Customer Reviews

Gustav Mahler, Vol. 3: Vienna: Triumph and Disillusion, 1904-1907

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Much as Mahler himself towers over Romantic era composer, so does La Grange tower over all other Mahler biographers. Not that Mitchell et. al. don't do a fine job, they do. But for comprehensive detail and deep probing and understanding of Mahler's life and music, La Grange is simply at the highest peaks. This latest installment of his massive series sustains his high standards of research, realiability and readability and for all you devoted Mahlerians out there is a must read. For those curious about Mahler, this is actually not a great place to start; the cost alone to read these three books, so far, on Mahler is a bad investment if you don't yet worship his music! There are many single books that give a good overview of his life as a companion to his music, if not a real guide. For those of you, try Cooke or Kennedy, for the rest, worship here!

The monumental biography of Mahler by Henri de la Grange has been available in French for some years, and the latest volume to appear in English is part of an ongoing project to make the work available to a wider audience. It is unique in the sheer mass of factual detail it presents, especially as regards contemporary critical reaction to Mahler's works and conducting. There is new material on William Ritter, an early admirer who left some colorful accounts of Herr Mahler in person; a

detailed physical description of Mahler by Alfred Roller, a Hofoper associate; and much other information that will be new and interesting even to long-standing Mahlerites who thought they knew it all.

However, de la Grange's almost exclusive focus on the externals of Mahler's life works to the detriment of the inner life, and this is the major shortcoming of his biography. There is little probing of the wellsprings of the mighty Mahlerian will that powered a colossal productivity, nor of the fierce vitality coexisting with neuroses. Nor, surprisingly, is much explanation offered as to why a tyrannical ascetic like Mahler would suddenly decide to marry someone half his age, a decision that took even his closest friends completely by surprise. Why didn't he stay single, or marry someone his own age, such as the devoted and musical Natalie Bauer-Lechner?

This question is important because it bears on the crucial one: Would Mahler have succeeded in solving the central problem of his last years -- keeping reality at bay in order to maintain the inhuman intensity needed to complete his unique artistic mission -- without the tension generated by this inappropriate (but for him richly symbolic) and largely sexless marriage, for which he, and to some extent also Alma's parents, were guilty? Did he feel this guilt and at a certain level feed on it? de la Grange draws a blank on these questions. Here Alma's book "Gustav Mahler, Memoirs and Letters" is a better source, though one has to read between the lines.

de la Grange clearly dislikes Alma and would minimize her role. He also worships Mahler and will not permit him the slightest fault. Two examples: He cannot conceive that the hero may have had a congenital heart defect, it must have been acquired from throat infections. He omits to mention that Mahler's idolized mother Marie was born lame and with a defective heart. According to Alma, who'd have no reason to make this up, all the children were handicapped by the mother's heart disease; there is also anecdotal evidence provided by Bruno Walter and others. Another example: de la Grange will not admit that the finale to the Seventh may be a miscalculation, however interesting. Thus he advances a tortured argument to turn black into white, and puts himself in the position of an "apologist nervous to the point of obduracy" (Adorno's words). In the process, he

completely ignores evidence that Mahler himself was uncomfortably aware of the problem (see the foreword by Redlich to the Eulenberg pocket score of the Seventh).

Mahler is a Freudian figure if ever there was one, and one can argue that the ideal of the eternal feminine, as symbolized by the composite Alma/Marie, became crucial to Mahler's sense of purpose, a major engine of his drive to create. Toward the end, he was psychologically completely dependent on her, even to the point of spouting nonsense regarding her abilities as a composer -- this, from the stern, inflexible director of the Hofoper! (The sad spectacle of Berlioz and his second wife Marie Recio comes to mind as another example of great-composer weakness.) That he had a mother fixation is attested by many, including Alma and Freud, and this would account for his lack of sexual interest; according to Alma, sex played only a very small part in his life. In any case, artistically the union was a brilliant success, even the marital crisis at the end serving to spur him on to new heights -- witness the Tenth Symphony with its impassioned marginalia addressed to Alma. With perfect timing, death then supervened to carry him off at the peak of his powers.

Although the music has lost none of its power and can speak for itself, there is still an unsatisfied need for a different kind of Mahler biography, one that is better balanced and probes the psychology of the man. For hagiography aside, Mahler's maladjustment was staggering even for his time, the hothouse atmosphere of fin-de-siecle Vienna just barely making his unique kind of greatness tenable. A great tortured artist on the scale of a Gustav Mahler is inconceivable today, our time doesn't allow it; we've been there, done that. He would be cured or killed at once, and in either case silenced. And for you computer game programmers out there, take heart -- in addition to a "Freudian" biography, there may be material here for an oeuvre of another sort perhaps more congenial to our age -- a soft-core computer game called "Let's cuckold Mahler". In any case, the music remains.

I had read the previous volume 2 of the life of Mahler several years ago and had anxiously awaited the issuance of this, the third in a four part series with high expectations.

I have not been disappointed. The extensive detail, expansive footnoting, and thorough research that went into this work is evident from the very first paragraph.

Highly recommended for any serious Mahler enthuasist.

The biography of Gustav Mahler by Henri Louis de La Grange is unlike any other I have read. Mr. de La Grange has searched for every scrap of information about Mahler that he could find. The result of his many years of research is a book that is as comprehensive as one could every want. For many readers, the book has too much information. However, the volumes that make up this biography stand as a resource for any question one might want to ask.

I found myself skimming some parts of this volume, particularly the quotes from critics. It is important to know what was reported about Mahler's productions at the Hofoper and the performances of his own music. After getting the general gist of what was being said, especially by negative critics, I did not need to know more. If I were researching the reception of Mahler's new productions for the Hofoper, it would be a different matter: all the information that I would need would be available to be with citations so I could check sources for myself.

What I found most interesting were the many descriptions of Mahler left by the people that knew him that Mr. de La Grange included. Perhaps the most memorable is one by Alfred Roller, who had been invited by Mahler to do some sunbathing. Roller provides us with a thorough description of Mahler's physical appearance. Another interesting remembrance was from Bruno Walter where he does not count Mahler as a true friend since friendship with Mahler was always on his terms.

The translation from the original French is good, if at time a bit dry. For anyone interesting in Mahler, this volume, covering the critical period 1904 - 1907, is indispensable. Perhaps the most valuable information is clearing up the rumor that Mahler was afflicted with heart disease. His real heart problem, probably caused by a child bout of rheumatic fever, was hardly a death sentence and would not have been cause for him to change his physical activities.

For any devotee of Mahler's music, De La Grange's biography of the composer is, without doubt, required reading; the sheer mass of details in these volumes guarantees that. Yet despite this truly monumental effort, I think De La Grange has missed something utterly essential about Mahler's art. It is true, as even a cursory examination of Mahler's scores will reveal, that he was absolutely obsessive about matters of musical detail. But these details were always meant to serve over-arching, ineffable artistic ideas; ultimately, they are to be kneaded seamlessly into the fabric and sweep of the music. Even though Mahler's markings are much more detailed than most composers', he consistently insisted that what was greatest and most elemental in music could not be expressed in the notes and the markings; they are a means to an end. A precise recreation of everything Mahler wrote on each page of a given symphony does not necessarily equal a compelling recreation of his vision. And by analogy, this is the problem with De La Grange's biography. If the cliche of "missing the forest for the trees" was ever apt, it is in this case. The amount of pedestrian detail in these books renders them semi-lifeless, and as a result Mahler's truly compelling spirit is utterly missing from most of the pages. Simply put, more is simply not always better. And with Volume 4 about to be published at a length of over 1700 pages, one starts to wonder if this is less a case of thoroughness and more a reflection of an obsessive-compulsive disorder. Just because a person may have an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of the widget doesn't mean that he can express it effectively in writing. I find myself wondering if the folks at OUP were simply too intimidated by De La Grange's knowledge of his subject to insist on what he needed most: an editor.

In my view, this sort of pedestrian literalism is antithetical to Mahler's art; remember, this is the man who felt that the orchestration of the Beethoven 5th Symphony would be better-served by the inclusion of a part for E-flat Clarinet, and who drove his publishers crazy with revisions. His approach to art was fluid, imaginative and always changing; he found the notion of quantifying art and life in a fixed place abhorrent. De La Grange's literalist approach says much more about our time than Mahler's; in the performance sphere, this approach has become quite common, and the result has been a lot of quite dull performances of Mahler's works, something I hadn't thought was possible. It is an outlook we would do well to reject, even as we gather more information about Mahler's music and life.