# Question About Mahler



## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

I have never read a biography, so my quick question (which may not lead to a quick answer) to those who know about him other than his music is:

What was his temperament like? Was he depressed, unhappy, stoic, balanced, pleasant? 

What prompted this question was a conversation I had last weekend at a party. I was talking with a gentleman and classical music came up. He asked me what composers I liked and when I mentioned Mahler, he said that he was a sad, depressed, and unhappy individual. I've never heard that, nor do I have any idea how accurate that is.

Would like to know what the experts here say about this like Mahlerian. Although I have no idea why I would ask a question about Mahler to someone who uses the moniker Mahlerian.

V


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

From what I know, he was a pretty neurotic individual. He was always searching for answers about life and death and had some unique religious opinions. From what I read, he seemed to have been in a perpetual existential crisis. I know he was difficult as a husband and he "banned" Alma from composing. And he was also a perfectionist as a conductor.

I'm not sure though that if you had randomly met him in person somewhere he would have seemed particularly depressed. That's not the impression I get.


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

violadude said:


> And he was also a perfectionist as a conductor.


That is putting it mildly. According to a (unfortunately rather short) biography that I read, he was a veritable monster on the podium, shouting and screaming and humiliating his orchestra. He once had them play the first four notes of Beethoven's fifth symphony over and over for several hours. They hated him. But apparently, it was partly this hatred that contributed to the brilliance of his performances.


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## Mahlerian (Nov 27, 2012)

brianvds said:


> That is putting it mildly. According to a (unfortunately rather short) biography that I read, he was a veritable monster on the podium, shouting and screaming and humiliating his orchestra. He once had them play the first four notes of Beethoven's fifth symphony over and over for several hours. They hated him. But apparently, it was partly this hatred that contributed to the brilliance of his performances.


He was feared but respected as a very hard taskmaster. Players and singers feared him for being so exacting and difficult to please, but respected the way that he knew exactly what he was doing and he did it well (except as it came to his own compositions, in which they didn't trust him at all).

Mahler was difficult indeed. He was absent-minded (all sorts of anecdotes about that), prone to sudden bursts of strong opinion that he might reverse the next day, dedicated to art above personal comfort or relationships, often in poor health, and relatively uninterested in social niceties. He was also, as Violadude mentioned, a perpetual seeker after answers. He believed in God but in no religious dogma, and his propensities ran towards mysticism of various kinds.

That said, he was also a loyal friend, a caring and devoted brother (forced to bear the burdens of being head of the family from a young age), a man who enjoyed walks in the countryside (but hated people making noise because they knew it would disturb him), and a man able to deftly navigate the politics and business of being the head of an opera house run by the Imperial court for nearly 10 years, all the while managing to retain some sense of his artistic ideals amid a culture that would have welcomed compromise.

Needless to say, he was quite complicated as an individual.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Mahlerian said:


> He was feared but respected as a very hard taskmaster. Players and singers feared him for being so exacting and difficult to please, but respected the way that he knew exactly what he was doing and he did it well (except as it came to his own compositions, in which they didn't trust him at all).
> 
> Mahler was difficult indeed. He was absent-minded (all sorts of anecdotes about that), prone to sudden bursts of strong opinion that he might reverse the next day, dedicated to art above personal comfort or relationships, often in poor health, and relatively uninterested in social niceties. He was also, as Violadude mentioned, a perpetual seeker after answers. He believed in God but in no religious dogma, and his propensities ran towards mysticism of various kinds.
> 
> ...


I heard a quote by Mahler once, commenting on the conservativeness of Vienna, he said something like: When the end of the world happens, I'll stay in Vienna because everything comes here last.


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## Aramis (Mar 1, 2009)

He was cool dude.


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## SONNET CLV (May 31, 2014)

Our esteemed colleague Mahlerian spoke well concerning the nature of the composer, and I add my LIKE to that post.

I wish only to add a memorable passage from the opening chapter (page 4) of Alex Ross's excellent book _THE REST IS NOISE: Listening to the Twentieth Century_. It concerns Mahler:

Mahler was a kaleidoscope of moods -- childlike, heaven-storming, despotic, despairing. In Vienna, as he strode from his apartment near the Schwarzenbergplatz to the opera house on the Ringstrasse, cabdrivers would whisper to their passengers, "_Der Mahler_!"

Ah, that whisper is indelibly haunting. "_Der Mahler_!"


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## JACE (Jul 18, 2014)

> Needless to say, he was quite complicated as an individual.


Absolutely. It would be wrong to characterize him simply as "neurotic" or "perfectionistic."

Both Peter Franklin and Jonathan Carr have written solid, one-volume biographies of Mahler's life.

I'd recommend them both!


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## brianvds (May 1, 2013)

SONNET CLV said:


> Ah, that whisper is indelibly haunting. "_Der Mahler_!"


Unbeknownst to most historians of music, his first name was actually Mathis.


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## Varick (Apr 30, 2014)

Thank you for the information. I haven't listened to Mahler in probably over a year, and since that party, I started listening to his symphonies again. My lord are they wonderful!

I'll have to pick up a biography. Thank you JACE, i'll check those out.

V


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## Fugue Meister (Jul 5, 2014)

He was also Jewish and converted to Catholicism to avoid professional persecution well persecution in general considering the times. I'm sure this was a contributing factor to his troubled and conflicted nature denying your true identity.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

Fugue Meister said:


> He was also Jewish and converted to Catholicism to avoid professional persecution well persecution in general considering the times. I'm sure this was a contributing factor to his troubled and conflicted nature denying your true identity.


He had a very rough early life in general too. His dad was abusive to his mom and Mahler was sensitive toward that while growing up. There's a famous story about Mahler as a boy where he ran out of his house during an episode between his parents and on the street he listened to a hurdy-gurdy player playing some popular tunes. This was supposedly brought up during a session with Freud as a psychological reason for why Mahler associated tragedy with that sort of unsophisticated folk jolliness and also why he reportedly felt the need to "ruin" the most noble passages of his music by introducing something banal into the music.


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## Avey (Mar 5, 2013)

Being a vegan, I totally relate with Mahler and that whole _let's be Wagnerians_ phase. Good times. One of the few things I respect about Wagner's personality.


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## Alypius (Jan 23, 2013)

Varick said:


> I have never read a biography [about Mahler] ....V


Some suggested reading: A good place to start is: Jeremy Barham, ed., _The Cambridge Companion to Mahler_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

A good standard biography is: Peter R. Franklin, _The Life of Mahler_ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). I have not read a recent work by one of the top Mahler scholars, namely, Floros Constantin, _Gustav Mahler: Visionary and Despot: Portrait of a Personality_, trans. Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch (New York: Peter Lang, 2012) -- whose title highlights perspectives that Mahlerian mentioned.

A few other items that are recommended in various bibliographies:

*Susan Filler, _Gustav and Alma Mahler: A Research and Information Guide_ (New York: Routledge, 2008).

*Henri-Louis de la Grange, _Gustav Mahler, Vol. 2: Vienna: The Years of Challenge (1897-1904)_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
_________, _Gustav Mahler, Vol. 3: Vienna, Triumph and Disillusion (1904-1907)_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
_________, _Gustav Mahler, Vol. 4: A New Life Cut Short (1907-1911)_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

*Constantin Floros, _Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies_, trans. Vernon Wicker (Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1992).

*Stephen E. Hefling, _Mahler, Das Lied von der Erde (=The Song of the Earth)_, Cambridge Music Handbooks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

*Donald Mitchell and Andrew Nicholson, eds., _The Mahler Companion_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).

*Karen Painter, ed., _Gustav Mahler and His World_ (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002)


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## ArtMusic (Jan 5, 2013)

Varick said:


> I have never read a biography, so my quick question (which may not lead to a quick answer) to those who know about him other than his music is:
> 
> What was his temperament like? Was he depressed, unhappy, stoic, balanced, pleasant?
> 
> ...


I was a discussion with a student studying pyschology and also listens to CM. Her "diagnosis" was Mahler had an inert egotistical issue of some sort. So partly "explained" why he wrote those mammoth symphonies of epic length, as if each sucessive one needed to outdo the previous one. That was her opinion and I would consider her a mahlerian fan.


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## violadude (May 2, 2011)

ArtMusic said:


> I was a discussion with a student studying pyschology and also listens to CM. Her "diagnosis" was Mahler had an inert egotistical issue of some sort. So partly "explained" why he wrote those mammoth symphonies of epic length, as if *each sucessive one needed to outdo the previous one*. That was her opinion and I would consider her a mahlerian fan.


Uh, then why is it that each successive symphony does not "outdo" the previous one, either in length or orchestra size?

Bruckner, by all accounts, was a very humble person and yet his symphonies are about the same length on average as Mahler's (maybe a bit shorter). What's the explanation for that?

And did everyone who wrote large symphonies for their time have an ego problem? Beethoven? Berlioz?


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## hpowders (Dec 23, 2013)

The longest Mahler symphonies are numbers 2 and 3, putting to rest the amateur psychologist's "diagnosis". How would she explain the fact that after composing those two mammoth symphonies, Mahler composed the relatively short fourth symphony? His "egotistical issue" inexplicably disappeared? Ridiculous!


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## shangoyal (Sep 22, 2013)

Of course all artists have "problems" - otherwise they would be baseball players.

[Just Kidding]


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## Downbeat (Jul 10, 2013)

As far as I know, Walter Bruno knew him and it might be an idea to check how he interprets Mahler's character...I just enjoy his music, and asume he was a complicated fellow from the violent mood swings.


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## Blake (Nov 6, 2013)

hpowders said:


> The longest Mahler symphonies are numbers 2 and 3, putting to rest the amateur psychologist's "diagnosis". How would she explain the fact that after composing those two mammoth symphonies, Mahler composed the relatively short fourth symphony? His "egotistical issue" inexplicably disappeared? Ridiculous!


Us egomaniacs get tired, mate.


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