Mahler
This course focuses on the career of composer and conductor Gustav Mahler, including detailed discussions of his symphonies and song cycles as well as his influence as a conductor. The course also examines fin de siècle Vienna, including musical feuds between Brahms, Bruckner, and Hugo Wolf. And how can we ignore Vienna’s most glamorous personality, Alma Mahler (née Schindler) whose diaries are Vienna’s looking glass? Providing context, such spectacular personalities as Gustav Klimt and Sigmund Freud are discussed alongside Mahler as exemplars of an emerging modernist ethos.
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Topics Discussed |
Featured Works |
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Week 1 |
Mahler’s upbringing and character Mahler and Brahms Mahler and Bruckner School days Mahler and Hugo Wolf |
Das Klagende Lied (1880) 1st Symphony (1885-88) |
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Week 2 |
Beginning of conducting career Mahler’s relationship to literature Mahler and Des Knaben Wunderhorn |
2nd Symphony (1888-94) Des Knaben Wunderhorn |
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Week 3 |
Mahler and Zemlinsky Mahler and Schoenberg Mahler and Richard Strauss Philosophical leanings Compositional methods Directorship of Vienna Opera |
3rd Symphony (1895-96) 4th Symphony (1899-1901) |
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Week 4 |
Alma Mahler |
5th Symphony (1901-02) Rückert Lieder and Kindertotenlieder |
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Week 5 |
Detailed analysis of Mahler’s 6th Symphony |
6th Symphony (1903-1904) |
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Week 6 |
End of an era in Vienna Personal tragedy Mahler in New York |
7th Symphony (1904-05) 8th Symphony (1906) |
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Week 7 |
Detailed analysis of Das Lied von der Erde |
Das Lied von der Erde (1907-08) |
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Week 8 |
Death and posterity Mahler’s musical and aesthetic heirs Mahler and modernism The postwar Mahler boom |
9th Symphony (1909) 10th Symphony (1910, incomplete) |
