Mahler 2017

Mahler 2017

July 3, 2017.  Mahler, Symphony no. 5.  Gustav Mahler was born on July 7th of 1860, and to celebrate his birthday we will again turn to one of his symphonies, this time the Fifth.  The time of its composition, the years of 1901 and 1902, is closely linked to Mahler’s marriage to Alma Schindler.  In 1897 Mahler Gustav Mahlerwas appointed the music director of the Vienna Hofoper, one of the most important opera theaters in Europe, whose orchestra, the Vienna Philharmonic, was (and still is) one of the best.  Mahler’s early years as the director were rather turbulent.  As he was mounting new opera productions (the first two were Wagner’s Lohengrin and Mozart’s Zauberflöte), Mahler required utter discipline and precision.  Very demanding, he was not too sensitive toward the singers and orchestra players, whose feelings he often hurt.  The atmosphere within the opera house was difficult but results were of a very high quality.  Problems of a different sort accompanied Mahler as the conductor of subscription concerts with the Vienna Philharmonic.  To many conservative music critic, he appeared not sufficiently felicitous to the classical scores.  And indeed, Mahler often altered the orchestration and was known to amplify musical dynamics beyond the generally accepted practices of the day.  Things were exacerbated by the partisan, and often very hostile, critics.  A large section of the society was deeply anti-Semitic (the Mayor of Vienna, Karl Lueger, was the leader of the anti-Semitic Austrian Christian Social Party), and even though Mahler converted to Christianity to take a position with the Hofoper, they never forgot his Jewish roots.

Nonetheless, by 1901 things were settling down.  Mahler resigned as the conductor of the Philharmonic series (his re-orchestration of Beethoven’s Ninth symphony cause a real scandal), concentrating on opera.  His own compositions were getting wider acceptance.  He was financially secure, and could even afford a villa, in Maiernigg on the Wörthersee.  The summer of 1901 was the first one of many that he spent there, composing.  In November of 1901, at a dinner party given by Sofie Clemenceau (sister-in-law of George Clemenceau, the future Prime-minister of France) he met Alma Schindler.  Alma, the daughter of an established landscape painter Emil Schindler, was then 22 (and 19 years younger than Mahler).  She was known as a fine-looking society girl.  At the time, Alma was having an affair with the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, her music teacher.  That didn’t prevent a brief but intense romance between her and Gustav, and on March 9th of 1902 they were married.  One of the conditions of the marriage, imposed by Gustav, was that Alma would drop her own composition efforts (Mahler changed his attitude some years later, helping Alma to edit and publish several of her compositions).  Both Mahler’s friends and his enemies were surprised: the friends, because they considered Alma to be too young for Gustav and too flirtatious, his enemies – because they considered her too pretty and too much a part of the society to marry a Jew.  But by the time of the marriage Alma was already pregnant with their first daughter and happy to assume her conjugal responsibilities.

By then Mahler had already started working on his Fifth symphony.  He and Alma spent the summer months of 1902 at their Maiernigg villa.  Mahler built a separate small studio, where he spent the morning hours composing.  By the end of the summer of 1902 the Fifth symphony was finished, although it would wait for the premier for another two years.  Here it is, in the 1996 performance by the Vienna Philharmonic, Pierre Boulez conducting.