter occurs in an undated letter which the recipient, Löhr, marked ‘Kassel, June 1885’. The passage concerned reads: All the jobs and prospects before me have helped me, sanguine type that I am, to get over many a bitter experience. I shall almost certainly leave her without so much as a word of farewell! For a whole month I haven’t set eyes on her except at rehearsals. How it has come to this is something I may tell you about when we meet. Sometimes, when I start up out of my sleep, I simply cannot believe it.23 Probably in view of the New Year letter of 1 January 1885, Guido Adler has assumed that the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen were actually written in December 1884, while Fritz Egon Pamer relies on the annotation in the score ‘Dezember 1883’, which possibly indicates the very first beginnings of the work. This nevertheless supports the fact that Mahler was occupied for such a long time producing the final version and orchestrating the cycle (which was not published until 1897) that up to the beginning of 1888 he 182

worked on no other compositions, apart from two musical adaptations for the theatre,24 and concentrated solely on completing the song cycle and the First Symphony. In March 1888 the score of the First Symphony was finished, as reported in a letter to Löhr. It is evident from Löhr’s footnote to this letter that Mahler was already making the initial sketches for the First Symphony during the composition of the Gesellen cycle. This footnote says: ‘The work then nearing completion, of which he here writes, is his First Symphony, the beginnings of which date back to the year 1884, when he was in Kassel.’25 We can assume that the final version of Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen was finished in the first months of 1885,26 so that detailed work on the score of the Symphony proper followed in the years between 1885 and 1888.27 The beginnings coincide with Mahler letters from April to June 1885 in which he speaks of overcoming his great spiritual crisis and of the final farewell to Johanna Richter. This demonstrates the differing ways in which the content of the experience was artistically transformed in both works. If the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen were the immediate expression of the love affair in Kassel, then the Symphony reached beyond the love affair: at its root was a decisive confrontation with the profound spiritual crisis. Mahler himself described this in a letter to Marschalk on 26 March 1896: If you will permit me to make one comment, I should like to see it emphasised that the symphony begins at a point beyond the loveaffair; it forms the basis, i.e. it dates from earlier in the composer’s emotional life. But the real-life experience was the reason for the work, not its content.28 It should be noted that at the end of the First Symphony’s scherzo Mahler inserted the following note in the score: ‘Take a sizeable break here before the next movement (no. 3) begins’. The significance of this pause is clear: it symbolises the tremendous disparity between the spiritual state before the shattering event that precipitated the great crisis, and the spiritual state at the very moment when this crisis reaches its highpoint in the expressive world of the eerily grotesque third movement. Evidence that at the first performance of the Symphony on 20 November 1889 in Budapest29 the [usually] unruffled audience was disturbed by such tragic intensity of expression and frightened out of their customary tranquillity is given in one of Löhr’s diary entries where he describes the effect of the great orchestral outburst at the beginning of the fourth movement on the lady sitting next to him: ‘A fashionable lady sitting near me was so 183

Caricature of Budapest première of First Symphony.

startled by the attacca leading into the last movement that she dropped all the things she was holding.’30 It is therefore not difficult to understand why at later performances of the Symphony, most importantly the June 1894 performance in Weimar at the Tonkünstlerfest of the Allgemeiner Deutscher Musikverein, Mahler followed the latest trends by adding a ‘programme’ in the attempt to facilitate the audience’s understanding of the Symphony – a work that had been decried as ‘outrageous’. According to this ‘programme’ the Symphony bore the title Titan, presumably to suggest the similarity between its moods of youthful exuberance and the emotional world of Jean Paul.31 In any event it was quite clear from the ‘programme’ that Mahler considered the first two and the last two movements as forming two parts separated by a large caesura. The first part was entitled ‘“Aus den Tagen der Jugend”, Blumen- , Frucht- und Dornstücke’ [‘“From the Days of Youth”, Flower, Fruit and Thorn Pieces’].32 The first movement has the heading ‘Frühling und kein Ende’ [‘Spring and no End’], with the additional explanation: ‘Die Einleitung schildert das Erwachen der Natur am frühesten Morgen’ [‘The introduction depicts the awakening of Nature at the break of day’]. (Another version used at the Hamburg performance has ‘Erwachen der Natur aus langem Winterschlafe’ [‘awakening of Nature from its long winter sleep’].) The second movement is labelled ‘“Mit vollen Segeln” (Scherzo)’ [‘“At Full Sail” (Scherzo)’]. The title of the second part of the Symphony was ‘“Commedia humana”’ [‘“Human Comedy”’].33 184

The third movement was given more extended explanation. It was headed ‘Gestrandet. Des Jägers Leichenbegängnis’ [‘Stranded. The Huntsman’s Funeral’] (in Hamburg, this was ‘“Gestrandet!” (Ein Todtenmarsch in “Callot’s Manier”)’ [‘“Stranded!” (A Funeral March “After Callot”)’]. Below this were the following lines: If necessary, the following will serve as explanation: the composer received the external stimulus for this piece of music from the parody illustration ‘The Huntsman’s Funeral’ well known to all children in Southern Germany from a book of old fairy tales. The animals of the forest escort the coffin of the dead hunter to the grave: hares carry the little flag; in front there is a band of Bohemian street musicians, with cats, toads and crows etc. playing instruments; stags, does, foxes and other four-legged creatures of the forest accompany the procession in bizarre poses. At this point the music is conceived as the expression of a sometimes mockingly ironic, sometimes uncanny and brooding mood, after which ‘Dall’ inferno al Paradiso’ (Allegro furioso) [i.e. the finale] follows immediately, as the sudden expression of a deeply wounded heart.34 The Huntsman's Funeral.

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For the concert of his works on 16 March 1896 in Berlin – which included the first movement of the Second Symphony, the première of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen sung by Sistermans, and, to end with, the First Symphony – Mahler omitted the above programmatic explanations. The sequence of song cycle followed by symphony seemed clear enough to him, and when Marschalk asked him for clarification, he gave the following detailed reply only four days later in a letter from Hamburg dated 20 March 1896: You are right about the title (Titan) and the programme. At the time my friends persuaded me to write some sort of programme notes to make the D major easier to understand. So I worked out the title and these explanatory notes retrospectively. My reason for omitting them this time was not only that I thought them quite inadequate – in fact, not even accurate or relevant – but that I have experienced the way the audiences have been set on the wrong track by them. But so it is with every programme!35 The Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and the beginnings of the First Symphony were the lasting fruits of Mahler’s years in Kassel, but one must not imagine that his day-to-day demands were neglected because of the love affair and these creative activities. We learn absolutely nothing from W. Bennecke’s cursory historical volume Das Hoftheater in Kassel von 1814 bis zur Gegenwart (Kassel, 1906) in which Mahler’s activities as conductor and choral director are briefly recorded in a single sentence (p. 165). But from Mahler’s various letters to Löhr and to the theatre director Angelo Neumann in Prague we hear that to his regret he was given neither Mozart nor Wagner, nor Beethoven’s Fidelio to conduct, although he did direct demanding enough works such as Weber’s Der Freischütz, Marschner’s Hans Heiling and Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable, among others. To be sure, he was not spared a work such as Nessler’s Der Rattenfänger von Hameln, but on one occasion Mahler was offered the unusual opportunity of placing his specialist compositional talents at the disposal of the theatre, and of writing music for tableaux vivants to Scheffel’s Der Trompeter von Säkkingen – a task that he completed within forty-eight hours. Its first performance took place at the Kassel Hoftheater on 23 June 1884 and was so successful that the work was also acquired and performed by larger theatres such as those in Mannheim, Karlsruhe and Wiesbaden, with very favourable financial consequences for Mahler. That he was quite pleased with the work, which can only really be regarded as an improvisation, is shown in a letter to Löhr written the day before the première: 186

In the last few days I have had to write some music helter-skelter for Der Trompeter von Säkkingen, which is going to be performed in the theatre tomorrow with tableaux vivants. I polished off this opus inside two days, and I must confess I am very pleased with it. As you can imagine, it has little in common with Scheffel’s affectation, indeed leaves that author a long way behind. Your letter arrived just as I was entering the last note in the score … .36 Despite this, Mahler found the work at the Kassel Hoftheater increasingly dissatisfying. He continually quarrelled with both Hofkapellmeister Treiber and the Intendant. A more serious conflict arose when he refused to conduct a Tannhäuser parody, and this was interpreted as insubordination. In addition his personal relationships became more complicated. As a kind of reaction to his unfortunate experience with Johanna Richter he kept falling in love with other female members of the ensemble. Alma Mahler was the first to comment on this complex situation in her memoirs, although it is not clear whether the double relationship she describes concerns a rival of Richter or two new Graces who ensnared him with their charms: He fell in love with two singers at the same time, who put their heads together to make fun of him. Tormented by his feelings, he wrote verses to both, not knowing they were friends and showed his verses to each other. If he finished a poem in the middle of the night, he dispatched it at once by messenger, regardless of the lateness of the hour and the fury these untimely offerings provoked. Driven to distraction at last by gossip and his divided feelings, he left Cassel hurriedly towards the end of the season, and once in the train he was a free man again.37 However, his departure from Kassel was not quite so sudden or unexpected an escape. Since 1884 it had become patently obvious to Mahler that renewing his contract and remaining in Kassel were out of the question. This is clearly illustrated in a letter from Kassel of 3 December 1884 sent by Mahler to Angelo Neumann at a time when, according to newspaper reports, the latter was about to take over directorship of the German National Theatre in Prague. The letter, reproduced below, was first published in the Prager Tagblatt on 5 March 1898:38 Honoured Director! I take the liberty of introducing and recommending myself to you should the occasion arise. I am the second Kapellmeister at the Hoftheater of this city, and I conduct Robert le Diable, Hans Heiling, Freischütz, Rattenfänger, etc. You can easily 187

obtain information on my abilities from here or from stage manager Ueberhorst of Dresden, who knows me very well. I wish to leave my present post, principally because of my need for better and more suitable work as befits my capabilities, which unfortunately I cannot find here as second Kapellmeister. Would you have need of a young, energetic conductor in the near or more distant future – at the moment I have to sing my own praises – equipped with knowledge and experience, and capable of instilling an art work and its performers with passion and enthusiasm? I will be brief so as not to waste your time unnecessarily. Please, let me have an early and favourable answer and accept the expression of my deepest respect. Gustav Mahler Kassel, Wolfsschlucht 13/III39 A positive answer to this letter soon arrived in Kassel. Neumann explained to Mahler that negotiations concerning his directorship of the German National Theatre in Prague were not yet concluded, but that he was to apply and introduce himself to him personally as soon as the newspapers reported the successful completion of these negotiations. Promising discussions were also begun with Max Staegemann, director of the Leipzig theatre. The musical director of the opera house there was none other than Artur Nikisch, a fellow conservatoire student only a few years older than Mahler who likewise had belonged to Bruckner’s closest circle of friends. An agreement was struck whereby after withdrawing from his association with the Kassel Hoftheater he could spend a probationary month in summer 1885 at the Leipzig opera house. With these favourable prospects guaranteed, Mahler was able triumphantly to weather the severest crisis of his relationship with Hofkapellmeister Treiber and the Intendant Freiherrn von und zu Gilsa. The starting point of this crisis was Mahler’s extremely successful work as director of a choral society in nearby Münden. From this choral society arose the idea of organising a large-scale music festival together with three other choirs from Marburg (the Akademischer Gesangsverein), Nordhausen and the Kassel Hoftheater. The programme was to consist of three events: an orchestral concert, a chamber-music evening and a grand performance of Mendelssohn’s oratorio St Paul featuring eminent soloists, all four choral societies and the royal court orchestra.40 The management in Kassel had in effect already agreed this plan, making the Hoftheater as well as the orchestra available. Then something unforeseen happened: by an overwhelming majority, Otto Freiberg, music director at the Royal University of Marburg, was 188

Mahler’s Metamorphoses

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chosen to conduct the orchestral concert, and the young music director and conductor of the Münden choral society, Gustav Mahler, was chosen for the massed oratorio performance. Hofkapellmeister Treiber felt grossly insulted that he had been passed over for such a special event, and the Intendant interposed, appealing to Mahler that he should voluntarily forgo directing the oratorio concert out of loyalty to his older colleague. He gave Mahler to understand that there would be serious consequences should he refuse, and that the participation of the Hoftheater in the music festival would be withdrawn. Mahler countered this thinly disguised attempt at blackmail with an unshakeable determination to accept his election as director of the festival. He felt strong enough to pursue the struggle against any obstruction from the Hoftheater management and to justify the confidence placed in him through this selection. He was no doubt also aware that with so many important parties interested in the staging of the festival, any attempt by the management to spoil the venture, or even to wreck it, would be successfully averted. And he was no longer worried about his own position at the theatre: he knew that he had nothing to lose there and that it only remained for him to obtain his release as soon as possible. Everything happened almost exactly as he had anticipated. The management withdrew the Hoftheater’s participation in the festival arrangements. This meant that the concerts could no longer take place in the theatre as originally planned. However, in order to avoid public opprobrium for openly sabotaging the festival, the management did not officially forbid the participation of the Royal Court Orchestra in the festival concerts, but rather prevailed upon the orchestra to make a declaration that the players would voluntarily withdraw from participating in the festival concerts out of loyalty to Hofkapellmeister Treiber who had been disregarded by the festival organisers. Now the bomb exploded. It began to appear as if the whole festival project was doomed to failure by the boycott of the Hoftheater management. A solution was nevertheless found. It turned out that the drill-hall of the infantry regiment stationed in Kassel had the acoustics of a first-rate concert hall and would provide a splendid setting in place of the theatre, especially for the oratorio performance and the orchestral concert. Solving the problem of the orchestra was much more difficult, but this, too, was eventually overcome. Of course it was only possible to muster an ad hoc collection of musicians for the festival rather than a permanent, finely honed orchestra. This meant an increased number of rehearsals and a redoubling of effort on the part of performers and conductors. 190

All this Mahler willingly took upon himself. In the absence of a central rehearsal space in Kassel and also to save costs, for a period of three months Mahler travelled among the neighbouring towns to take intensive rehearsals with each of the choral societies. The choirs were so expertly prepared that even the first general rehearsals for St Paul held in Kassel went extraordinarily well and made a very promising impression. The situation turned more and more in favour of Mahler and the festival organisers. As the famous soloists started to arrive in Kassel from far and near – led by prima donna Rosa Papier from the Vienna Hofoper, the Kammersänger41 Bulss and Gudehus from Dresden, the violinist Karl Halir (born in Hohenelbe in Bohemia), leader of the court orchestra in Weimar, and the piano virtuoso Alfred Reisenauer, one of Liszt’s most outstanding pupils – a festival mood full of expectancy held sway. ‘Grand Music Festival in Kassel on 29 June, 30 June and 1 July 1885’ it said on the title page of the programme-book distributed to festival patrons. But even the highest expectations were exceeded in the festival’s brilliant opening performance of Mendelssohn’s oratorio St Paul given by the combined choirs of Kassel, Münden, Nordhausen and Marburg, accompanied by an eighty-strong orchestra under the baton of the twenty-five-year-old music director, Gustav Mahler, in which Rosa Papier, the famous singer from the Vienna Hofoper, celebrated one of the greatest triumphs of her illustrious, but tragically all-too-short, career. The greatness of Mahler’s personality as a conductor – hitherto sensed by only a few – was fully revealed for the first time during an evening that proved to be of prophetic significance for his entire future life, or more precisely, for his appointment at the Vienna Hofoper. As Löhr noted in one of his discerning and informative commentaries to the letters written to him by Mahler: ‘Even 12 years later Frau Rosa Papier could still talk of that inspiring performance [29 June 1885], and at the time when Mahler’s appointment to the Vienna Opera was under discussion [1897], the impression still remained’.42 A brief report on the Kassel music festival appeared in the curious journal Parsifal which was published for just two years (1884 and 1885) in Vienna and then Leipzig, and called itself a ‘fortnightly journal dedicated to achieving the artistic ideals of Richard Wagner’. The report, in no. 14 of the second year, read as follows: Kassel, July. The days of the music festival are now over and, as was reported to ‘B.C.’, they richly fulfilled all expectations. It was especially remarkable that, as a result of a disagreement with the management of the Royal Theatre, the performances could not take place in the 191

theatre but did so in the drill-hall of the infantry regiment, whose acoustics luckily proved to be so favourable that these very circumstances contributed substantially to the success of the musical performances. Mendelssohn’s oratorio St Paul constituted the pièce de résistance among the performances. To be sure, the Royal Orchestra was prevented from taking part due to the aforementioned dispute, but the replacement, in the form of an orchestra assembled ad hoc, proved perfectly satisfactory. In addition to the conductor and music director Mahler, warmest praise is due above all to the soloists: Rosa Papier from Vienna, Messrs Gudehus and Bulss from Dresden as well as Wagner from Kassel. The first three of these artists also took part in the final concert and on that occasion, too, were enthusiastically applauded. The main works of the final concert were Rubinstein’s Ocean Symphony and Liszt’s Piano Concerto; the latter was played with distinction by Mr Reisenauer. A ball held in the festival hall after a concert given by the infantry band and choir concluded the festival, which will long remain in the memory of local music-lovers.43 As a bizarre footnote it should be mentioned that during the festival Mahler found himself to be in dire financial straits having spent all his money travelling to the many separate rehearsals in neighbouring towns. He was at the very height of his popularity at this time in Kassel and obviously in Münden, where he went on 5 July 1885 to bid farewell to his faithful choir. By way of a fee and as a token of their grateful appreciation, the festival committee had presented him with a laurel wreath, a large diamond ring and an album. From the choir he received a beautiful gold watch, just at the time when he had to have his old watch sequestered. He jokingly wrote from Münden that he would most probably have to dispose of some of the expensive gifts he had just received in order to set out on his journey home to Iglau the next day.44 During preparations for the music festival, Mahler obtained his release from the theatre in Kassel that he had earlier requested in April 1885, so that there was nothing to keep him there any longer. In the very last days before his departure he made the acquaintance of a colleague with whom he maintained friendly relations for several years, but who later became one of his most implacable opponents: Felix Weingartner. The latter reports in his Lebenserinnerungen: I met Gustav Mahler, who worked as music director at the theatre, on several occasions in a restaurant. At that time there was much talk of an impressive performance of Mendelssohn’s St Paul which he had 192

conducted. We found a great deal to agree about during lively conversations on artistic and intellectual matters.45 More noteworthy still, however, was the relationship Mahler began in Kassel with another, far greater personality: Hans von Bülow. The worldfamous conductor had come to Kassel for a concert with his Meiningen Court Orchestra, and, struck by this experience, Mahler had written him an effusive letter.46 The acquaintance with von Bülow was to have great significance for Mahler only a few years later when both artists were working together in Hamburg. For Mahler found in von Bülow not only a model conductor but also an understanding friend and supporter. Mahler’s great success at the Kassel music festival appears to have led to him dispensing with the probationary month in July 1885 at the Leipzig theatre for which he had been engaged by director Max Staegemann. Instead of this, he was taken on with no prior conducting audition for the 1886–87 season in Leipzig as second Kapellmeister to Nikisch. Before this, Angelo Neumann, who had meanwhile become director of the German National Theatre in Prague, had drawn up a contract for the 1885–86 season for Mahler to be second Kapellmeister at his theatre. Therefore, after saying goodbye to his choir in Münden on 5 July, he finally left Kassel on the next day for his parents in Iglau, stopping on the way in Prague where he introduced himself to director Neumann. He arrived home very tired and with a severe throat infection. Only a few days’ holiday remained before he had to be in Prague on 13 July to begin rehearsals for the opening performance on 1 August. A new chapter in his career was about to begin.

193

Notes

6 The notes to the introductory essay cover items

Foreword and Introduction 1 Einheit was a journal published in London by and

for Czech refugees during the Second World War by the organisation Mladé Ceskoslovensko (Young Czechoslovakia). It was published from 1941 to 1945 and was described as a ‘Sudeten German anti-fascist fortnightly’. 2 Rosenzweig may well have adopted this term

(Umwertung) from Nietzsche’s idea of the ‘revaluation of all values’ [Umwertung aller Werte]. 3 The symphony in question was the First. This

symphony was also performed in an ‘extraordinary’ concert by the Vienna Philharmonic in the Grosser Konzerthaussaal on 3 June 1945 under Robert Fanta as part of a programme that included Schumann’s overture Hermann und Dorothea, Borodin’s symphonic poem In the Steppes of Central Asia and de Falla’s Danse Espagnole No. 1. This concert programme is reproduced on page 28. 4 For example, Karl Blessinger, Die Überwindung von musikalischen Impotenz (Stuttgart: B. Filser, 1920); Richard Eichenauer, Musik und Rasse, 2nd edn (Munich: J. F. Lehmanns Verlag, 1937); Blessinger, Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Mahler. Drei Kapitel Judentum in der Musik als Schlüssel zur Musikgeschichte des 19. Jahrhunderts (Berlin: Bernhard Hahnefeld, 1939); Otto Schumann, Geschichte der deutschen Musik (Leipzig: Bibliographisches Institut, 1940). For a discussion of this and other related literature, see Karen Painter, ‘Jewish identity and anti-Semitic critique in the Austro-German reception of Mahler, 1900–1945’, in Jeremy Barham (ed.), Perspectives on Gustav Mahler (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 175– 94. 5 Alma Mahler, Gustav Mahler. Memories and Letters,

4th edn, ed. Donald Mitchell and Knud Martner, trans. Basil Creighton (London: Cardinal, 1990), p. 109.

addressing this subject that were either unknown to Rosenzweig or post-dated his death. 7 Richard Specht, Gustav Mahler (Berlin and Leipzig:

Schuster & Löffler, 1913). 8 Paul Stefan, Gustav Mahler. Eine Studie über

Persönlichkeit und Werk, 3rd edn (Munich: Piper, 1912), p. 11. 9 Guido Adler, Gustav Mahler (Vienna: Universal

Edition, 1916). 10 For further details of Adler’s life, career and relationship with Mahler, see his memoirs, Wollen und Wirken aus dem Leben eines Musikhistorikers (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1935), later mentioned by Rosenzweig, Mosco Carner, ‘A Pioneer of Musicology: Guido Adler’, in Of Men and Music. Collected Essays and Articles (London: Joseph Williams, 1944), pp. 14–16; Wolfgang Dömling, ‘Musikgeschichte als Stilgeschichte: Bemerkungen zum musikhistorischen Konzept Guido Adlers’, International Review of the Aesthetics and Sociology of Music 4 (1973), pp. 35–49; Edward R. Reilly, Gustav Mahler and Guido Adler: Records of a Friendship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), and Volker Kalisch, Entwurf einer Wissenschaft von der Musik: Guido Adler (BadenBaden: V. Koerner, 1988). 11 Fritz Egon Pamer, ‘Die Lieder Gustav Mahlers’, Studien zur Musikwissenschaft 16 (1929), Beihefte der Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Österreich (Vienna: Universal Edition). 12 Stefan, Gustav Mahler, p. 11. 13 Specht, Gustav Mahler, p. 1. 14 For information on Mahler’s conducting activi-

ties and his surviving conducting scores, see, for example, La Grange’s biography, Zoltan Roman, Gustav Mahler and Hungary (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1991); Bernd Schabbing, Gustav Mahler als Konzert- und Operndirigent in Hamburg (Berlin:

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Ernst Kuhn, 2002); Franz Willnauer, Gustav Mahler und die Wiener Oper (Vienna: Löcker, 1993); and David Pickett, ‘Gustav Mahler as an Interpreter: A Study of his Textural Alterations and Performance Practice in the Symphonic Repertoire’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Surrey, 1988). 15 See Schabbing, Gustav Mahler als Konzert- und

Operndirigent in Hamburg. 16 For updated information on issues surround-

ing the manuscripts and publication of the Fourth Symphony, see James Zychowicz, Mahler’s Fourth Symphony, Studies in Musical Genesis and Structure (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and ‘Reevaluating the sources of Mahler’s music’, in Barham, Perspectives, pp. 419–36. For a portrait of Emil Hertzka, see p. 133 of this volume. 17 Specht, Gustav Mahler, p. 2. The relationship

between Mahler’s biography and his music has preoccupied several more recent commentators, for example, Constantin Floros, Gustav Mahler I, II & III (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1977, 1977 and 1985); Floros, Gustav Mahler. The Symphonies, trans. Vernon Wicker (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994); David Birchler, ‘Nature and Autobiography in the Music of Gustav Mahler’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin, 1991); and Stuart Feder, Gustav Mahler. A Life in Crisis (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 2004). 18 Cited by Alma Mahler in Knud Martner (ed.),

Selected Letters of Gustav Mahler (London: Faber & Faber, 1979), p. 28. 19 Rosenzweig reveals here that he subscribed to the

death myth surrounding accounts of Mahler at this time of his life. 20 Bruno Walter, Gustav Mahler, trans. James Galston

(London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1937), p. 131. 21 Ibid., p. 132.

22 Ibid., p. 133. 23 Ibid., pp. 133–4. The bracketed phrase does not

appear in this translation. It is taken from Bruno Walter, Gustav Mahler, trans. Lotte Walter Lindt (London: Quartet Books, 1990), p. 114. 24 With the exception, perhaps, of Nietzsche. 25 Universalism was a form of thinking prevalent in

the works of Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas and Hegel, which views the universe as a totality and which attempts to explain, understand and derive the particular from the perspective of this superordinate totality. 26 Schopenhauer had in fact left a bequest to the bereaved families of those soldiers killed in the suppression of the liberal rebellion in 1848. 27 Dinger, Richard Wagners geistige Entwicklung.

Versuch einer Darstellung der Weltanschauung Richard Wagners (Leipzig: Röder, 1892); Adler, Richard Wagner (Leipzig: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1904); Mann, Der Untertan (Leipzig: Kurt Wolff, 1919). 28 Jacques Barzun, Darwin, Marx and Wagner

(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1941). 29 Julius Kapp, Richard Wagner. Eine Biographie (Berlin: Schuster & Loeffler, 1910); Ernest Newman, The Life of Richard Wagner, 3 vols (London: Cassell, 1933–47). 30 Note to the postscript to The Case of Wagner, trans.

Walter Kaufmann, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche (New York: The Modern Library, 1968), p. 638. 31 Guido Adler, Richard Wagner, 2nd edn (Munich: Drei Masken Verlag, 1923), p. 344. 32 For example, Versuch über die Ungleichheit der Menschenracen (Stuttgart: Frommann, 1898–1901); Nachgelassene Schriften des Grafen Gobineau (Strassburg: 1901–18). Again, these elements of Wagner’s thought went unnoticed amongst most of his contemporaries with the exception perhaps of Nietzsche.

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33 For further discussion of this performance, see

41 For a discussion of Cosima’s handling of the

also Gerald Turbow, ‘Art and politics; Wagnerism in France’, in David Large and William Weber (eds), Wagnerism in European Culture and Politics (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 134–66, esp. pp. 145–53 and 162–4.

Wagner and Bayreuth legacies, see Geoffrey Skelton, Wagner at Bayreuth (New York: Da Capo Press, 1983), chapters 5–7, and Frederic Spotts, Bayreuth. A History of the Wagner Festival (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1994), chapter 3.

34 Edward Dent, Opera (London: Pelican, 1940), p.

42 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 73.

74. 35 It should be noted that Mahler himself was actively

associated with three of these groups: the Leseverein der deutschen Studenten Wiens, the Pernerstorferkreis and the Sagengesellschaft. See William McGrath, Dionysian Art and Populist Politics in Austria (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1974) and Jeremy Barham, ‘Gustav Mahler and the philosophy of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche’ (unpublished MMus dissertation, University of Surrey, 1992) for further details. 36 While no works by the German economist Amon could be located, examples of Wilser’s work include Stammbaum und Ausbreitung der Germanen (Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1895); Herkunft und Urgeschichte der Arier (Heidelberg: 1899); and Die Überlegenheit der germanischen Rasse (Stuttgart: Strecker und Schröder, 1915). 37 Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Grundlagen des

19. Jahrhunderts (Munich: F. Bruckmann, 1899). A copy of this book survives in the remains of Mahler’s library (see Jeremy Barham, ‘Mahler the thinker: the books of the Alma Mahler-Werfel Collection’, in Barham, Perspectives, pp. 37–151). Chamberlain also wrote, for example, Arische Weltanschauung (Berlin: Bard, Marquardt, 1905).

43 This anecdote was related by Alma Mahler in Mein Leben (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1963), p. 35. 44 On 14 October 1898 in Vienna, an attendant named Barisch at the pathological laboratory of the Vienna General Hospital, charged with looking after animals and bacteriological apparatus used in the investigation of plague, fell ill. Plague was suspected, but Müller, who attended the man and had studied the disease in India, would not admit the diagnosis on clinical grounds. It was not established bacteriologically until 19 October, Barisch having died the day before. Two days later a nurse, and three days later Müller, fell ill. Both died of pneumonic plague. Information obtained from: www.1911encyclopedia. org/P/PL/PLAGUE.htm. 45 Cited in Ludwig Karpath, Begegnung mit dem

Genius (Vienna: Fiba, 1934), pp. 43–4. 46 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 12. 47 See Cosima Wagner und Houston Stewart Chamberlain im Briefwechsel (Leipzig, 1934). 48 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 418. 49 Rosenzweig did not survive to complete the first volume.

38 Heinrich Mann, Der Untertan (Frankfurt am

50 Paul Pretzsch (ed.), Cosima Wagner und Houston

Main: Fischer, 2004), pp. 237–8. English translation taken from The Loyal Subject, trans. Ernest Boyd and Daniel Theisen (New York and London: Continuum, 1998), p. 169.

Stewart Chamberlain im Briefwechsel, 2nd edn (Leipzig: Reclam, 1934).

39 Ibid., p. 240; trans., ibid., p. 171. 40 Letter to Richard Fricke, 18 August 1876.

51 Ferruccio Busoni, Entwurf einer neuen Aesthetik

der Tonkunst (Triest and Charlottenburg, 1907). Trans. in Three Classics of Music Aesthetics (New York: Dover, 1962), pp. 73–102.

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52 Paul Stefan (ed.), Gustav Mahler. Ein Bild seiner Persönlichkeit in Widmungen (Munich: Piper, 1910), p. 16. 53 The debate continues today. For a range of useful discussions and contrasting viewpoints on what has become an increasingly outworn argument, see Sally O’Brien, ‘The “programme” paradox in Romantic music as epitomized in the works of Gustav Mahler’, Studies in Musicology 5 (1971), pp. 54–65; Susan Derrett, ‘In search of wholeness: Gustav Mahler and programme music’, Dansk Arbog for Musikforskning 16 (1985), pp. 7–22; Vera Micznik, ‘Meaning in Gustav Mahler’s Music: a Historical and Analytical Study Focussing on the Ninth Symphony’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1989); Constantin Floros, ‘Aspekte der Programmatik bei Mahler’ in M. T. Vogt (ed.), Das Gustav-Mahler Fest, Hamburg 1989. Bericht über den Internationalen Gustav-Mahler-Kongreß (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1991), pp. 436–44; and Stephen Hefling, ‘Miners digging from opposite sides: Mahler, Strauss, and the problem of program music’, in B. Gilliam (ed.), Richard Strauss. New Perspectives on the Composer and his Work (Durham, NC, and London: Duke University Press, 1992), pp. 41–53. Notably Daniel Chua has argued that the notion of absolute music should be regarded as a socio-theoretical construct and not as an essentialist aesthetic category. See Chua, Absolute Music and the Construction of Meaning (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 54 Mahler in fact died on 11 May 1911, approxi-

mately seven weeks short of his 51st birthday. 55 It should be noted, however, that the following

studies of Mahler all predate Adler’s: Max Graf, ‘Gustav Mahler’, in Wagner Probleme und andere Studien (Vienna: Viener Verlag, 1900), pp. 122–45; Arthur Seidl, Moderne Geist in der deutschen Tonkunst (Regensburg: Bosse, 1900); Ludwig Schiedermair, Gustav Mahler: eine biographisch-kritische Würdigung (Leipzig: Hermann Seemann, 1901); Richard Specht,

Gustav Mahler. Moderne Essays (Berlin: Gose und Tetzlaff, 1905); Paul Stefan, Gustav Mahlers Erbe (Munich: H. von Weber, 1908); Paul Stefan (ed.), Gustav Mahler; ein Bild seiner Persönlichkeit in Widmungen (Munich: Piper, 1910); Paul Stefan, Gustav Mahler: eine Studie über Persönlichkeit und Werk (Munich: Piper, 1910); Edgar Istel (ed.), Mahlers Symphonien (Berlin: Schlesingersche Buchund Musikhandlung, 1910); Richard Specht, Gustav Mahler (Berlin: Schuster, 1913). 56 This remains the case. Excerpts are included in the appendix of Vladimír Karbusicky´, Gustav Mahler und seine Umwelt (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1978). 57 Alfred Einstein (ed.), Musiklexikon, 10th edn (Leipzig, 1922). 58 These views were repeated in Redlich’s later study,

Bruckner and Mahler (London: Dent, 1963), p. 143, though they are presented by no means as forcefully as Rosenzweig’s in this manuscript. 59 Paul Bekker, Die Sinfonie von Beethoven bis Mahler (Berlin: Schuster, 1918). 60 Paul Bekker, Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien (Berlin: Schuster, 1921). 61 See ibid., pp. 11–34. 62 Ernst Kurth, Anton Bruckner (Berlin: Hesse, 1925); Alfred Orel, Anton Bruckner: das Werk, der Künstler, die Zeit (Vienna, 1925). 63 Alma Mahler (ed.), Gustav Mahler. Briefe (1879–

1911) (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay, 1924). 64 La Grange’s multi-volume, ongoing biography, the first volume of which appeared in 1974, would probably have exceeded even Rosenzweig’s expectations. 65 Arnold Schoenberg, Harmonielehre (Vienna:

Universal Edition, 1911). 66 Arnold Schoenberg, Theory of Harmony, trans. Roy E. Carter (London: Faber & Faber, 1978), p. 12. Schoenberg himself puts this phrase in quotation

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marks and describes it as an adaptation of a familiar saying.

76 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 221.

67 Ibid., p. 97.

Rosamond Ley (London: E. Arnold & Co., 1938).

68 Ibid., p. 9, translation amended.

78 Richard Capell, ‘Gustav Mahler, Erinnerungen und Briefe’, Music & Letters 22(2) (April 1941), pp. 189–96.

69 Ibid., p. 396. 70 For a discussion of the important pioneering role played by British conductors in the Mahler renaissance, see Donald Mitchell, ‘The Mahler renaissance in England: its origins and chronology’ in Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson (eds), The Mahler Companion (Oxford: Oxford University Press: 2002), pp. 547–64. 71 Rosenzweig’s own capitalisation. 72 Literature on the role of music in the Third Reich has since become extensive. See, for example, Michael Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and their Music in the Third Reich (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Erik Levi, Music in the Third Reich (London: Macmillan, 1995); Alan Steinweis, Art, Ideology and Economics in Nazi Germany: The Reich Chambers of Music, Theater and the Visual Arts (Chapel Hill & London: University of North Carolina Press, 1993); Michael Meyer, Politics of Music in the Third Reich (Berne: Peter Lang, 1991); and Brandon Taylor and Wilfried van der Will (eds), The Nazification of Art: Art, Design, Music, Architecture and Film in the Third Reich (Winchester: Winchester Press, 1990). 73 Das Lied von der Erde, recorded in 1936, is available on Opus Kura (2004); the Ninth Symphony is available on Naxos Historical 8110852 (2002). Rosenzweig’s note: ‘During the writing of the first volume of this biography Anna [Fistoulari-] Mahler received the news from America that Mahler’s Fourth Symphony has been recorded under Walter.’ This could well refer to Walter’s 1947 recording in New York (Sony SMK 64 450 (1994)). 74 Volume 2 was never begun by Rosenzweig.

77 Ferruccio Busoni. Letters to his Wife, trans.

79 Rosenzweig appears to be mistaken in his chronology here as the review was published in 1941. 80 A more balanced view of Strauss’s involvement

with the Nazi authorities is presented in a recent biography of the composer by Michael Kennedy, Richard Strauss. Man, Musician, Enigma (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). 81 Alfred Mathis, ‘Stefan Zweig as librettist and Richard Strauss’, Music & Letters 25(3) (July 1944), pp. 163–76 and 25(4) (October 1944), pp. 226–45. 82 Only Carl Moll was a step-parent; Anna Moll was

Alma’s true mother. 83 See Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, pp. 54–5. 84 Rosenzweig’s note: ‘See Mahler’s letter to Lipiner in Briefe 1879–1911, no. 262, p. 283.’ Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, pp. 243–5. 85 A prose paraphrase of this poem appears in translation in Dika Newlin, Bruckner, Mahler, Schoenberg (London: Marion Boyars, 1979), p. 122. 86 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 189. Fuller

details of these events can be found in the final chapter of HLGF3, pp. 833–955. 87 Had Rosenzweig lived longer it would have been interesting to see how much of the surviving Tenth Symphony sketch and draft material he might have been able to discover, and what ethical position he might have adopted towards ‘performing versions’. 88 Much of this research has since been undertaken

by La Grange.

75 Bruno Walter, Gustav Mahler (Vienna: Herbert

Reichner, 1936).

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Chapter 1 1 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 393.

the poems from German, French and English prose versions of the original Chinese texts.

2 According to La Grange’s genealogical table, two

12 Walter, Gustav Mahler, p. 61, translation amend-

further children were born in these years: Karl (27 August 1864–28 December 1865) and Rudolf (17 August 1865–21 February 1866) (HLGF1, p. 908).

ed.

3 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, pp. 9–10. 4 According to Susan Filler he died in 1931 in Chicago,

his death certificate bearing the name Hans Mahler, ‘The missing Mahler: Alois (Hans) in Chicago’ in Günther Weiß (ed.), Neue Mahleriana. Essays in Honour of Henry-Louis de La Grange on his Seventieth Birthday (Berne: Peter Lang, 1997), pp. 39–45. 5 11 October according to La Grange (HLGF1, p.

908). 6 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, pp. 25–6. 7 This has subsequently been found to be untrue.

A movement for Piano Quartet survives along with fragments of two song settings. See Jeremy Barham, ‘Juvenilia and early works: from the first song fragments to Das klagende Lied’, in Barham (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Mahler (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming); Jack Diether, ‘Notes on some Mahler juvenilia’, Chord and Discord 3(1) (1969), pp. 3–100; and Paul Banks, ‘The Early Social and Musical Environment of Gustav Mahler’ (unpublished DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1980). The piano quartet has recently been published as part of the Complete Critical Edition: Manfred Wagner-Artzt (ed.), Gustav Mahler Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Supplement Band III. Klavierquartett 1. Satz (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1997). 8 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 55. 9 The letter was addressed to Josef Steiner. 10 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 56. 11 This is not entirely accurate: Bethge re-worked

13 Interestingly a sense of rupture has become some-

thing of a slogan in Mahler scholarship at least since the time of Adorno’s 1960 study, although it is most often seen in the interplay between ‘high’ and ‘low’ musics and between formal traditions and the nominalist quality of Mahler’s structural processes. 14 The philosopher Johann Gottfried Herder (1744– 1803) is regarded as the father of Slavonic studies and was largely responsible for raising the profile of the Slavonic people and for introducing hitherto neglected areas of Slavonic culture into the western European mainstream. His most important work in this respect was his Stimmen der Völker in Liedern (originally Volkslieder: 2 vols, 1778–79) in which he undertook German translations of traditional folk poetry. 15 Symphony No. 3, ‘Život’ [‘Life’], in D major, Op. 36, 1894. The performance took place on 13 April in the Stadttheater as part of a benefit concert for Foerster’s wife, the singer Berta Foerster-Lauterer. The work was performed again on 25 April. For further information on Foerster see Nejedly´, Jos. B. Foerster (Prague, 1910); J. Bartoš, Josef Bohuslav Foerster (Prague, 1910); and Vladimír Karbusicky´, ‘Salomon Mosenthals und J.B. Foersters “Deborah” und Gustav Mahlers Auferstehungssymphonie’, in Doris Leitinger (ed.), Kritische Musikästhetik und Wertungsforschung: Otto Kolleritsch zum 60. Geburtstag (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1996), pp. 73–95. 16 Three-act opera, libretto by J. Wenzig (Czech transl. E. Spindler); first version (1865–7), first performed New Town, 1868; second version (1870), first performed Provisional Theatre, Prague, 1870. 17 Fourth, definitive, version in 3 acts (1870), first performed Provisional Theatre, Prague, 1870.

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18 Život a dílo Antonína Dvořáka [Life and Works of Anton Dvořák], 4 vols (Prague, 1916–33). See also Šourek, Antonín Dvořák (Prague, 1929; 3rd edn 1947), and its English trans. Anton Dvořák. His Life and Works (Prague: Orbis, 1952), pp. 37 and 125. 19 Symphonic poem after Erben; composed 1896;

first performed Brno, 1898. 20 Three-act opera, composed 1900; libretto J. Kvapil

after F. de la Motte Fouqué’s Undine. 21 The Rosenzweig collection at the Guildhall School

Grange suggests that on this occasion Mahler played through some unpublished Thalberg manuscripts that had been discovered by Gustav Schwarz (see HLGE1, p. 27 and HLGF1, pp. 47–8). 9 Anonymous article, Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt, 8 June (or July) 1911. 10 Mathis-Rosenzweig’s note: ‘Proposals follow concerning the journey.’ 11 Mathis-Rosenzweig’s note: ‘Published in the

23 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 226.

Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt, 8 June 1911.’ Later in the text this is cited as 8 July 1911. This letter has not previously been published in the literature on Mahler and it clarifies the confusion, still evident in La Grange’s biography (HLGF1, p. 49) about who accompanied Mahler on his first trip to Vienna in order to be heard by Julius Epstein, piano professor at the Vienna Conservatoire. Apparently Bernhard Mahler and Gustav Schwarz were both present. According to Mathis-Rosenzweig the article from the Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt in which the letter was published was anonymously written. It also contains further details of the events surrounding Schwarz’s early championing of Mahler that are used by Mathis-Rosenzweig to flesh out his account.

Chapter 2

12 This letter is presented, differently translated, in HLGE1, p. 28. (See also HLGF1, p. 48.)

1 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, pp. 7–8.

13 Paul Stefan, Gustav Mahler. Eine Studie über

2 Ibid., p. 7. 3 Ibid., pp. 7–8.

Persönlichkeit und Werk (Munich: R. Piper, 1912), p. 24.

4 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, pp. 54–7.

14 Presumably Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt, 8 June,

of Music and Drama, London, contains seven unpublished letters addressed by Mahler to Dvořák between April 1901 and May 1902 on this subject. These are reproduced in facsimile and translated on pp. 220–35. 22 For a comprehensive account of Mahler’s concert programmes and operatic performances see Knud Martner, Gustav Mahler im Konzertsaal: eine Dokumentation seiner Konzerttätigkeit 1870–1911 (Copenhagen: privately published, 1985); ‘Mahler im Opernhaus. Eine Bilanz seiner Bühnentätigkeit’, in Weiß, Neue Mahleriana, pp.163–73; and Schabbing, Gustav Mahler als Konzert- und Operndirigent.

5 Ibid., p. 55. 6 Ibid., p. 56. 7 Mahler spent the summer holidays in 1875–76 at

Morawan and Ronow, farmhouses 25 miles north of Iglau. 8 Mahler is known to have played Thalberg’s fantasia

on Bellini’s Norma in a concert in 1873. However, La

1911. La Grange cites an article written in the same newspaper by Epstein himself on 19 May, 1911, in which his response was ‘Herr Mahler, your son is a born musician’ (HLGE1, p. 30). 15 There is some confusion here as in HLGF1, p. 48 n. 2, La Grange cites the two letters as having been re-published by Schwarz’s granddaughter, Hanna Schwarz, in the Neue freie Presse on 3 April 1924,

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whereas in HLGE1, p. 842 n. 1, he gives the date as 3 August 1924. Both letters had been published in an earlier article by Schwarz in the Neues Wiener Journal, 6 August 1905. They now appear in Herta Blaukopf (ed.), Gustav Mahler Briefe (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay, 1996), pp. 25 and 27–9. 16 Mathis-Rosenzweig’s note: ‘There follows an

indistinct word, like “abzubrechen” (“to break off ”) which, according to the sense, should probably be “aufrechtzuerhalten” (“to keep up”).’ 17 Blaukopf (ed.), Gustav Mahler. Briefe, pp. 27–9. 18 8 June 1911.

29 Ibid., p. 115. 30 Rosenzweig did not survive to embark on this promised chapter. 31 See Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, pp. 63–4. 32 Opera after German legend, composed c. 1879–83; unfinished, music lost; libretto in Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, Yale University, microfilm held in the New York Public Library. For the libretto and a discussion of the possible inaccuracies of Alma’s account, see Dika Newlin and Julia Morrison, ‘Mahler’s Rübezahl’, Chord and Discord, 3(2) (1998), pp. 1–52.

19 See note 7 of the previous chapter regarding

33 See note 7 of the previous chapter regarding Mahler’s surviving juvenilia.

Mahler’s surviving juvenilia.

34 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 144.

20 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 53. 21 Ibid., pp. 392–3. 22 This information on Mahler’s prize-winning activ-

ities as a student composer is inaccurate. According to Conservatoire records, Mahler won a unanimous first prize for the ‘first movement of a quintet’ in the 1876 composition competition, and a non-unanimous first prize for a ‘scherzo for piano quintet’ in the 1878 competition. For further details, see Barham, ‘Juvenilia and Early Works’. 23 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 8. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. According to Conservatoire records no symphony by Mahler won a composition prize in this or any other year.

35 Ibid. 36 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 186. 37 Ibid., p. 185. 38 An image frequently used by Nietzsche, whom Mahler was reading at the time, to contrast with northern German heaviness. 39 Walter, Gustav Mahler, p. 29. 40 Der Corregidor, four-act opera, composed 1895; libretto R. Mayreder after P. de Alarcón’s El sombrero de tres picos; first performed Mannheim 1896. 41 Printed in Ernst Decsey, ‘Aus Hugo Wolfs letzten Jahren’, Die Musik (second October number, 1901).

26 Peter Franklin (ed.), Recollections of Gustav Mahler,

42 Mathis-Rosenzweig’s note: ‘This portion of Wolf ’s report dealt specifically with the performance of Die Walküre.’

trans. Dika Newlin (London: Faber Music, 1980), p. 23.

43 A similar remark by Wolf to Bauer-Lechner is cited in HLGE1, p. 443 and HLGE2, p. 51.

27 According to Bauer-Lechner (ibid.), Mahler composed a prize-winning piano suite at the last minute to replace the symphony. No suite or sonata by Mahler is cited in Conservatoire records.

44 Cited in Ernest Newman, Hugo Wolf (London:

28 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 63.

Methuen, 1907), pp. 135–6. 45 Three-act opera, composed 1897; libretto M. Hoernes after Alarcón’s El niño de la Bola; first performed Mannheim, 1903; five scenes completed.

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46 Demon, opera in three acts with prologue; libretto P.A. Viskovatov and A. Maykov after Lermontov; composed 1871; first performed St Petersburg, 1875; subsequently known as Der Dämon.

(Regensburg: Gustav Bosse, 1922), p. 39.

‘Von Bruckner und Wolf ’, Bruckner-Blätter, 2(2) (1930), p. 26; and Günther Brosche, ‘Anton Bruckner und Hugo Wolf’, in Othmar Wessely (ed.), BrucknerStudien (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1975), pp. 171–85 which contains citations from these earlier items.

48 Specht, Gustav Mahler, p. 31.

60 Auer, Anton Bruckner: sein Leben und Werk, p. 416.

49 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 64.

See also Brosche, ‘Anton Bruckner und Hugo Wolf ’, pp. 183–4.

47 Heinrich Werner, Der Hugo Wolf-Verein in Wien

50 Ernest Newman, Hugo Wolf (London: Methuen, 1907), p. 141. 51 Specht, Gustav Mahler, from p. 375.

61 Ernst Kurth, Bruckner, 2 vols (Berlin: Hesse, 1925),

vol. 1, p. 142.

53 See HLGE2, pp. 69–72 for a detailed account of this episode.

62 Letter of 30 April 1866, in Andrea Harrandt and Otto Schneider (eds), Briefe 1852–1886, Anton Bruckner Sämtliche Werke, vol. 24/1 (Vienna: Musikwissenschaftlicher Verlag der Internationalen Bruckner-Gesellschaft, 1998), p. 55.

54 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 64. The last

63 Ernst Kurth, Bruckner, 2 vols (Berlin: Hesse, 1925),

sentence is missing from Basil Creighton’s English translation.

vol. 1, p. 123.

52 Mahler did not in fact perform Der Corregidor

until 1904.

55 Robert Hernried, ‘Hugo Wolf ’s “Four Operas”,

with unpublished letters from Hugo Wolf, Rosa Mayreder and Oskar Grohe’, The Musical Quarterly, 31(1) (January 1945), pp. 89–100. 56 Ibid., p. 91. 57 Max Auer, Anton Bruckner: sein Leben und Werk (Vienna, 1923); 2nd edn (Leipzig, 1934), p. 306. 58 Christian Dietrich Grabbe (1801–36) was

a German dramatist noted for his use of satire and irony. The Nazis appropriated him principally because of his anti-Semitism. 59 Auer, Anton Bruckner: sein Leben und Werk, p. 416.

The slightly different wording here is as follows: ‘Teufel, woher haben Sie den Akkord?’ (original emphasis). See Friedrich Eckstein, ‘Die erste und die letzte Begegnung zwischen Hugo Wolf und Anton Bruckner’, in Karl Kobald (ed.), In memoriam Anton Bruckner (Leipzig and Vienna, 1924), pp. 44–59; Alte unnennbare Tage (Vienna: Reichner, 1936), pp. 173–82; Ernst Decsey,

64 Alfred Orel, Anton Bruckner: das Werk, der Künstler,

die Zeit (Vienna and Leipzig, 1925). 65 It is likely that Rosenzweig is referring to Emil

Naumann, Illustrierte Musikgeschichte (Berlin and Stuttgart: W. Spemann, 1885) which had reached its tenth edition by 1934. 66 A brief and by no means comprehensive sur-

vey reveals that the trend has continued in some areas of the general historical literature on music in the English language from mid-century up to the present day. For example, Hugo Leichtentritt, Music, History and Ideas (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1941), pp. 248–9; Donald Ferguson, A History of Musical Thought (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1948), pp. 551–3; Percy A. Scholes, The Oxford Companion to Music (London: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 601; Donald Jay Grout, A History of Western Music (London: Dent, 1981), p. 639; and Donald Jay Grout and Claude V. Palisca, A History of Western Music (New York and London:

202

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Norton, 1996), pp. 653–9, where Mahler is included along with Wolf and Strauss in a sub-section entitled ‘The German Tradition’. 67 Arnold Bax, Farewell My Youth (London:

Longmans, Green & Co., 1943), p. 36. The quote ends: ‘The crash of silence at the sudden cessation of this din was as shattering upon the ears as the blow of a sandbag.’ 68 Ibid., p. 35. 69 Richard Wagner, Das Judentum in der Musik

(1850, rev. 1869). 70 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 107. 71 Ibid., p. 8. 72 For further details about Hans Rott, his music

and his relationship with Mahler, see Paul Banks, ‘The early social and musical environment of Gustav Mahler’; ‘Hans Rott, 1858–1884’, The Musical Times 125 (September 1984), pp. 493–5; ‘Hans Rott and the new symphony’, The Musical Times 130 (March 1989), pp. 142–7; and Stephen McClatchie, ‘Hans Rott, Gustav Mahler and the “New Symphony”: new evidence for a pressing question’, Music & Letters, 81(3) (August 2000), pp. 392–401. 73 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, pp. 106–7. 74 Mathis-Rosenzweig’s note: ‘Several refugee musi-

cians from the counter-Reformation in Bohemia, the most important being Johann Stamitz, took up residence in Mannheim where the Court of the Elector of the Palatinate kept an orchestra that counted amongst the very best in Germany. Besides this, the Viennese Ignaz Holzbauer worked there as Kapellmeister. At the same time the composers Georg Christoph Wagenseil, Matthias Georg Monn, Georg Reutter and Franz Tuma (born in Kostelec in Bohemia) worked in Vienna preparing the way for the classical symphony. It is significant that even outstanding and scientifically unimpeachable German musicologists such as Hugo Riemann and Hermann Abert could not

entirely free themselves from the aforementioned great-German annexing tendencies and tried to establish a position of supremacy for the Mannheim School in the development of the classical symphony. Only Gustav Mahler’s compatriot and childhood friend, the famous Viennese musical historian Guido Adler, in his seminal work Der Stil in der Musik (Leipzig, 1911, 2nd edn. 1929) and in the chapter of his Handbuch der Musikgeschichte devoted to the “Viennese Classical School”* (ed., Frankfurt 1924, rev. edn. 1930) pointed out that very strong influences were exerted by the “Viennese pre-classical composers” which found direct expression in the early works of the great Viennese classical masters.’ * [Editor’s note] In this book, Adler contributed chapters on ‘Periodisierung der abendländischen Musik’ and ‘Die Wiener klassische Schule’. 75 As part of his call to fellow Germans in the 1880s

to reject Jews and other ‘non-German’ peoples of the Habsburg Empire, Georg von Schönerer advocated cutting loose from the Roman Catholic Church and adopting a peculiarly German ‘racial Christianity’. The ‘los von Rom’ movement had a decisive impact on the young Hitler during his early years in Upper Austria. For a succinct analysis of these developments see Carlton J. H. Hayes, A Generation of Materialism. 1871–1900 (New York: Harper & Row, 1941, repr. 1963). 76 Kurth, Bruckner vol. 1, p. 77. 77 This comment is cited in August Göllerich, Anton Bruckner: ein Lebens- und Schaffensbild (Regensburg: Bosse, 1922), ed. Max Auer (1928–37), vol. III, part 1, p. 523, in connection with Bruckner’s completion of his final compositional work for Otto Kitzler (Overture in G Minor and Symphony in F Minor) in July 1863, but there is no mention of Wagner. 78 Göllerich, Anton Bruckner, vol. III, part 1, pp. 315–17. 79 Cited in Göllerich, Anton Bruckner, vol. III, part

1, pp. 431–2.

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80 Both of these comments are attributable to Brahms, according to Specht, who cites the composer’s verbal reference to Bruckner’s ‘symphonic boa-constrictors’, and description of his music as ‘a swindle that will be forgotten in a few years’ (Specht, Johannes Brahms, trans. Eric Blom (London: Dent, 1930), p. 262).

98 Kurth, Bruckner, vol. 1, p. 53. 99 Auer, Anton Bruckner: sein Leben und Werk, p. 328. 100 Ibid., p. 244. The extent of Mahler’s cuts should

88 Ibid., pp. 13–14.

not be underestimated, as the work of David Pickett has shown. See his ‘Gustav Mahler as an Interpreter’, one of the few extensive studies of Mahler’s performance practice. Furthermore, as has been pointed out in subsequent literature, Mahler had a decidedly ambivalent attitude towards formal aspects of Bruckner’s symphonies. See Herbert Killian (ed.), Gustav Mahler in den Erinnerungen von Natalie Bauer-Lechner (Hamburg: Karl Dieter Wagner, 1984), p. 32; HLGE2, pp. 231–2 and 331–2; and Henry-Louis de La Grange and Günther Weiß (eds), Ein Glück ohne Ruh’. Die Briefe Gustav Mahlers an Alma (Berlin: Siedler, 1995), pp. 209 and 286.

89 Cited in Karpath, Begegnung mit dem Genius, p.

101

81 This commentary contains references to Zeus, Chronos and Aeschylus’s Prometheus, combined with Christian references to the Archangel Michael. 82 Paul Bekker, Gustav Mahlers Sinfonien, p. 17. 83 Ibid., p. 19. 84 Orel, Anton Bruckner, p. 199. 85 Ibid. 86 Cited in ibid., p. 198. 87 Kurth, Bruckner, vol. 1, p. 12.

90. 90 Natalie Bauer-Lechner, Erinnerungen an Gustav

Mahler (Leipzig, Vienna & Zürich: E.P. Tal, 1923), p. 27. See Franklin (ed.), Recollections, pp. 47–8 for a slightly different translation. 91 Ibid., p. 28; Recollections, p. 48. 92 Walter, Mahler (1936), p. 97; Mahler ([1958] 1990), p. 121. 93 Göllerich, Anton Bruckner, p. 29. For further details of this speech, see HLGE2, pp. 331–2. 94 This transcription was apparently made in (unacknowledged) collaboration with his student colleague Rudolf Krzyzanowski in 1878. It was published in that year by Bussjäger & Rättig.

Georg Göhler, ‘Wichtige Aufgaben der Musikwissenschaft gegenüber Anton Bruckner’, Zeitschrift für Musikwissenschaft, 1 (1919), pp. 293–5.

102 Wöss also made piano reductions of several

Mahler symphonies. 103 Egon Wellesz, ‘Anton Bruckner and the Process of Musical Creation’, Musical Quarterly, 24(3) (July 1938), pp. 265–90. 104 Auer, Anton Bruckner: sein Leben und Werk, p.

362. 105 Franz Gräflinger, Anton Bruckner. Leben und Schaffen (Umgearbeitete Bausteine) (Berlin: Max Hesses Handbücher, no. 84, 1927), p. 339. 106 Ibid., p. 341.

96 Ibid., p. 108.

107 Alfred Orel, ‘Original und Bearbeitung bei Anton Bruckner’, Deutsche Musikkultur, 1(4) (1936–37), pp. 193–222.

97 Cited in Auer, Anton Bruckner: sein Leben und

108 For more recent discussion of the convoluted

Werk, p. 319; the letter is also contained in Blaukopf, Gustav Mahler Briefe, p. 121.

and controversial publication history of Bruckner’s music, as well as his reception in the Third Reich

95 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 176.

204

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and earlier, see Benjamin Korstvedt, ‘Anton Bruckner in the Third Reich and after: an essay on ideology and Bruckner reception’, The Musical Quarterly, 80 (1996), pp. 132–60; ‘The first printed edition of Anton Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony: collaboration and authenticity’, 19th-Century Music, 20 (1996–97), pp. 3–26; ‘“Return to the pure sources”: the ideology and text-critical legacy of the first Bruckner Gesamtausgabe’, in Timothy Jackson and Paul Hawkshaw (eds), Bruckner Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 91–109; Bryan Gilliam, ‘The annexation of Anton Bruckner: Nazi revisionism and the politics of appropriation’, in Jackson and Hawkshaw (eds), Bruckner Studies, pp. 72–90; Korstvedt, ‘Bruckner editions: the revolution revisited’, in John Williamson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Bruckner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 121–37; Morten Solvik, ‘The International Bruckner Society and the N.S.D.A.P.: a case study of Robert Haas and the Critical Edition’, The Musical Quarterly, 82 (1998), pp. 362–82; William Carragan, ‘The early version of the Second Symphony’, in Crawford Howie, Paul Hawkshaw and Timothy Jackson (eds), Perspectives on Anton Bruckner (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 69–92; Thomas Röder, ‘Master and disciple united: the 1889 Finale of the Third Symphony’, in Howie, Hawkshaw and Jackson (eds), Perspectives on Anton Bruckner, pp. 93–113; and Andrea Harrandt, ‘Students and friends as “prophets” and “promoters”: the reception of Bruckner’s works in the Wiener Akademische Wagner-Verein’, in Howie, Hawkshaw and Jackson (eds), Perspectives on Anton Bruckner, pp. 317–27.

reliable critical edition produced by the International Gustav Mahler Society: Manfred Wagner-Artzt (ed.), Gustav Mahler Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe, Supplement Band III. Klavierquartett 1. Satz (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1997). For further discussion of the work see Paul Banks, ‘The Early Social and Musical Environment of Gustav Mahler’, DPhil thesis, University of Oxford (1980). For further discussion of the work and the critical edition, see Jeremy Barham, review of the critical edition, Music & Letters, 80(1) (February 1999), pp. 163–5; ‘Mahler’s first compositions: Piano Quartet and songs’, in Mitchell and Nicholson, The Mahler Companion: 597–607; and ‘Juvenilia and Early Works’. 3 Kurth, Bruckner, vol. 1, p. 85. 4 Saint-Saëns originally wrote this essay for the jour-

nal L’Estafette in August 1876. It was later edited for inclusion in his collection of writings Harmonie et mélodie (Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1885): ‘L’Anneau du Niebelung et les représentations de Bayreuth’, pp. 37–98. The citation is from p. 41. 5 Richard Wagner, ‘Offenes Schreiben an Herrn Ernst

von Weber, Verfasser der Schrift: Die Folterkammern der Wissenschaft’ (1879); ‘Religion und Kunst’ (1880); ‘Was nützt diese Erkenntnis: eine Nachtrag zu: “Religion und Kunst”’ (1880); ‘Ausführungen zu Religion und Kunst: i “Erkenne dich selbst”, ii “Heldentum und Christentum”’ (1881). 6 See, for instance, letters to Uhlig dated 22 October

1850 and 22 July 1852 in Stewart Spencer and Barry Millington (ed. and trans.), Selected Letters of Richard Wagner (London: Dent, 1987), pp. 217 and 264. 7 This and all subsequent excerpts from Wagner’s

writings are newly translated.

Chapter 3

8 Rosenzweig’s emphasis.

1 Martner (ed.),, Selected Letters, p. 200.

9 Kapp, Wagner, p. 117.

2 This work did in fact survive and was published in

10 William I of Prussia.

1973 and in 1997, in the latter case in a much more

11 Giuseppe Verdi: Briefe, ed. and with an introduc-

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tion by Franz Werfel (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay, 1926), pp. 242–4. See Letters of Giuseppe Verdi, ed. Charles Osborne (London: Victor Gollancz, 1971), pp. 161–2 for a different translation. 12 Source not supplied. Probably from Werfel’s introduction to Giuseppe Verdi: Briefe. 13 Probably cited from Edmund von Hagen, Über die

Dichtung der ersten Scene des ‘Rheingold’ von Richard Wagner: ein Beitrag zur Beurtheilung des Dichters (Munich: C. Kaiser, 1876). 14 Richard Wagner, ‘Censuren v: Aufklärungen

über “Das Judentum in der Musik” (An Frau Marie Muchanoff, geborene Gräfin Nesselrode)’ (1869). 15 For further details of the literary origins of Das klagende Lied, see Banks, ‘The Early Social and Musical Environment of Gustav Mahler’, HLGF1, 943–54; Edward Reilly, ‘Das klagende Lied reconsidered’ in Stephen Hefling (ed.), Mahler Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 25–52; and Reinhold Kubik, foreword to Das klagende Lied. Erstfassung in drei Sätzen (1880) (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1998). 16 Much of this information on the genesis and revi-

sion of Das klagende Lied is inaccurate. It has long been established, for example, that it was at no point conceived by Mahler as an operatic work. The threepart cantata was completed in 1880, then subject to three revisions: in 1893 (at which point the first movement, ‘Waldmärchen’, was removed), 1898–99 and 1906. For full details of the work’s compositional, revisory, publication and performance history see Reilly, ‘Das klagende Lied reconsidered’, pp. 25–52; Reinhold Kubik, ‘Das klagende Lied. A Chronology’, News About Mahler Research, 38 (spring 1998), pp. 3–10; foreword to Das klagende Lied. Erstfassung in drei Sätzen; Barham, review of the critical edition in Music & Letters, 83(1) (February 2002): 177–80, and ‘Juvenilia and early works’.

17 In its first incarnation the song was called ‘Maitanz im Grünen’. Transposed from D to F major and with some small textual alterations, additional chromaticisms in the accompaniment, and a sophisticated array of constantly changing performance instructions, it became the song ‘Hans und Grethe’, the third item in Volume 1 of Lieder und Gesänge (later known as Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit), published in 1892; and this in turn became the inspiration for the ‘Kräftig bewegt’ second movement of the First Symphony. 18 Mahler worked on the unfinished opera project Die Argonauten in 1879–80; libretto by Mahler or Josef Steiner, probably after Grillparzer’s Das goldene Vlies. The music, which probably did not advance very far, has not survived. 19 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 108. 20 Franklin (ed.), Recollections of Gustav Mahler, p. 146. 21 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, pp. 64–5. 22 Now Ljubljana. 23 Stefan, Gustav Mahler, p. 33. 24 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 68. 25 This anecdote was published in an obituary article

in the Österreichische Volkszeitung, 21 May 1911. 26 Called simply Lieder und Gesänge during Mahler’s lifetime. 27 Composed between 1880 and 1883, they were in fact not published until 1892, the erroneous date given here presumably deriving from Adler. 28 Full title: ‘Gustav Mahlers Lieder. Eine stilkritische

Studie’ (dissertation, University of Vienna, 1922). 29 Richard Leander’s real name was Richard von Volkmann. There is no evidence that Mahler knew him. 30 Itself a pseudonym of the Spanish monk Fray

Gabriel Téllez.

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31 For a discussion of these songs, see E. Mary Dargie, Music and Poetry in the Songs of Gustav Mahler (Peter Lang: Berne, 1981); Peter Revers, Mahlers Lieder. Ein musikalischer Werkführer (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2000); and Zoltan Roman, ‘Song and symphony (I). Lieder und Gesänge Vol. 1, Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen and the First Symphony: compositional patterns for the future’ in Jeremy Barham (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Mahler (forthcoming).

12 This was in fact the symphony’s third per-

32 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 110.

16 Ibid., p. 80.

33 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, pp. 73–4.

17 Ibid.

34 An affair with the singer Johanna Richter.

18 Ibid., p. 81.

Chapter 4

19 The precise chronology is still open to question. La Grange gives December 1884 as the date for the first version of the cycle for voice and piano (HLGF1, p. 917).

1 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, pp. 74–5. 2 Ibid., p. 76. 3 Sulpiz Boisserée, Tagebücher und Briefwechsel (Stuttgart: Cotta, 1862).

formance. It had previously been performed in Budapest (1889) and Hamburg (1893). Rosenzweig later acknowledges this. 13 Letter of 20 March, 1896; Martner (ed.), Selected

Letters, p. 178. 14 Ibid., p. 75. 15 Ibid., p. 76.

20 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 82.

4 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 78.

21 Ibid., pp. 84–5.

5 Ibid., p. 80.

22 Ibid., p. 87.

6 Ibid., p. 75.

23 Ibid., p. 88.

7 Ibid., p. 81.

24 Der Trompeter von Säkkingen, music to accompany tableaux vivants illustrating the poem by Viktor von Scheffel (June 1884), and Das Volkslied, a work with songs, choruses and tableaux vivants by Salomon Hermann for which Mahler contributed various arrangements (April 1885).

8 According to La Grange, Mahler came across a copy

of the collection by chance in autumn 1887 at the house of the Webers (HLGE1, p. 171). 9 ‘Nicht wiedersehen!’, the eighth song from 9

Wunderhornlieder with piano (1887–90), forming vols 2 and 3 of Lieder und Gesänge, published in 1892. Rosenzweig’s chronology seems unclear here, since the composition of the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (version for voice and piano, 1884) preceded that of the 9 Wunderhornlieder. 10 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 81. 11 See Löhr’s footnote in Herta Blaukopf (ed.),

Gustav Mahler Briefe, 2nd edn (Vienna: Paul Zsolnay, 1996), p. 434. This footnote is missing from Martner (ed.), Selected Letters.

25 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 400. 26 See note 19. 27 This presumed chronology of the First Symphony’s

composition is still valid. 28 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, pp. 178–9. 29 Rosenzweig’s note: ‘Mahler was working in Budapest at the time as director of the Royal Hungarian Opera.’ 30 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 404.

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31 Bauer-Lechner reported that Mahler denied this association with Jean Paul’s Titan. See Recollections, pp. 157, 236–7 and 239.

44 See the letter to Löhr dated 5 July 1885 in Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 89.

32 ‘Blumen-, Frucht- und Dornstücke’ is taken from

and Leipzig: Wiener Literarische Anstalt, 1923), vol. 1, pp. 218–19. Rosenzweig’s note: ‘Weingartner’s mistake. By then Mahler had already obtained his release from the Royal Court Theatre in Kassel.’ Given the lack of precise dating attached to Weingartner’s comments, Rosenzweig’s note may not, in fact, be accurate.

the full title of Jean Paul’s novel Siebenkäs, a work known and admired by Mahler. 33 Possibly after Dante’s Divine Comedy. 34 For detailed investigation of the iconographical

dimensions of this programmatic account, see Ute Jung-Kaiser, ‘Die wahren Bilder und Chiffren “tragischer Ironie” in Mahlers “Erster”’ in Weiß, Neue Mahleriana, pp. 101–52. 35 Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 177. The last sentence is, however, missing from the translation.

45 Felix Weingartner, Lebenserinnerungen (Vienna

46 The undated letter (probably 25 or 26 January 1884) is printed in Blaukopf (ed.), Gustav Mahler. Briefe, pp. 51–2. von Bülow did not reply, but instead passed Mahler’s letter on to Hofkapellmeister Treiber.

36 Ibid., p. 77. 37 Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters, p. 110. 38 According to La Grange, the Prague paper was

called Bohemia (HLGE1, p. 856, HLGF1, p. 188. 39 This letter is published in English in HLGE1, p. 121 (in different translation), in French in HLGF1, p. 188, and in the original German in Mathias Hansen (ed.), Gustav Mahler. Briefe (Leipzig: Reclam, 1985), p. 78. 40 Rosenzweig’s note: ‘Originally a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was planned, as indicated in a letter from Mahler to Julius Epstein dated 26 March 1885.’ (See Martner (ed.), Selected Letters, p. 83.) 41 Kammersänger is a German term describing a

singer of outstanding reputation, effectively the male equivalent of prima donna. 42 Blaukopf (ed.), Gustav Mahler. Briefe, p. 435.

This note does not appear in Martner (ed.), Selected Letters. 43 Parsifal, (from 1886 the Leipziger Musik- und Kunst-Zeitung), ed. E. Kastner (Vienna (from 1886 Vienna and Leipzig) 1884–88). Five volumes were published.

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Appendices

209

210

Windband arrangement of 'At se pinkl házi'

Appendix 1

211

212

dissertation by Guido Adler and Robert Lach.

Rigorosenakt, University of Vienna, including reports on his

Documents from Alfred Rosenzweig’s doctoral

Appendix 2

213

214

215

216

217

218

Appendix 3

Cover page from the Mathis-Rosenzweig typescript

219

Appendix 4

Vienna, 4 May, 1901

Z.313/1901

and May 1902 discussing the staging of Rusalka at the Vienna Opera.

Letters addressed by, or on behalf of, Mahler to Dvorˇ ák between May 1901

K.K. HOF-OPERNTHEATER

Right Honourable Sir, After looking through the piano score that was cordially sent to me by the Bohemian Regional Theatre I would very much like to pursue the possibility of performing your opera Russalka [sic], though first I will need a German libretto. I thus take the liberty of asking you to let me know if you are already in possession of a translation of the work or if you have the intention of having one made, and to whom I would have to turn with regard to this matter. With many thanks for a cordial reply to my missive, I remain with expressions of greatest respect Yours sincerely, Mahler K. and K. Director of the k.k. Hofoperntheater

220

221

The K. and K. Directorate HOF-OPERNTHEATER IN WIEN

Vienna, 15 June, 1901

Right Honourable Sir, Herr Director Mahler has already left for his holidays and would like to ask you kindly to send him the score and piano reduction of your work at the beginning of September, as he will not be returning before then. Permit me, right honourable Sir, to assure you of my deepest respect and admiration Most respectfully yours, Alois Przistaupinsky Secretary

222

223

Z.313/1901 K.K. HOF-OPERNTHEATER

Right Honourable Sir, In acknowledgement of the news in your esteemed letter of the 21st of the month I take the liberty of informing you that, since I alone cannot make a decision, I at this point must report to my superior, i.e. the Intendant’s office, and receive its approval for the conditions that you state. I will inform you as soon as a decision has been made. Assuring you of my deepest respect and admiration Most respectfully yours, Mahler Vienna, 24 September, 1901

224

225

K.K. HOF-OPERNTHEATER

Vienna, 31 October, 1901

Z.313/1901

Right Honourable Sir, As I took the liberty of informing you in my last letter, I have had to await the decision of the Intendant’s office regarding your conditions for granting rights to the opera ‘Rusalka’. From this authority I have now received word that the conditions you offered far exceed the usual proportions of such arrangements. The conditions that usually apply to an eveninglength opera here include a royalty payment of 5% excluding subscriptions. For the operatic works that that we have performed here recently, ‘Der Bärenhäuter’, ‘Es war einmal’, ‘Donna Diana’, ‘Lobetanz’, we pay, without exception, 5% excluding subscriptions. In addition, in all of these cases no submission fee is guaranteed if the score and all of the parts have to be produced in-house.

226

227

The Intendant’s office would thus only be able to consider acquiring the performance rights to the opera Rusalka if you, honoured master, could modify your conditions to match our usual fees. I kindly request you to send me your valued opinion and sign with assurances of my deepest respect and admiration as Most respectfully yours, Mahler K. and K. Director of the k.k. Hofoperntheater

228

229

K.K. HOF-OPERNTHEATER

Vienna, 4 December, 1901

Z.313/1901

Right Honourable Sir, Your stated conditions regarding the granting of performance rights to ‘Rusalka’ have been approved by the Intendant’s office and thus I am in the position of guaranteeing you a royalty of 5% of the gross receipts including subscriptions. A brief personal consultation would be ideal in order to bring the affair to a proper close and to secure the contract, and thus I would like to request you to look me up for this purpose at your convenience. With assurances of my deepest respect and admiration Most respectfully yours, Mahler K. and K. Director of the k.k. Hofoperntheater

230

231

K.K. HOF-OPERNTHEATER

Vienna, 10 February, 1902

Z.136/1902

Right Honourable Sir, It is to my deepest regret not possible to present your opera ‘Rusalka’ this season; I can only consider performing your work next season. I hold myself responsible for informing you of this so that you can make any further necessary decisions. With assurances of my deepest respect and admiration I remain Most respectfully yours, Mahler K. and K. Director of the k.k. Hofoperntheater

232

233

K.K. HOF-OPERNTHEATER

Vienna, 13 May, 1902

Z.136/1902

Right Honourable Sir, I take the liberty of sending you the following contract ratified by the Intendant’s office for the acquisition of performance rights to your opera ‘Rusalka’ and sign with assurances of my deepest respect Most respectfully yours, Mahler K. and K. Director of the k.k. Hofoperntheater

234

235

236

Salzburg Festivals.

proposal to publish a typically politicised history of the Bayreuth and

Letter from Lindsay Drummond publishers rejecting Rosenzweig’s

Appendix 5

6 November

4 December

18 December

Beethoven

Symphony in G minor

Mozart

Eroica Symphony

Beethoven

Oberon Overture

Weber

Symphony in B minor

Schubert

Symphonie Fantastique

Berlioz

Second Symphony

Brahms

Symphonic Poem Heldenlied (1st perf.) Variations on a Folk Hymn1

Dvořák

Overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Mendelssohn

Third Suite Roma (1st [Vienna] perf.)

Bizet

Siegfried Idyll

Wagner

Eighth Symphony

Beethoven

String Quartet in F Minor, op. 95

Beethoven

Haydn

1899 15 January

(arranged by Mahler for string orchestra) (1st perf.)

29 January

26 February

19 March

First Symphony

Schumann

1812 Overture

Tchaikovsky

Symphonic Poem Festklänge (1st [Vienna] perf.)

Liszt

Hebrides Overture

Mendelssohn

‘Rigaudon’ from Dardanus (1st [Vienna?] perf.)

Rameau

Symphony in F major (1st perf.)

H[ermann] Goetz

Sixth Symphony (1st complete perf.)

Bruckner

Overture and ‘Klärchen-Lieder’ from Egmont

Beethoven

Rosamunde Overture

Schubert

Overture to Fidelio

Beethoven

Piano Concerto no. 5 in Eb major

"

(soloist: Ferruccio Busoni) Seventh Symphony

"

9 April (Nicolai

Second Symphony in C Minor (1st perf.)

Concert)

(soloists: M[arcella] Pregi and L[otte] von Bärensfeld; Singverein of the Gesellschaft

Mahler

der Musikfreunde)

237

The Complete Programmes of Gustav Mahler as Director of the Vienna Philharmonic (1898–1907)

20 November

Coriolan Overture

Appendix 6

1898

5 November

8 November

Euryanthe Overture

Weber

Jupiter Symphony

Mozart

Fifth Symphony

Beethoven

Repeat of the programme from 5 November

(Extraordinary concert) 19 November

3 December2

17 December

Symphonic Poem Aus Italien (1st [Vienna] perf.)

Strauss

Second Symphony

Beethoven

Third Symphony

Brahms

Symphonic Poem Die Waldtaube (1st perf.)

Dvořák

Overture [to Die Weihe des Hauses] op. 124

Beethoven

Jessonda Overture

Spohr

Violin Concerto (soloist: Marie Soldat-Roger)

Brahms

Pastoral Symphony

Beethoven

Fourth Symphony

Schumann

Songs with orchestra

Mahler

1900 14 January

1.

‘Ging heut’ morgens übers Feld’

2.

‘Die zwei blauen Augen’

3.

‘Das irdische Leben’

4.

‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’

5.

‘Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht’ (1st perf.)

(soloist: Selma Kurz)

28 January

18 February

Roman Carnival Overture

Berlioz

Fourth Symphony

Bruckner

Meerestille und glückliche Fahrt Overture Kaisermarsch3

Mendelssohn

Ninth Symphony

Beethoven

Wagner

(Nicolai Concert) (soloists: Marie Katzmayr (soprano), Louise [sic: Leonore] Rellee [sic: Rellé] (alto), F[ranz] Pacal (tenor), Wilhelm Hesch (bass); Vienna Singakademie and Schubertbund) 22 February

Overture [to Die Weihe des Hauses] op. 124

(Extraordinary

Ninth Symphony (same performers as 18 February)

Nicolai Concert)

Beethoven "

238

18 March

1 April

4 November

18 November

2 December

16 December

Symphony in Eb major [‘Drumroll’, no. 103]

Haydn

Konzertstück for piano [Liszt’s version] (soloist: Ferruccio Busoni)

Weber

Mephisto Waltzes

Liszt

Im Frühling Overture

Goldmark

Symphony in C Major

Schubert

Variations on a Theme of Haydn

Brahms

Overture Leonore no. 3

Beethoven

Rob Roy Overture (1st [Vienna] perf.)

Berlioz

Faust Overture

Wagner

Third Symphony (Eroica)

Beethoven

Prometheus Overture

Beethoven

Manfred Overture

Schumann

First Symphony in D Major (1st perf.)

Mahler

Keyboard Concerto in D minor (soloist: K[arl] Friedberg [piano])

Bach

Overture Leonore no. 2

Beethoven

Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra (soloist: K[arl] Friedberg)

Franck

Prelude to Libuše and Die Moldau [Vltava]

Smetana

First Symphony

Beethoven

Coriolan Overture

"

Fourth Symphony

"

1901 13 January

27 January

Third Symphony

Mendelssohn

Manfred Symphony (1st [Vienna] perf.)

Tchaikovsky

Ninth Symphony

Beethoven

(Nicolai Concert) (soloists: Elise Elizza (soprano), Ch. [sic: Karoline] Kusmitsch (alto), F[ranz] Naval (tenor), M[oritz] Frauscher (bass); Singakademie and Schubertbund) 24 February

Turandot Overture (1st [Vienna] perf.)

Weber

Serenade for Wind Instruments [op. 44] (1st [Vienna] perf.) Fifth Symphony (1st [Vienna] perf.)4

Dvořák

10 March

Mahler ill, replaced by J. Hellmesberger

24 March

Mahler ill, replaced by Franz Schalk

Bruckner

1902 12 January

König Stefan Overture

Beethoven

Fourth Symphony in G Major (soloist: Rita Michalek) (1st [Vienna] perf.)

Mahler

239

19 June

20 June

Meistersinger Overture

Wagner

Symphony in G Minor

Mozart

Overture Leonore no. 3

Beethoven

Oberon Overture

Weber

Fifth Symphony

Beethoven

Concert of the Vienna Male Voice Choir (choir with orchestra [and soloist: Hermann Winkelmann (tenor); conducted by Richard von Perger]) Der Freischütz Overture [conducted by Mahler]5

Weber

Egmont Overture

Beethoven

Romance in F Major (soloist: Arnold Rosé)

21 June

22 June6

Philharmonic under the Directorship of Gustav Mahler

Gesellschaft Concerts with the Participation of the Vienna

Philharmonic Concerts in Paris on the Occasion of the 1900 World Exhibition

18 June

"

Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde

Wagner

Symphonie Fantastique

Berlioz

Third Symphony (Eroica)

Beethoven

Symphony in B Minor (‘Unfinished’)

Schubert

Scherzo from the Fourth Symphony

Bruckner

Im Frühling Overture

Goldmark

Tannhäuser Overture

Wagner

Concert of the Vienna Male Voice Choir (choir with orchestra) Adagio (soloist: Karl Prill)

Spohr

Der fliegende Holländer Overture

Wagner

14 December 1904

Third Symphony

(Extraordinary Gesellschaft Concert)

(soloist: Hermine Kittel (alto); Singverein of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde; a boys’ choir) (1st Vienna perf.)

7 December 1905

Motet ‘Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied’

(Extraordinary Gesellschaft

(Singverein of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde) [conducted by Franz

Concert)

Schalk]

Mahler

Bach

Fifth Symphony (1st perf. in Vienna) [conducted by Mahler] Mahler 24 November 1907

Mahler’s farewell concert

(Extraordinary Gesellschaft

Second Symphony

Concert)

(soloists: Elise Elizza, Gertrude Förstel (sopranos), Hermine Kittel, Bella Paalen (altos); Singverein of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde)

240

Mahler

Der Bärenhäuter Overture (conducted by the composer)

(Concert of Contemporary Music Maurische Rhapsodie (conducted by the composer) for the Pensions and Support

‘Don Quixotes phantastischer Austritt und seine traurige Heimkehr’

Fund of the Society of Authors,

(two interludes from the opera Don Quixote) (conducted by the

Siegfried Wagner Humperdinck Wilhelm Kienzl

Composers and Music Publishers composer) in Vienna)

Preludes to Act I and III of Guntram [conducted by Mahler]

Strauss

13 and 14 March 1899

Oratorio La Risurezzione di Lazzaro

Lorenzo Perosi

(Charity Concert under the

(soloists: Guido Vaccari, Silla Carobbi, Amelia Fusco, Lotte Barensfeld,

Auspices of Archduchess Maria

and Emil Vaupel)

Josepha for the Alland Infirmary) 17 February 1901

Das klagende Lied7

(Extraordinary Concert of the

(soloists: Elisse Elizza, Anna von Mildenburg, Edyth Walker and Fritz Schrödter; Vienna Singakademie and the Schubertbund) (1st perf. of

Vienna Singakademie)

Mahler

revised [two-movement] work) 20 January 1902

Das klagende Lied

(Extraordinary Concert of the

(soloists: Elisse Elizza, Anna von Mildenburg, Edyth Walker, Hermine

Vienna Singakademia)

Kittel and Erik Schmedes; Vienna Singakademie) Fourth Symphony in G Major8

Mahler

"

(soloist: Rita Michalek (soprano)) 29 January 1905,

Songs for voice and orchestra

repeated on 3 February9

[Kindertotenlieder, four Rückertlieder of 1901, six Wunderhorn songs]

(In the Small Hall of the

(soloists: Fritz Schrödter, Anton Moser, and Friedrich Weidemann; chamber orchestra of the Vienna Philharmonic)10

Konzertverein: Liederabend

Mahler

with orchestra organized by the ‘Vereinigung schaffender Tonkünstler in Wien’

Notes 1

‘Variations on the Austrian Anthem’ from Haydn’s Emperor Quartet.

2

La Grange gives the date as 8 December (HLGE2, p. 207).

3

To commemorate Kaiser Wilhelm II’s birthday.

4

Much to the dismay of Bruckner’s supporters in Vienna, this performance contained significant cuts. For details see HLGE2, pp. 331–4.

5

For the somewhat dramatic circumstances surrounding this concert, involving Mahler’s temporary indisposition, see HLGE2, p. 262.

6

This concert is not mentioned in La Grange’s biography.

7

According to La Grange, Das klagende Lied was preceded by Wagner’s Faust Overture in the concert (HLGE2, p. 331).

8

According to La Grange, Das klagende Lied was performed after the Fourth Symphony in the concert (HLGE2, p. 472).

9

The ‘repeat’ of the concert was not an identical one. See HLGE3, pp. 107–8 for full details.

10 For discussion of the significance of the chamber forces employed by Mahler in these performances, see Renate Hilmar-Voit, ‘Symphonic Sound or in the Style of Chamber Music?’, News About Mahler241 Research, 28 (October 1992), pp. 8–12 and Foreword to Gustav Mahler. Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Gesamtausgabe. Band XIV/2: Des Knaben Wunderhorn. Gesänge für eine Singstimme mit Orchesterbegleitung (Vienna: Universal Edition, 1998), pp. xix–xxv.

Special Concerts with the Participation of the Vienna Philharmonic and under the Directorship of Gustav Mahler

19 February 1899

Index Pages including

Abert, Hermann 203 absolute music 58, 197

illustrations are Academic Wagner Society 151–2 shown in italic. Adler, Guido 31, 32, 169

and Germany/Prussia 15, 19, 41, 58–9, 62, 70, 121, 141 Jews in 19, 121 Mahler and 4, 19, 30, 56–8, 69, 83–4

and Bruckner 32, 110, 116

music see Austrian music and musical life

friendship with Mahler 31, 32, 85–6, 194

post-Second World War 27

and publications of Mahler symphonies 85–6

see also Austro-Hungarian Empire; ‘great-German’ movement; Vienna

and Rosenzweig 1, 215 and Wagner 32, 39, 40, 151 writings 33, 39, 194, 203 on Mahler 33, 62, 181, 182 Adler, Viktor 11 Adorno, Theodor W. 18–19 Aeschylus 204 Aibl, Josef 133 Altshluderbach 82 Amon, Otto 44 annexing techniques see German music and musicology Ansfelden 122 anti-Semitism 14, 50, 68, 160, 202, 203 among Catholics 50

Austrian Bruckner League 141 Austrian music and musical life: and Austrian landscape 128 Austrian symphonic lineage 4, 5, 63, 83, 113, 125–8 see also symphony and Bruckner 141, 148 contrast with imperial Germany 115 Mahler’s role in 56–7, 83–4 military marches 78, 94 provincial theatres 167 publishing industry 133 universal/Slavic elements 60–1, 83–4 Austro-Hungarian Empire 10–11, 12, 13, 38, 59–60, 62, 121

among Jews 11 Mahler and 11, 19, 102 in musicology 68, 128 in Vienna see Vienna

Bach, Johann Sebastian: Mahler and 47–8 Wagnerians and 152

Appia, Adolphe 54

Bad Hall 163, 166

Aristotle 195

Badeni, Count 21

Arnim, Achim von 177

bagpipes 17–18

‘At se pinkl házi’ (‘Let the knapsack rock’) 9–10, 11, 17, 210–11

Bahr, Hermann 35

Auer, Max 108, 110, 135, 141, 143–4 Augsburg 143, 146 Aussee 162 Austria: anti-Semitism, nationalism and imperialism 50, 51, 55, 57, 61 Austrianism 57 conflict between provinces and Vienna 146

Bakhtin, Mikhail 22 Barzun, Jacques 39 Bassermann, Intendant 107 Bauer-Lechner, Natalie 63–4, 73, 97, 130, 164, 207 Bavaria: and Bruckner 146 Wagner and 41 see also Munich

dictatorship (1934) and Nazi occupation (1938) 69, 70, 146

Bax, Sir Arnold 113–14

Germans in 59

Bayreuth 55, 236

242

Bayer, Franz 135

Bayreuth Festival 16, 38–9, 42–3, 45, 49, 53–4, 62, 156–7 Festspielhaus 38, 156 imperialist and racial ideology 40–3, 47, 49, 53, 55, 62, 152, 160

Bohemia-Moravia 21, 58–61, 77 as ‘conservatory of Europe’ 16 folk music and dance 4, 12, 19, 61, 162 see also Bohemian street musicians; Czech music and folksong

influence of 16–17, 38–9, 52–4

Germans in 59, 85

Mahler and 16–17, 47, 49–50, 56, 62, 69, 102, 170–1

Jewish communities in 10, 11

performances 47

provincial theatres 167

early Ring stagings 47, 53 Parsifal 47, 53, 160, 170 performing standards and stagecraft 47, 49, 53–4, 56 Beckerman, Michael 13 Beethoven, Ludwig van 83, 113

refugee musicians from 203 Bohemian street musicians 13, 17–18, 60, 77, 81, 83 contribution to Western music 60 see also Musikanten ‘Bohemians’ (music society) 14

Mahler and 13, 46, 47, 96–7, 186, 208

Boisserée, Sulpiz 174

and mass audience 118

Bolshevism, ‘cultural’ 144, 146

succession to 16

bourgeoisie 15, 35, 39, 50, 59, 118, 154

undervalued in Mahler’s time 46

Brahms, Johannes:

Wagner/Wagnerians and 152, 158

and Bruckner 60, 124, 204

Wolf and 109

and Czech music 60

works:

and Dvořák 60

formal type 16

and folk music 128

piano sonatas and string quartets 118

and Mahler 48, 66, 130, 151

symphonies 117–18, 119, 125; Ninth 118, 125; thematic linking of movements 118; and Will to Form 119

opponents and supporters 99, 109, 111, 124 and Richard Strauss 130 symphonies 120, 125

Bekker, Paul 16, 63, 125–6

Braunfels, Walter 143, 144

Benda, Georg 21

Brecht, Berthold 146

Bennecke, W. 186

Breitkopf & Härtel 141–2

Berg, Alban 145

Brentano, Clemens 174, 177

Berlin 121, 135, 154, 186

Britain:

Berlin Bruckner Society 141

appeasement period and Second World War 72, 114

Berliner, Arnold 53

and Bruckner 113–14

Berlioz, Hector 120, 121, 125

Czech refugees in 194

influence in Germany 120

Mahler’s reception in 5, 67, 72, 113–14, 198, 202–3

Bethge, Hans 82, 199

music histories 16, 113

Billroth, Theodor 151

and Wagner 40

Birrenkoven, Willi 53

Wagner’s view of 158

Bismarck, Prince Otto von 10, 41, 154, 159

Brno 10

Bizet, Georges 167

Brosch (teacher of Mahler) 86

Blaukopf, Herta 2

Bruckner, Anton 109–50

Blessinger, Karl 194

Bruckner controversy 32, 110–12, 122–4, 131

243

conductors, students, followers and champions 5, 32, 109–10, 111–17, 124–5, 129–30, 138–41, 147–50, 178–9, 241 see also Bruckner societies; Mahler’s relationship with below editions see under works below and Jews 115, 116 life and career 110–11, 122–4, 128, 130–2, 136, 138, 147 Mahler’s relationship with 5, 48, 83, 99, 102, 110, 112–17, 125, 127, 129–35, 136, 149–50, 160, 241

symphonies 111, 122, 125–7, 131–48; Symphony in F Minor (1863) 203; First Symphony 123, 132; Second Symphony 132; Third Symphony (‘Wagner’) 110, 111–12, 116, 132, 133; Fourth Symphony 124, 132, 178–9; Fifth Symphony 114, 133, 147; Sixth Symphony 132, 135, 150; Seventh Symphony 110, 133, 147; Eighth Symphony 124, 132–3, 147–8; Ninth Symphony (incomplete) 122, 130–1, 137, 138–40; cuts and re-touchings 5, 135, 136–9, 147, 149, 204, 241; piano versions 109, 112, 116, 132; Schubert as precursor 121, 126; structure/formal design 117, 125–7, 136; Will to Form 117, 121 Te Deum 112, 132, 133, 134–5 writings on 16, 63, 113, 135–6, 144

Mahler’s work in lineage of 4, 63, 128, 130

Bruckner societies 140–4, 146, 148

manuscripts 136–8, 141, 150

Budapest 34, 50, 52, 183–4, 207

monuments and commemorations:

Bülow, Hans von 84, 123, 193, 208

International Festivals (1936, 1937) 148 Regensburg Valhalla 16, 148–50 Vienna festival (1932) 140 Vienna monument 131

Bulss, Paul 191–2 Bürger, Gottfried August 90 Burney, Charles 16 Busch, Adolf 68 Busoni, Ferruccio 56, 72

opponents 60, 111–12, 113, 115, 124–5, 131 and the organ 122, 125, 126, 136, 147

Caine, Uri 17–18

reception history 4, 5, 6, 51, 109, 112, 152

Callot, Jacques 166, 179, 185

posthumous 131, 133–50, 204–5 romanticism and remoteness (Fernstand) 124, 129–30 and sacred music 122, 126, 136 Vienna and 51, 110–11

Capell, Richard 72 Carl, Hans 63 Carltheater, Vienna 170 Carner, Mosco 64 Casals, Pablo 68

and Wagner 110, 115, 122–5

Časlau 81, 89

as Wagner epigone 113

Cassel see Kassel

and Wagner party and New German School 5, 121, 124

Catholic Church 203

and Hugo Wolf 5, 102, 108, 109–10 works: choral works 132 Mass in D Minor 122, 135, 150 Overture in G Minor 203 publication and editions 5, 112, 131–4, 136–50, 204–5 String Quintet 138

244

Central and Eastern Europe 4, 11, 15, 19 see also Bohemia-Moravia; Czechs; Slavs Chamberlain, Houston Stewart 44, 52, 54, 55, 69, 196 Chinese poetry 82 Christian Socialists 50 Chua, Daniel 197 counter-Reformation 203 Czech language 10, 13, 14, 21 Czech music and folksong 9–11, 12–15, 16, 20, 21, 60–1, 94

19th-century renaissance 21, 60–1

Eichenauer, Richard 194

influences on Mahler 9–10, 12

Einheit 25, 194

musicologists and Mahler 62, 68

Einstein, Alfred 63

Czechoslovakia 25, 27

Eisler, Hanns 146

Czechs:

England see Britain

and Austria 58–9, 62

Epstein, Julius 88, 90–1, 95, 200

Czech-Bohemian art peripheral to German 12, 16

and Mahler 95–6, 115, 163

‘Czechness’ 12–13

Ernst of Swabia 81

diaspora 21

Etude, The 10

and Germans 10, 16, 58–60, 62 nationalism and struggle for freedom 12, 59

Fanta, Robert 28, 194

Nazi oppression 18

fascism 4, 27–8, 29, 146

see also Bohemia-Moravia; Czech language; Czech music and folksong Dahlhaus, Carl 19 Dante Alighieri 208 Debussy, Claude 67 Decsey 115 ‘degenerate art’ 6, 29, 30, 75 Dehmel, Ida 72 Dent, Edward 42 Destin, Emmy 84 Deutschnationaler Verein 11 Dinger, Hugo 39 Draughon, Francesca 16, 22 Dresden 113–14 uprising (1849) 41, 154, 160 Drummond, Lindsay 236 Dual Monarchy 121 Düsseldorf 135 Dvořák, Antonin 60, 84–5 and Brahms 60, 84 and Czech musical renaissance 60 Mahler and 4, 13, 14, 84–5, 220–35 Rusalka 4, 21, 85, 220–35

see also National Socialism Feuerbach, Ludwig 153 Filser, Benno 142, 143 fin-de-siècle music 6 Fischer, Ernst 27 Fistoulari-Mahler, Anna 71, 198 Flotow, Friedrich 170 Foerster, Josef Bohuslav 1, 4, 10, 84, 199 Foerster-Lauterer, Berta 85, 199 folk music see Bohemia-Moravia; Czech music and folksong; pseudo-folk sources etc. France: French Revolution 118 and Gobineau 40 music see French music and musical life Verdi and 158–9 Wagner’s hatred 158 see also Franco-Prussian War; Paris Franco-Prussian War 38, 62, 154, 158–9 Franz Josef, Emperor 78 ‘Free from Rome’ (los von Rom) 121, 203 Freiberg, Otto 188–90 French music and musical life: and Berlioz 120

Eastern Europe see Central and Eastern Europe; Czechs; Slavs and names of countries

and Bruckner 141

Eberle (Josef) & Co. 131, 132, 133, 138

and Mahler 67

Eckstein, Friedrich 138

music histories 16

Eibenschütz 85

opera 39, 42, 156

Debussy and impressionism 67

245

and Wagner 41, 152

and Wagner cult 38–44, 121, 153–8, 160

Wagnerians and 152

see also Franco-Prussian War; German language; German music; Prussia

Freund, Emil 64, 81, 86, 165 Friedjung, Heinrich 11 Frohsinn choral society 123–4 Fuchs, Robert 95, 97, 115 Furreg, Georg 140 Furreg, Robert 142, 143

Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Conservatoire of the (Vienna Conservatoire) 38, 60, 91–2, 95–6, 151, 201 Gesellschaft zur Förderung deutscher Wissenschaft, Kunst und Kultur in Böhmen 85–6 Gilsa, Intendant Freiherr von und zu 173–4, 187, 188, 190 Glinka, Mikhail Ivanovich 13

German language 10, 14, 21

Gluck, Christoph Willibald 56, 153

German League (North German Confederation) 41, 59–60

Gobineau, Count Joseph Arthur de 40, 44, 121, 153, 195

German music and musical life: annexing techniques 16, 17, 63, 113, 114, 203 and Austrian post-classical symphony concept 16, 126, 128–9

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von 174 Göhler, Georg 64, 136–7 Goldmark, Karl 29, 51 Göllerich, August 123, 135, 138, 143

and Bruckner 141–4

Gounod, Charles 166

German musical theatre vs French and Italian operatic conventions 39, 156

Grabbe, Christian Dietrich 109, 202

influence of Berlioz 120

Gräflinger, Franz 141

and Mahler 17, 63, 67–9, 128–9 myth of transcendence 18

Grange, Henry-Louis de La 3, 7, 197, 198, 199, 200, 207, 208

National Socialists and see National Socialism

‘great-Austrian territory’ 61

opera 39, 145–6, 156

‘great-German’ movement 6, 7, 15, 16, 29, 55, 59, 60, 62, 102, 104, 106, 113, 121, 127, 128, 140, 145, 148, 150, 152, 160, 204–5

public for 146 Singspiel 42 and Slavic elements 83–4 Wagner cult 42–3, 63 Germany: 1848–49 revolutions and aftermath 39, 41, 121, 154–5, 195 bourgeoisie 35, 39, 44, 154 cultural domination notion 16 democracy in 154

Grädener, Hermann 151

annexing techniques see German music and musical life Greek drama 153–4 Greek mythology 204 Grillparzer, Franz 206 Grimm, Brothers 161 Grohe, Oskar 107 Grünfeld family 87 Grünfeld, Alfred 87

‘German spirit’ 39, 153, 158

Grunsky, Karl 141

humanist tendencies 28

Gudehus, Heinrich 191–2

liberalism 10

Guildhall School of Music & Drama 2

Mahler and 30, 51–2, 62

Rosenzweig Collection 2, 4, 200

master-race ideology (Uebermenschentum) 160

Gutheil-Schoder, Marie 85

and National Socialism 28, 59, 68

Guttmann, A. 131, 133, 134

nationalism and imperialism 6, 7, 10–11, 16–17, 19– 20, 28–30, 38–9, 44–5, 57, 59, 62, 120–1, 153–60

Haas, Robert 137, 138–40, 142, 147

246

Habsburg empire 10–11, 15, 38, 57, 58–9, 121

see also Budapest

Hagemann, Carl 64

‘Huntsman’s Funeral, The’ 185

Hagen, Edmund von 159–60

hurdy-gurdy 81

Hajs, Fr. see ‘At se pinkl házi’ Halir, Karl 191 Hamburg: Mahler in 13, 34, 50, 51–2, 84, 135, 150, 193 performance of First Symphony 184, 185, 207 ‘Subscription Concerts’ 34, 84 Handel, George Frederick 152 Hanslick, Eduard 54, 111, 124 Hartl, Vinzenz 141 Haslinger, C. 131, 132, 133 Hausegger, Siegmund von 139 Haydn, Josef 83, 113 symphonies 117, 119

Iglau viii, 9–11, 12, 13, 31, 77–80, 85–6, 89, 171, 173, 174, 192 Illustriertes Wiener Extrablatt 92, 94, 200 impressionism: in music 67 in staging 56 International Bruckner Society see Bruckner, Anton (Bruckner societies) Italian music: opera 39, 42, 155, 156 see also Verdi, Giuseppe Wagner/Wagnerians and 152, 158

Wagnerians and 152 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, and Hegelianism 39, 153, 195

Jahn, Wilhelm 52, 54

Hellmesberger, Joseph 95, 98, 108

Jeffrey, Herbert 2

Herbeck, Johann von 110–11

Jews/Judaism:

Janáček, Leoš 14, 85, 133

Herder, Johann Gottfried 17, 19, 84, 199

disciples and friends of Wagner 121, 160–1

Hermann, Rudolf 29

Jewishness in music 16

Hermann, Salomon 207

in National-Socialist musicology 68

Hernried, Robert 107

see also anti-Semitism; Bruckner, Anton; Mahler, Gustav (life)

Hertzka, Emil 35, 133–4, 145 Hesch, Wilhelm 85 Hitler, Adolf:

Kalischt 31, 77–8, 85

at Bayreuth 55

Kant, Immanuel 159

and Regensburg Bruckner monument 16, 148–50

Kapp, Julius 39, 156

and Schönerer movement 203

Karbusický, Vladimír 1, 197

see also fascism

Karpath, Ludwig 130

Hoffmann, Rudolf Stephan 161–2 Hoffmann-Matscheko, Nina 64

Kassel 95, 170–1, 173–93 Music Festival 5, 188–93

Hofmannsthal, Hugo 57, 73

Keller, Gottfried 154

Hohenzollern see Prussia

Kieval, Hillel 10

Holland 68, 69, 70

Kitzler, Otto 122, 203

Holzbauer, Ignaz 16, 203

Klemperer, Otto 6, 69

Hugo Wolf Society (Hugo Wolf-Verein) 104–7, 108

Klimt, Gustav 74

Humperdinck, Engelbert 100

Klinger, Max 74

Hungary 62, 83

Klose, Friedrich 150

247

Klosterneuberg foundation 141 Knaben Wunderhorn, Des 177

correspondence with Mahler 31, 64, 71, 77, 96–7, 167–8, 171, 174, 175, 178, 181–3, 186, 208

Knapp, Raymond 16, 22

Louis, Rudolf 129

Köchert, Theodor 104

Löwe, Ferdinand 109, 116, 117, 136, 138, 139, 140, 147, 150

Konzertverein see Vienna Concert Society Koschat, Thomas 13

Lower Austria 141, 146 see also Vienna

Krauss, Clemens 29, 140

Ludwig II, King 41, 153, 156, 157, 160

Krenek, Ernst 146

Lueger, Karl 50

Krenn, Theodor 95, 97, 115

Lukács, Georg 154–5

Krieser, Karl 143 Kross, Siegfried 16 Krzyzanowski, Heinrich 64

Mahler, Alma Maria (née Schindler; Mahler’s wife) 30, 64, 70–4

Krzyzanowski, Rudolf 64, 99–100, 204

on Bruckner 110, 116

Kurth, Ernst 110, 151

character 73–4

and Bruckner 63, 112, 126, 127–8, 129–30, 141, 143, 144

on Cosima Wagner 52

on Mahler 129, 135

relationship with Mahler see Mahler, Gustav (life: marriage and children)

Kvapil, J. 200

on relation of Mahler’s life and music 195

and Richard Strauss 72–3 La Grange see Grange, Henry-Louis de La Lach, Robert 1, 212 Laibach 166 Leander, Richard (Richard von Volkmann) 169, 206 Leipzig 13, 141–2 Mahler in 13, 34, 50, 188, 193 Leipzig circle (Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms) 16, 120, 125 Leitmotiv 120 ‘Let the knapsack rock’ see ‘At se pinkl házi’

on Hugo Wolf 105–7 writings: Gustav Mahler. Erinnerungen und Briefe 30, 51–2, 70–4, 79, 80–1, 87, 98, 105, 116, 134, 170, 187 planned preface to Rosenzweig’s book 2, 7 Mahler, Alois (or Louis or Hans; brother) 79, 199 Mahler, Anna (Fistoulari-; daughter) 71, 198 Mahler, Bernhard (father) 9, 77–81, 171 children of 77–80, 199 and Mahler’s career 5, 88–91, 95, 98–9, 163, 200 Mahler, Emma (sister) 80

Levi, Hermann 135, 138, 139, 147–8, 160

Mahler, Ernst (brother) 78–9, 81

Linz 122, 123–4, 125, 135, 146, 148, 150, 178–9

Mahler, Gustav:

Lipiner, Siegfried 64, 71, 73, 74 Liszt, Franz 113, 121, 125, 192

character and beliefs 36–7, 51, 70, 71, 78 alienation and sense of homelessness 12, 30, 36

and Berlioz 120

assimilationist 12, 19

programme music 120, 125

Austrian identity (Oesterreichertum) 11, 15, 128

and Smetana 60

Deutschtümelei 11–12

symphonic poems 120

ethnic allegiances 10–12, 15, 17, 30, 128

and Wagner 120, 153

exaltation and depression 36–7, 50, 82–3, 130, 171

Wolf and 109

frank critic of others’ works 101–2, 108

Löhr, Friedrich (Fritz) 12, 31–2, 64, 77–8, 80

248

generosity and sympathy with suffering 78, 80, 99

love of nature 12, 81, 82–3, 94, 128, 151, 171

to Bruckner 135

love of walking and swimming 82

to Epstein 95

non-believer 131

to Freund 165–6

nostalgia and dreaminess 80–1, 88, 94

to Goldmark 51

political thinking and foresight 11–12, 15, 18–19, 37, 50, 196

to Löhr see Löhr, Friedrich

reserve 51, 71, 92, 94, 171 social realism 18–19 uncompromising integrity and concern for standards 14, 51, 71, 97–8, 105, 108, 167 vegetarian and regeneration theories 165–6, 168–9

to Marschalk 101–2, 151, 180, 183, 186 to Schwarz 90–4 life: in Altshluderbach 82–3 at Cartheater, Vienna 170

willpower 78, 130

in Bad Hall 163, 166

world sorrow 19, 36–7, 50

at Bayreuth 47, 170–1

as conductor and theatre director 32, 36, 47, 50–8, 62, 74, 108, 162–3, 166–9, 173–4, 200, 204

boyhood in Kalischt and Iglau 4–5, 9–11, 12–13, 31, 38, 61–2, 77–83, 85–6, 87–9, 95, 165

immune to convention and performance traditions 46, 99–100

in Budapest 34, 50, 52, 183–4, 207

interpretations: Beethoven 46, 96; Bruckner 122, 129, 135, 138, 149–50, 204; Dvořák 84; Gluck 56; Mendelssohn 191; Mozart 46, 56; Wagner (see also below) 46–8, 52–3, 103, 167, 186

and contemporary society 37–8, 50, 58, 60

opera reforms 6, 49, 55–7

in Hamburg see Hamburg

scores and other records of 34, 194

illness and death 58, 74, 82, 197

depictions of 28, 69, 172–3

conducting career see above early career 151–71 education and early musical training 10, 80, 86

Jewishness 9–11, 12, 19, 29, 30, 36, 52, 79

caricatures 52, 189

in Kassel 170–1, 173–93

Rodin bust 70

in Laibach 166

influences/sources:

languages 10, 14–15

Bruckner 5, 127, 129–31, 160, 179

in Leipzig 13, 34, 50, 188, 193

fairy tales and folk poetry 161–2, 176

marriage and children 71, 73–5, 78, 82

folk and popular music and dance 4, 10–11, 12–15, 17–19, 31, 61–2, 77–8, 81, 83–4, 94, 128, 162, 175–6, 199

in Münden 96, 188–93 in Olmütz 62, 81, 166–70

military music 10, 78, 94

opponents 21, 29, 32, 45–6, 50–1, 54–6, 65, 67, 103, 104, 116, 128–9, 135, 136, 162–3

Schumann 169

and his parents and siblings 79–81, 171

Wagner (see also below) 161–2, 165, 166 interpreters of 69, 75, 198 Klemperer 69, 75 Scherchen 64, 75 Bruno Walter 69–70, 75 letters 71 publication of 31, 34, 64, 70–4, 88

in Perchtoldsdorf 96 as pianist 80, 86, 96–7, 115 playing accordion 10 in Prague see Prague sexual and early romantic experiences 87, 165, 171, 187, 207; see also Richter, Johanna

to Alma 71

studies in Vienna 5, 11, 38, 62, 63, 81, 83–6, 88– 104, 109, 110–17, 121, 151, 196

to and on behalf of Dvořák 4, 200, 220–35

summer holidays 82–3, 162–3, 173, 174

249

teaching the piano 86

Das Lied von der Erde 69, 82, 88, 94

in the United States 14, 74, 75, 81, 101, 134, 135

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen 5, 175–8, 180–3, 186, 207

at Vienna Hofoper and Vienna Philharmonic 4, 6, 14, 21, 29, 30, 33, 34, 46, 50–8, 62, 70, 74, 81, 84, 85, 102–4, 131, 162, 191, 237–41 and 1905 workers’ demonstration 50

Lieder und Gesänge aus der Jugendzeit 169, 206, 207 ‘Lob des hohen Verstandes’ 11 9 Wunderhornlieder 207

literature on see writings on below

Piano Quartet (fragment) 151, 199, 205

reception 4, 17, 18, 63–70, 129, 184

Piano Quintet 97, 101, 201

in Britain see Britain

polka with funeral march (first composition) 10

interwar years 63–70

Rübezahl opera project 12, 100–2, 166, 175, 181

mid-20th-century nadir and rehabilitation 6, 18

sense of rupture 199

unpopularity in western Europe 4, 67, 68

songs 12, 33, 108–9, 161–2, 169, 194, 199; contrast with Wolf 108–9

see also National Socialism; Vienna relationships: with Alma see life (marriage and children) above with Brahms 48, 66, 99, 131, 151 with Bruckner see Bruckner, Anton with von Bülow 193 with Schoenberg see Schoenberg, Arnold with Schwarz 89–95, 200–1 with Richard Strauss see Strauss, Richard with Wolf see Wolf, Hugo and Wagner 5, 11, 16–17, 45–50, 99, 151–62, 170–1, 187 anti-Wagnerian or Wagner epigone 4, 15, 17, 63 devotion to Wagner’s art 4, 15–17, 47–50, 100, 102, 160–2, 170–1 meeting with Wagner 48 and Wagner ideology 4, 17, 48, 50 see also above works: Die Argonauten 101, 162, 163, 206 ‘Fischpredigt’ 11, 13 folk elements in see influences/sources above ‘Hans und Grethe’ 161–2, 169, 206 Herzog Ernst von Schwaben (incomplete opera) 81, 101

tonality in 66 Der Trompeter von Säkkingen 186–7, 207 Violin Sonata 97, 98, 101 Das Volkslied 207 ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’ 11 writings of:

‘Irdische Leben’ 11

Argonauten libretto (?) 162, 206

juvenilia and early works 10, 12, 81, 89, 94, 97–8, 100–1, 108, 151, 161–2, 169, 199, 201, 205

love poems 187

Kindertotenlieder 79

see also letters above

Das klagende Lied 161, 163, 165, 166, 206

250

symphonies 6, 35, 36–7, 75, 86, 98, 125, 160, 180–1, 201; Nordic Symphony (early work) 101; First Symphony: allusions to völkisch music and folk song 11, 180; Brucknerian influence 5, 179; Uri Caine’s version 18; early performances 179, 183–6, 207; genesis and composition of 179–80, 183; post-war performances in Vienna 28–9, 194; programme and title (withdrawn) 179, 184–6; Rübezahl material in 12; second movement (scherzo) 180, 183, 206; themes from Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen in 179–80; third movement 179, 183; Second Symphony 129, 130, 148, 186; Fourth Symphony 162, 198; Mahler’s re-touchings 34; manuscripts and publication 34–5; Fifth Symphony 11, 13; Sixth Symphony 11, 114; Seventh Symphony 11; Eighth Symphony 1, 36, 129; Ninth Symphony 11, 69; Tenth Symphony (incomplete) 75, 198; Austrian lineage 15, 16, 63, 113, 125–6, 150; Brucknerian influence 5, 117, 179; developing from song 5, 180; folk influences 11, 31; piano versions 204; programme music aesthetic 4, 113, 185–6; publication of 85–6, 133, 134

song texts 162, 176–7 writings on 3, 4, 16, 18, 30–5, 58, 62–76

absolute vs. programme music debate 58, 197

Mengelberg, Rudolf 64

biographies and studies of 3, 18, 30–5, 62–9

Mersmann, Hans 64

on folk idioms or melodies 13, 31, 199

Metternich-Sandor, Princess Pauline 41

relation of life to works 35, 58, 65, 195

Meyerbeer, Giacomo 167, 169, 186

sense of rupture 199

Michael, Archangel 144, 204

on songs 33, 169, 194

‘middle-German symphonists’ 120, 125

Mahler, Isidor (brother) 78

Mildenburg, Anna von 64, 73, 74

Mahler, Justine (sister) 79, 101, 169

Milhaud, Darius 145

Mahler, Leopoldine (sister) 79

military music 10, 31, 78

Mahler, Maria (daughter) 70

Mladé Ceskoslovensko (Young Czechoslovakia) 194

Mahler, Marie (mother) 77–80, 98, 163, 171

modes, church 66

see also Mahler, Bernhard

Moissl, Franz 141, 143

Mahler, Otto (brother) 79–80, 131

Moll, Carl and Anna 73–4, 198

Maiernigg (Wörthersee) 162

Monn, Matthias Georg 16, 203

Mann, Heinrich 39, 43–5

Monteverdi, Claudio 153

Mann, Thomas 39

Moravia 86

Mannheim 107–8, 117, 203

see also Bohemia-Moravia

Mannheim School 203

Morawan 81, 88, 94, 200

Manzoni, Alessandro 159

Moser, Kolo 74

Marburg 188, 191

Motte Fouqué, F. de la 200

Marschalk, Max 101–2, 151, 180, 183, 186

Mottl, Felix 54

Marschner, Heinrich 186

Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus 83, 113

Mathis-Rosenzweig, Alfred 1–7, 15–22, 24, 75

and Bohemian musicians 60

articles in Der Wiener Tag 1

Mahler and 46, 47, 56, 167, 186

Bayreuth and Salzburg history project 236

Wagner/Wagnerians and 42, 152, 158

‘Gustav Mahler: his Life, his Times, his Work’ (lecture/projected pamphlet, 1945) 25

works:

Gustav Mahler: Neue Erkentnisse zu seinem Leben, seiner Zeit, seinem Werk (typescript) 1–7, 15–22, 25–193, 219 unwritten parts 5–6, 53, 69, 75, 100

contrast with Wagner 42, 46 operas 46, 73 symphonies 117–18 Müller, Paul 103

‘Wie Gustav Mahler seine “Achte” plante’ 1

Münch, F. X. 143

‘Zur Entwicklungsgeschichte des Richard Strauss’chen Musikdramas’ (doctoral dissertation) 1, 212–18

Münden 96, 188–91, 193 Munich 36, 41, 123, 129, 139–40, 141

Mehul, Etienne Nicolas 167

Music & Letters 1, 72

Meininger stagings of Wagner 56

Musical Quarterly, The 107

Melion 89

Musicological Publishers of the International Bruckner Society 140, 142, 144, 149

Mendelssohn, Felix: St Paul 188, 191–3 Wagnerians and 152 see also Leipzig circle

Musikanten 10, 60 see also Bohemian street musicians mythology, ancient 161, 204

251

Nabl, Franz 9 Napoleon III, Emperor 41

earlier production styles contrasted with Wagner 42, 46–7, 49, 53, 56

Napoleonic wars 121

Mahler’s reforms 6, 49, 55–7

National Socialism:

post-romantic 20th-century 58

anti-Austrian propaganda 148 ‘degenerate art’ policies 6, 29, 30, 75 forerunners 59, 69 see also Schönerer, Georg von and German musical life 39, 68, 145–6 and Mahler 4, 6, 29–30, 67–9, 70, 75–6, 79, 150 musical propaganda 5, 20, 29–30, 39, 68, 75–6, 104 and Bruckner 136, 140, 143–50, 204–5 musicians opposed to 68, 69, 146 musicology 4, 6, 16, 39, 68, 75, 113, 128 postwar liberation from 27–8

Viennese 18th-century 56–7 see also French music; German music; Italian music orchestras: challenged by Wagner 49 Mahler’s concern for standards 14, 49 Orel, Alfred: on Bruckner and Austrian post-classical symphony 63, 113, 126, 127–8 and Bruckner editions 137, 142, 148 on Mahler 128–9 Ostjuden 11

State Department of Music (Reichsmusikkammer) 29

Pamer, Fritz Egon 33, 64, 169, 181, 182

see also fascism

‘pan-German’ movement 7, 11, 17, 44, 50, 55, 59, 62

naturalism see theatre

pan-Slavism 15, 19

Naumann, Emil 113, 202

Papier, Rosa 74, 191–2

Nazis see National Socialism

Paris:

Nejedlý, Zdeněk 17, 27, 62–3

romantic music and Berlioz 120

neo-romantic music 130

Verdi and 159

Nessler, Viktor Ernst 186

and Wagner 41

Nettl, Bruno 19

Wagner’s view of 158

Neumann, Angelo 186, 187–8, 193

see also France; French music

‘New German School’ (‘programme symphonists’) 5, 16, 109, 113, 120–1, 125 New York 14 see also United States of America Newman, Ernest 39, 41, 105 Nicolai, Otto 163 Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm 11, 40, 194, 195, 201 Nikisch, Artur 138, 139, 140, 141, 147, 150, 188, 193 Nordhausen 188, 191 North German Confederation see German League Olmütz 62, 81, 166–70 opera: audience’s experience of 42 collaborations 57, 73

252

Parsifal (journal) 5, 191, 208 Parsifal (opera) see Wagner, Richard Paul, Jean 178, 179, 184, 207, 208 ‘Pauline’ 88 Perchtoldsdorf 96 Pernerstorfer, Engelbert 11 Pichl, Václav 21 Plato 159, 195 Posen 176 Prague 10–11, 60, 85, 86 Mahler in 13, 34, 50, 62, 87, 187–8, 193 Mozart and 60 opera in 13, 85, 187–8 programme music 4, 58, 120, 125, 197 Prussia 10–11, 19, 38, 41–2, 59, 62

Prussian-Hohenzollern imperialism 15, 42–4, 121, 154–5

Scherchen, Hermann 64, 75

see also ‘pan-German’ movement

Schindler, Emil 73

pseudo-folk sources 13

Schiller, Johann Christoph Friedrich von 118, 158 Schlegel brothers 174 Schlesinger-Lienau 132

racism see anti-Semitism; Gobineau, Count; Schönerer, Georg von; Wagner, Richard (political and racial ideology) etc. Rättig, Theodor 112, 116, 131, 162 Rättig & Bösendorfer 132 Redlich, Hans Ferdinand 17, 63, 197

Schoenberg, Arnold: and Hertzka 133 and Mahler 4, 65–7, 72 Schönerer, Georg von, and his followers 7, 11, 50, 55, 59, 121, 203

Regensburg Valhalla 16, 148–50

Schopenhauer, Artur, and Schopenhauerism 11, 39, 155, 159, 195

Reger, Max 130

Schreker, Franz 145

Reisenauer, Alfred 191

Schubert, Franz 113, 119, 128

Reitler, Josef 92

Mahler and 47, 96, 97, 109, 169

Reutter, Georg 16, 203

as precursor of Mahler 16, 63, 97, 115

‘revaluation’ (Umwertung) 28, 194

Vienna and 51, 83

Richter, Hans 55, 84, 103, 138

Wolf and 108–9

Richter, Johanna 174–5, 178, 180–3, 187, 207

works:

Riemann, Hugo 63, 203

Piano Sonata in A Major 119

Risorgimento 155

songs 109

Rodin, Auguste 70 Roman Catholic Church 203

symphonies 118–19, 121, 125, 126, 127; B Minor (Unfinished) 119; C Major 119; harmony and instrumentation 119

romanticism and music 56

thematic unity 119, 126

Ronow 81, 88, 94, 200

Wanderer Fantasy 119, 126

Roller, Alfred 34, 74, 101

Rosé, Arnold 79, 101

Schuch, Ernst 54

Rosenzweig, Alfred see Mathis-Rosenzweig, Alfred

Schumann, Otto 194

Rosenzweig Collection see Guildhall School of Music & Drama

Schumann, Robert 96

Rott, Hans 98, 108, 115, 164–5

and folk music 128 see also Leipzig circle

Rubinstein, Anton 104–6, 192, 202

Schwarz, Egon 19

Russia 16, 68, 151

Schwarz, Gustav and family 5, 89–95, 200–1 Schwarz, Hanna 200

St Florian 122, 125, 141

Secessionist circle 74

Saint-Saëns, Camille 40, 152

Sechter, Simon 111, 122

Salzburg 236

Seelau 165

Schalk, Franz 116, 117, 138, 139, 140, 143–4, 147, 150

Shakespeare, William 109

Schalk, Joseph 109, 116, 117, 124, 138, 147

Shaw, George Bernard 40

Scheffel, Viktor von 186, 187, 207

Sheldon, Mrs 74

Schemann, Ludwig 40–1, 44, 55

Simrock 60

253

Slavs 15, 58–9

symphony:

Slavic culture and influences 11, 12, 17, 31, 77–8, 84

classical and pre-classical 16, 117–20

see also Czechs

decline of in 20th century 67

Slezak, Leo 85

evolution of movements 117–18

Slovakia 12

post-classical 16, 120–1, 125–6

Smetana, Bedřich: and Czech musical renaissance 60 and Liszt 60

Austrian development of 15, 16, 63, 113, 120, 125–6, 150 finale symphonists 16, 125, 126–7

Mahler and 4, 13–14, 84

use of voice 118

reception in German-speaking lands 14

Will to Form 117, 119, 121

and Wagner 60 works: Bartered Bride, The 14, 84 Dalibor 14, 84 socialism 153, 160 Soldat-Röger string quartet 63 sonata form 126, 127 see also symphony Šourek, Otakar 84 Soviet Union 68 Spain 68 Specht, Richard 10, 30–1, 34, 35, 105, 204 Spiegler, Albert and Nina 64, 73 Staegemann, Max 188, 193 Stamitz, Johann 16, 203 Stefan, Paul 31, 33–4, 35, 85, 91, 105, 166 Stein, Erwin 64

Tal, E. P. 63 Tasso, Torquato 37 Thalberg, Sigismond 89, 200 theatre: continual development and evolution of 53 naturalistic vs. impressionist staging 56 see also Greek drama; opera Third Reich see Germany; National Socialism Thomas Aquinas 195 Tirso de Molina (Gabriel Téllez) 169, 206 Toblach 82, 134 tonality 65, 66 tone-painting 125 Toscanini, Arturo 68 Treiber, Wilhelm 173–4, 187, 188, 190, 208 Treitschke, Heinrich von 11, 44, 121 Tuma, Franz 16, 203

Steiner, Josef 88, 94, 199, 206 Steyr 135

Ueberhorst, Karl 188

Stiedry, Fritz 64

Uhlig, Theodor 153

Strauss, Pauline (de Ahna) 72–3

United States of America 16, 79, 84

Strauss, Richard 57, 66, 71–3, 133, 163 and Bruckner 130 librettists 57, 73 Mahler’s relationship with 71–3

and Bruckner (Society and journal) 141 and Mahler 68, 141, 198 see also Mahler, Gustav (life)

his marriage 72–3

Universal Edition 34, 132, 133–4, 136, 137, 139, 145–6, 149

and the Third Reich 72, 198

universalism 39, 195

and Wagner 73

Upper Austria 141, 146, 148

Sudetenland/Sudeten Germans 12, 59, 194 Switzerland 68, 141

254

see also Linz USSR 68

Vanhal, Johann Baptist 21

Viennese music and musical life:

vegetarianism 152–3, 165–6, 168–9

and Bruckner 110–12, 140, 141–3

Verdi, Giuseppe:

18th-century opera 56–7, 121

contrasted with Wagner 5, 155–6, 158–9

Mahler and Schoenberg’s influence 67

and German nationalism 158–9

mixed elements 83

Mahler and 167

Viennese classical and pre-classical 16, 60, 83, 117–18, 203

and Risorgimento 155 works 155, 159 Vienna 13, 83, 146 anti-Semitism and fascism in 11, 19, 22, 29, 50, 104, 105

see also Vienna Hofoper; Vienna Philharmonic etc. Viktorin (teacher of Mahler) 86 Vöcklabruck 141, 143, 144 Vogel, Edith 1–2

demonstration of 1905 50 indifference to living composers 51

Wagenseil, Georg Christoph 16, 203

Jews in 11

Wagner, Cosima 52–5

Mahler and see Mahler, Gustav (life)

anti-Semitic and fascistic 52, 69

Meistersingerstrasse 70

and Bayreuth’s dominance 40, 47, 54–5

music see Viennese music and musical life

and Chamberlain 52, 69

and Verdi 159

control of Bayreuth performance tradition 47, 49, 54

and Wagner 121

and Mahler 4, 16, 52–3, 54–6, 69

Vienna Concert Hall Society (Wiener Konzerthausgesellschaft) 104 Vienna Concert Society (Konzertverein) 136 Vienna Conservatoire see Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, Conservatoire of the Vienna Court Library (Hofbibliothek) 136 Vienna Hofoper (later Vienna State Opera [Staatsoper]) 74, 100 Bayreuth and 54–5 Mahler bust removed 70 Richard Strauss at 73 Wagner at (1875) 48 see also Mahler, Gustav (life) Vienna National Library 136, 137, 138, 140, 141, 142 Vienna Philharmonic 84 and Bruckner 110, 135, 140 Mahler recordings 69 Mahler’s Directorship 34, 164, 237–41 post-liberation concerts (1945) 28–9, 194 and Wagner 110 Vienna State Opera (Staatsoper) see Vienna Hofoper Vienna University 151

Wagner, Richard 38–56 and Bruckner 110, 123 as conductor and theatre director 41, 46–7, 56 Vienna performances (1875) 48, 110 contrasted with Verdi 5, 155–9 Gesamtkunstwerk theory and practice 39, 47, 153–4, 162 and Greek tragedy 153–4 and Jews 152–3, 160–1 life: and 1848–49 revolutions 40, 41, 153–4, 160 and Bayreuth see Bayreuth and Ludwig II 41, 153 in Munich 154 in Zürich 153, 160 political and racial ideology: 1848–49 politico-cultural revolutionary 39, 40, 41, 153–4 evolution towards imperialism and racism 39, 40, 41, 121, 153–4, 156–8 see also writings of below reception and literature on 6, 39–41, 46, 47, 73, 121

255

works: audience and performers’ surrender to 42–3, 49 Leitmotive in 120 Lohengrin 39; performances 48, 103; Wilhelm II’s pose 43 Die Meistersinger 123–4 Parsifal 47, 53, 160, 170

Weill, Kurt 146 Weimar 179, 184 Weimar circle see ‘New German School’ Weingartner, Felix 192–3 Wellesz, Egon 64, 138 Weltner, A. J. 34

Rienzi 152

Werfel, Franz 30, 70

Der Ring des Nibelungen 47, 103; Götterdämmerung, Mahler and 100; Das Rheingold 52; Hagen on 159– 60; Kaiser’s car horn 43; Die Walküre 52, 201

Werner, Heinrich 104, 105, 108

Tannhäuser 41, 48, 122 tone-painting and nature motifs 125 Tristan und Isolde 123 writings of 6, 152–3, 157–9, 160–1 on animals and vivisection 152

Wiener Salonblatt 109 Wiener Tag, Der 1 Wilhelm I, Kaiser 42, 156–7, 159 Wilhelm II, Kaiser 42–5, 241 and Wagner 42–4 Wagnerian gestures 43–4

anti-French 158

Will to Form see symphony

on art theories 152–3

Wilser, Ludwig 44

‘Deutsche Kunst und deutsche Politik’ 153, 158

Wolf, Hugo 6, 100

falsifications in 39–40

and Brahms 109

‘Heldentum und Christentum’ 153, 154

mental breakdown 103–8

‘Das Judentum in der Musik’ (and ‘Aufklärungen’) 153, 160–1

music criticism 109

monarchist 157–8, 160 political, nationalist and racial 5, 40, 48, 52, 115, 152–3, 157–9, 160–1

political sympathies 102 relationship with Bruckner 5, 102, 108, 109–10 relationship with Mahler 4, 5, 17, 99–110

revolutionary early writings 153, 157, 160

and Wagner 102, 103, 152

on vegetarianism and nutrition 152–3, 165

works:

writings on see reception and literature on above

Der Corregidor 102, 103, 104–8, 202

see also Bayreuth; Wagner, Cosima

Manuel Vanegas 103, 104

Wagner Societies 40, 109, 115, 124, 151–2, 160

Rübezahl project 100–1

Wagner, Winifred 55

songs 108–9, 110

Wagnerism see ‘New German School’ Waldheim-Eberle A. G. 132, 133, 134, 138 Wallace, Laura 2 Wallerstein, Lothar 73

see also Hugo Wolf Society World War, First 144 Wöss, Josef von 138, 149, 150, 204

Walter, Bruno 69 and Mahler 6, 36–7, 69–70, 82–3, 102, 131, 198 Weber, Carl Maria von 163

Zemlinsky, Alexander von 133 Zsolnay, Paul 88

Mahler and 47, 186

Zürich 153, 160

Wagnerians and 152

Zweig, Stefan 73

Weber, Ernst von 152

256

Zwerenz, Mizzi 163