MAHLER, GUSTAV (Mahler, Gustav) (1860–1911), Austrian composer and conductor. Born on July 7, 1860 in Kaliste (Czech Republic), the second of 14 children in the family of Maria Hermann and Bernhard Mahler, a Jewish distiller. Soon after Gustav's birth, the family moved to the small industrial town of Jihlava, an island of German culture in South Moravia (now the Czech Republic).

As a child, Mahler showed extraordinary musical talent and studied with local teachers. Then his father took him to Vienna. At the age of 15, Mahler entered the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied with J. Epstein (piano), R. Fuchs (harmony) and F. Krenn (composition). He also attended lecture courses on the history of music and philosophy at the University of Vienna and met A. Bruckner, who was then working at the university. Mahler's first significant work, the cantata Lamentation Song (Das klagende Lied, 1880), did not receive the Beethoven Prize at the Conservatory, after which the disappointed author decided to devote himself to conducting - first in a small operetta theater near Linz (May-June 1880), then in Ljubljana ( Slovenia, 1881–1882), Olomouc (Moravia, 1883) and Kassel (Germany, 1883–1885). At the age of 25, Mahler was invited as a conductor to the Prague Opera, where he great success staged operas by Mozart and Wagner and performed Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. However, as a result of a conflict with the chief conductor, A. Seidl, Mahler was forced to leave Vienna and from 1886 to 1888 served as assistant to the chief conductor A. Nikisch at the Leipzig Opera. The unrequited love experienced by the musician at this time gave rise to two major works - the vocal-symphonic cycle Songs of the Wandering Apprentice (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, 1883) and the First Symphony (1888).

Middle period.

Following the triumphant success in Leipzig of the premiere of K. M. Weber's completed opera The Three Pintos (Die drei Pintos), Mahler performed it several more times during 1888 in theaters in Germany and Austria. These triumphs, however, did not solve the conductor's personal problems. After a quarrel with Nikisch, he left Leipzig and became director of the Royal Opera in Budapest. Here he conducted the Hungarian premieres of Wagner's Das Rheingold and Die Walküre, and staged one of the first verist operas, Mascagni's Die Rural Honour. His interpretation of Mozart's Don Giovanni evoked an enthusiastic response from I. Brahms.

In 1891 Mahler had to leave Budapest because new director The Royal Theater did not want to collaborate with a foreign conductor. By this time, Mahler had already composed three notebooks of songs with piano accompaniment; Nine songs based on texts from the German folk poetry anthology The Boy's Magic Horn (Des Knaben Wunderhorn) formed a vocal cycle of the same name. Next place Mahler's service became the Hamburg City Opera House, where he served as first conductor (1891–1897). Now he had an ensemble of first-class singers at his disposal, and he had the opportunity to communicate with the greatest musicians of his time. H. von Bülow acted as Mahler's patron, who, on the eve of his death (1894), handed over to Mahler the leadership of the Hamburg subscription concerts. During the Hamburg period, Mahler completed the orchestral edition of The Boy's Magic Horn and the Second and Third Symphonies.

In Hamburg, Mahler experienced a passion for Anna von Mildenburg, a singer (dramatic soprano) from Vienna; At the same time, his long-term friendship with violinist Natalie Bauer-Lechner began: they spent months summer holiday together, and Natalie kept a diary, one of the most reliable sources of information about Mahler’s life and way of thinking. In 1897, he converted to Catholicism; one of the reasons for his conversion was the desire to obtain a position as director and conductor of the Court Opera in Vienna. The ten years that Mahler spent in this post are considered by many musicologists to be the golden age of the Vienna Opera: the conductor selected and trained an ensemble of magnificent performers, while preferring singer-actors to bel canto virtuosos. Mahler's artistic fanaticism, his stubborn character, his disdain for certain performing traditions, his desire to pursue a meaningful repertoire policy, as well as the unusual tempos that he chose and the harsh comments that he made during rehearsals, created many enemies for Mahler in Vienna, the city where music was viewed as an object of pleasure rather than sacrificial service. In 1903, Mahler invited a new collaborator to the theater - the Viennese artist A. Roller; together they created a number of productions in which they applied new stylistic and technique, which developed at the turn of the century in the European theater arts. The biggest achievements along this path were Tristan and Isolde (1903), Fidelio (1904), Das Rheingold and Don Giovanni (1905), as well as the cycle best operas Mozart, prepared in 1906 for the 150th anniversary of the composer's birth.

In 1901, Mahler married Alma Schindler, the daughter of a famous Viennese landscape painter. Alma Mahler was eighteen years younger than her husband, studied music, even tried to compose, generally felt like a creative person and did not at all strive to diligently fulfill the duties of a housewife, mother and wife, as Mahler wanted. However, thanks to Alma, the composer’s social circle expanded: in particular, he became close friends with playwright G. Hauptmann and composers A. Zemlinsky and A. Schoenberg. In his little “composer's cottage”, hidden in the forest on the shores of Lake Wörthersee, Mahler completed the Fourth Symphony and created four more symphonies, as well as a second vocal cycle based on verses from The Boy's Magic Horn (Seven Songs recent years, Sieben Lieder aus letzter Zeit) and a tragic vocal cycle based on poems by Rückert Songs about Dead Children (Kindertotenlieder).

By 1902, Mahler's work as a composer was widely recognized, largely thanks to the support of R. Strauss, who arranged the first complete performance of the Third Symphony, which was a great success. In addition, Strauss included the Second and Sixth symphonies, as well as Mahler's songs, in the programs of the annual festival of the All-German Musical Union, which he headed. Mahler was often invited to conduct his own works, and this led to a conflict between the composer and the administration of the Vienna Opera, who believed that Mahler was neglecting his duties as artistic director.

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Last years.

1907 turned out to be a very difficult year for Mahler. He left the Vienna Opera, saying that his work here was not appreciated; his youngest daughter died of diphtheria, and he himself learned that he was suffering from a serious heart disease. Mahler took the place of chief conductor of the New York Metropolitan Opera, but his health did not allow him to engage in conducting activities. In 1908, a new manager appeared at the Metropolitan Opera - the Italian impresario G. Gatti-Casazza, who brought his conductor - the famous A. Toscanini. Mahler accepted the invitation to the post of chief conductor of the New York Philharmonic, which at that time was in urgent need of reorganization. Thanks to Mahler, the number of concerts soon increased from 18 to 46 (of which 11 were on tour), and not only famous masterpieces, but also new scores by American, English, French, German and Slavic authors. In the 1910/1911 season, the New York Philharmonic Orchestra gave 65 concerts, but Mahler, who was feeling unwell and tired of the struggle for artistic values ​​with the leadership of the Philharmonic, left for Europe in April 1911. He stayed in Paris to undergo treatment, then returned to Vienna. Mahler died in Vienna on May 18, 1911.

Music by Mahler. Six months before his death, Mahler experienced the greatest triumph on his thorny path as a composer: the premiere of his grandiose Eighth Symphony took place in Munich, which requires about a thousand participants for its performance - orchestra members, solo singers and choristers. During the summer months of 1909–1911, which Mahler spent in Toblach (South Tyrol, now Italy), he composed the Song of the Earth for soloists and orchestra (Das Lied von der Erde), the Ninth Symphony, and also worked on the Tenth Symphony (which remained unfinished) .

During Mahler's lifetime, his music was often underappreciated. Mahler's symphonies were called "symphonic medleys", they were condemned for stylistic eclecticism, abuse of "reminiscences" from other authors and quotations from Austrian folk songs. Mahler's high compositional technique was not denied, but he was accused of trying to hide his creative inadequacy with countless sound effects and the use of grandiose orchestral (and sometimes choral) compositions. His works sometimes repulsed and shocked listeners with the tension of internal paradoxes and antinomies, such as “tragedy - farce”, “pathos - irony”, “nostalgia - parody”, “refinement - vulgarity”, “primitive - sophistication”, “fiery mysticism - cynicism” . The German philosopher and music critic TADORNO was the first to show that various kinds of breakdowns, distortions, and deviations in Mahler are never arbitrary, even if they do not obey the usual laws of musical logic. Adorno was also the first to note the distinctiveness of the general “tone” of Mahler’s music, which makes it unlike any other and immediately recognizable. He drew attention to the “novel-like” nature of development in Mahler’s symphonies, the dramaturgy and dimensions of which are determined more often by the course of certain musical events than by a pre-established scheme.

Among Mahler's discoveries in the field of form is his almost complete avoidance of exact reprise; consumption of refined variation forms, in which the general pattern of the theme is preserved, while its intervallic composition changes; the use of diverse and subtle polyphonic techniques, which sometimes gives rise to very bold harmonic combinations; in later works there is a tendency towards “total thematicism” (later theoretically substantiated by Schoenberg), i.e. to saturate not only the main but also secondary voices with thematic elements. Mahler never claimed to invent a new musical language, but he created music so complex (a striking example is the finale of the Sixth Symphony) that even Schoenberg and his school are inferior to him in this sense.

It has been noted that Mahler’s harmony itself is less chromatic, less “modern” than, for example, that of R. Strauss. The fourth sequences on the verge of atonality that open Schoenberg's Chamber Symphony have an analogue in Mahler's Seventh Symphony, but such phenomena for Mahler are the exception, not the rule. His works are full of polyphony, which becomes increasingly complex in his later opuses, and the consonances formed as a result of the combination of polyphonic lines can often seem random, not subject to the laws of harmony. At the same time, Mahler's rhythm is basically quite simple, with obvious preference given to the meter and rhythm typical of the march and ländler. The composer's passion for trumpet signals, and in general for military brass music, is easily explained by childhood memories of military parades in his native Jihlava. According to Mahler, “the process of composing is reminiscent of a child’s game, in which new buildings are built each time from the same cubes. But these cubes themselves lie in the mind since childhood, for only this is the time of collecting and accumulation.”

Mahler's orchestral writing was particularly controversial. He introduced new instruments into the symphony orchestra, such as the guitar, mandolin, celesta, and cow bell. He used traditional instruments in uncharacteristic registers and achieved new sound effects with unusual combinations of orchestral voices. The texture of his music is very changeable, and the massive tutti of the entire orchestra can suddenly be replaced by the lonely voice of the solo instrument.

Although during the 1930s and 1940s the composer's music was promoted by such conductors as B. Walter, O. Klemperer and D. Mitropoulos, the real discovery of Mahler began only in the 1960s, when the complete cycles of his symphonies were recorded by L. Bernstein, J. Solti, R. Kubelik and B. Haitink. By the 1970s, Mahler's works were firmly established in the repertoire and began to be performed all over the world.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) - combined in his person a brilliant composer-symphonist and a brilliant conductor. He performed almost the entire symphonic repertoire of his time and toured many countries around the world (including visiting Russia three times).

Mahler's most fruitful activity was as chief conductor of the Vienna Court Opera House. The composer spent the last 4 years of his life in America. He became conductor of the Metropolitan Opera and also director of the New York Philharmonic.

Mahler's creative interests focused on two genres - symphony and song. He is the author of 9 symphonies (the 10th remained unfinished) and at least 40 songs (including for voice and orchestra). Among his vocal compositions are the cycles “Songs of the Wandering Apprentice” (based on his own poems), “The Magic Horn of a Boy” (based on folk texts collected by the “Heidelberg” romantic writers Arnim and Brentano), “Songs about Dead Children” (based on words by F. Rückert), “7 songs of recent years.”

The song and the symphony in Mahler's work were always inseparably linked: the melodies of the songs repeatedly became the most important themes of his symphonies, or were completely included in the symphony as independent vocal episodes. At the end of the creative journey song cycle and the symphony were fused together in the symphony-cantata “Song of the Earth,” written to the texts of Chinese poets of the 8th century (1908). All 6 of its parts are vocal (tenor and contralto or baritone solo).

At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Mahler was one of the few composers in Austria and Germany whose works were imbued with deep philosophical issues. All his work is a continuous search for answers to the fundamental questions of human existence. Extreme sincerity and deep compassion for each person bring Mahler’s music closer to the work of F. M. Dostoevsky, which the composer knew and loved well.

The main thing that Mahler has in common with Dostoevsky is a thirst for justice, irreconcilability to the slightest manifestations of evil, a sense of involvement in everything that is happening in the world. He said: “There is a pan-European vice: everywhere they say - this does not concern me... But it’s not a person who can say so, but a clay heap! No, everything concerns me, the whole world...”

In order to make it easier for the listener to perceive his philosophical ideas, Mahler often included in his symphonies poetic texts, entrusting their performance to the choir or solo singers. In the 2nd-4th symphonies these are the texts of folk songs from “The Boy’s Magic Horn”, as well as poems by the German poet Klopstock (in the 2nd symphony) and lines by F. Nietzsche (in the 3rd symphony); The 8th Symphony is based on the text of the final scene of Goethe's Faust.

Other Mahler symphonies (1st, 5th-7th, 9th) are purely instrumental, but their ideas were born from songs. For example, in the 1st symphony the musical material of the vocal cycle “Songs of the Wandering Apprentice” was used; symphonies of the middle period (5th-7th) are associated with song cycles based on words by Rückert.

It is the song (in solo, choral or orchestral presentation) in Mahler’s symphonies that is the main bearer of the generalized idea.

Typical features of Mahler's style also include reliance on existing genres of folk and urban music (song, dance, most often ländler and waltz, military or funeral march, military signal, chorale).

In most of his symphonies, Mahler abandons the classical 4-movement structure: in the 2nd and 5th symphonies there are five movements; in the 3rd - six, in the 8th - only two. The traditional sequence of parts and their tempo relationships also change. Mahler's orchestra embodied two trends characteristic of the beginning of the twentieth century: on the one hand, the expansion of the orchestral apparatus (especially the powerful orchestra in the 8th symphony, which is called the “Symphony for a Thousand Participants”), on the other, the emergence of the chamber orchestra.

Completing the age of romanticism, Mahler anticipated many phenomena of modern music (in particular, emotional aggravation). He had a particularly strong influence on Shostakovich.

Austria is a country that is undoubtedly rich in great musicians. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Joseph Haydn, Ludwig Van Beethoven, Franz Schubert and many others. Gustav Mahler - one of the representatives musical culture Austria, who made an invaluable contribution to musical art not only of your country, but of the whole world. He was not only a composer, but also a famous conductor.

Biography

According to his biography, Gustav Mahler was born in the small village of Kaliste in Bohemia, which is located in the Czech Republic, in 1860. He was the second child in the family. By the way, out of fourteen children, his parents had to bury eight.

Gustav's father and mother were absolute opposites to each other, but this did not stop them from living together for a long time. happy life. Bernhard Mahler, like the grandfather of the future famous composer, was an innkeeper and merchant. Mother, Maria, was the daughter of a soap factory worker. She was a very sweet and flexible woman, which could not be said about Gustav's father, who was incredibly stubborn. Perhaps this contrast of characters helped them become one.

Childhood

Nothing foreshadowed Gustav's musical career. Neither mother nor father were at all interested in art. But the family's move to Jihlava put everything in its place, perhaps deciding the fate of the future composer.

The Czech city of Jihlava was full of traditions. Surprisingly, there was a theater here that staged not only dramatic repertoire, but also opera. Thanks to the fairs where the military brass band played, Gustav Mahler first encountered music and fell in love with it forever.

Hearing the orchestra play for the first time, the boy was so amazed that he could not take his eyes off his fascination. He had to be taken home by force. folk music fascinated the future composer, so by the age of 4 he was vigorously playing the harmonica, given by his father.

Gustav's family was Jewish, but the boy wanted to be closer to music so much that his father was able to negotiate with a Catholic priest so that his son could sing in a children's choir catholic church. Seeing their son’s love and passion for art, his parents found an opportunity to pay for his piano lessons.

Creative path

If Gustav Mahler learned to play the piano well by the age of six, his first works as a composer appeared somewhat later. When the young man turned 15 years old, his parents, on the recommendation of his teachers, sent their son to study.

The choice, naturally, fell on an educational institution where the young Mahler could learn his favorite activity. This is how young Gustav ended up in the capital of classical music of that time, Vienna. Having entered the conservatory, he enthusiastically devoted himself to the work of his whole life.

After this is over educational institution Mahler graduated from the University of Vienna. But, having received a classical musical education in the art of composition, he understood that he could not support himself by composing, so he decided to try himself as a conductor. By the way, he did it not just well, but amazingly. It is as a conductor that Gustav Mahler is known throughout the world. One could only envy the musician’s tenacity. He could spend hours practicing a small fragment with the orchestra, forcing both himself and the orchestra members to work exhaustively.

He began his conducting career with a small group that did not show much promise. But every year he was offered more and more prestigious jobs. The pinnacle of his conducting career was the position of director of the opera house in Vienna.

Mahler's ability to work could be the envy of many. The musicians of the orchestra he directed quietly hated their leader for his persistence and inflexibility. But at the same time it gave its results. Under his direction the orchestra played better than ever.

Once at a concert there was a fire on stage in the prompter's booth. The conductor did not want to stop the performance until the last minute, forcing the musicians to play their parts. Only the firefighters who arrived were able to stop the concert. By the way, when the fire was extinguished, the conductor hurried to continue the performance from where they left off.

Outwardly, the composer Gustav Mahler was somewhat angular and awkward. But as soon as he raised his hands, inviting the orchestra to play, every spectator understood that this man was a genius, that he lived and breathed music. Tousled hair, crazy eyes, and thin figure did not prevent him from being one of the best conductors of his time.

Despite the fact that Gustav Mahler, short biography whom is presented to your attention in the article, directed the Vienna Opera House, he himself never wrote operas. But symphonic works he has enough. Moreover, their scale shocks even an experienced musician. He believed that a symphony should contain as much as possible - complex parts, a huge number of orchestral players, incredible strength and power of musical performance. Spectators, leaving his performances, sometimes felt a certain confusion from the pressure of sound information that literally fell upon them.

Personal life

Like many great composers, personal relationships and family were not the main thing for Gustav Mahler. True love For him there was always music. Although, at the age of 42, Mahler still met his chosen one. Her name was Alma Schindler. She was young, but she already knew how to turn men’s heads. Being 19 years younger than her husband, she was also a budding musician and even managed to write several songs.

Unfortunately, Gustav did not tolerate competition even with his wife, so musical career Alma just had to forget. She bore him two daughters. Unfortunately, one of them died at the age of 4 after contracting scarlet fever. This was a blow to my father. Perhaps this loss was the cause of the heart disease that he was diagnosed with a little later.

The family life of Gustav and Alma was constantly powder keg. Misunderstanding and jealousy took a huge amount of energy. And although Alma was faithful to her husband, he suspected that she was having an affair with a promising architect.

His wife was by his side until his death. In those years, antibiotics were not known, therefore, by diagnosing Mahler with bacterial endocarditis, doctors literally signed his death contract. And even experimental treatment with a certain serum, which the musician decided on literally out of despair, did not help. Gustav Mahler died in Vienna in 1911.

Creative heritage

The main musical genres in the composer's work were symphony and song. Two absolutely different genres found their response in this talented and purposeful person. Mahler wrote 9 symphonies. The 10th, unfortunately, was not completed at the time of his death. All his symphonies are long and very emotional.

Also, Mahler’s work throughout his life, from childhood, was hand in hand with song. Gustav Mahler has more than 40 musical works. The cycle “Songs of the Wandering Apprentice” is especially popular, the words to which he wrote himself. You can't ignore "The Boy's Magic Horn" - based on folklore. Also beautiful are “Songs about Dead Children” with lyrics by F. Rückert. Another popular cycle is “7 Last Songs”.

"Song of the Earth"

This piece of music can hardly be called just a song. This is a cantata for a symphony orchestra and two soloists who take turns performing their vocal parts. The work was written in 1909 by a composer who was already creatively mature. In "Song of the Earth" Gustav Mahler wanted to express his entire attitude towards the world and music. The music is based on poems by Chinese poets of the Tang era. The work consists of 6 song parts:

1. “Drinking song about the sorrows of the earth” (E minor).
2. “Lonely in Autumn” (D minor).
3. “About Youth” (B flat minor).
4. “On Beauty” (G major).
5. “Drunk in the Spring” (A major).
6. “Farewell” (C minor, C major).

This structure of the work is more like a song cycle. By the way, some composers used this structure of constructing a musical work in their compositions.

"Song of the Earth" was first performed after the composer's death in 1911 by his student and successor.

Gustav Mahler: "Songs of Dead Children"

Already by the title one can judge this work as a tragic page in the composer’s life. Unfortunately, he had to face death as a child, when his brothers and sisters died. And Mahler took the premature death of his daughter very hard.

The vocal cycle for orchestra and soloist was written between 1901 and 1904 based on poems by Friedrich Rückert. In this case, the orchestra is represented not by a full orchestra, but by a chamber composition. The duration of the work is almost 25 minutes.

Symphony No. 10

Gustav Mahler for his creative career wrote quite a lot musical works, including 9 symphonies. As mentioned above, he started another one. Unfortunately, a serious illness that led to death did not allow another, perhaps brilliant, work to be born. The composer worked on this symphony for quite a long time, then leaving it, then starting work again. After his death, sketches of the work were found. But they were so crude that even his student did not dare to complete his creation. In addition, Gustav Mahler himself was very categorical about works that, in his opinion, were imperfect. He never showed his creations until he finished them.

To present an unfinished composition to the viewer's judgment, even if these were the closest and dearest people, was absolutely out of character for him. From the composer's notes it follows that the symphony was supposed to consist of five movements. Some of them were written at the time of his death, and some he had not started at all. A few years after Mahler’s death, the composer’s wife asked for help from some musicians, inviting them to complete her husband’s last composition, but, unfortunately, no one agreed to this. Therefore, even today Gustav Mahler’s last symphony is not available to the listener. But individual parts of the work were rearranged from orchestration into solo works for instruments and performed at various venues around the world.

Gustav sold his first compositions, written at the age of 16. True, his own parents became buyers. Apparently, even then the future composer wanted to receive not only moral satisfaction for his work, but also financial support.

As a child, the composer was a very reserved child. One day his father left him alone in the forest. Returning for the child a few hours later, the father found him sitting in the same position in which he had left him. It turned out that loneliness did not frighten the child at all, but only gave him a reason and time to reflect on life.

Mahler was delighted with the work of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and even helped produce several of his operas in Germany and Austria. So we can assume that Tchaikovsky’s world fame also increased thanks to Gustav Mahler. By the way, upon arriving in Austria, Tchaikovsky attended a rehearsal of his opera. He liked the conductor's work so much that he did not interfere, but allowed Mahler to do everything as he intended.

The composer was Jewish. But when it was necessary for mercantile motives to change his faith, he became a Catholic without a twinge of conscience. However, after that I never became more sensitive to religion.

Gustav Mahler was very respectful of the work of the Russian writer F. I. Dostoevsky.

All his life Mahler wanted to be like Ludwig van Beethoven, and not only in quality outstanding composer, but even outwardly he tried to be like him. By the way, he did the latter quite well. His tousled hair and half-crazed gleam in his eyes made Mahler look a little like Beethoven. His emotional and overly harsh conducting style differed from the techniques of other orchestra directors. People sitting in the auditorium sometimes felt as if he was being electrocuted.

Gustav Mahler had a surprisingly quarrelsome character. He could quarrel with anyone. The orchestra's musicians literally hated him because Gustav forced them to continue working with the instrument for 15 hours straight without rest.

It was Mahler who introduced the fashion of turning off the lights in the hall during a performance. This was done so that the audience would look only at the illuminated stage, and not at each other’s jewelry and outfits.

last years of life

In his last years, Mahler worked very hard. Being no longer young, he continued to conduct and create his works. Unfortunately, the serious illness was diagnosed too late, and the medicine of that time was far from perfect. Gustav Mahler, whose biography was discussed in the article, died in 1911 at the age of 51. His wife was married twice more after his death and even gave birth to a child, who, unfortunately, also died at the age of 18.

Great master

The music of Gustav Mahler is complex, emotional and not always understandable. But it carries within itself the experiences that the composer experienced when creating his imperishable masterpieces.

Born on July 7, 1860 in the Czech village of Kaliste. At the age of six, Gustav began learning to play the piano and discovered extraordinary abilities. In 1875, his father took the young man to Vienna, where, on the recommendation of Professor Yu. Epstein, Gustav entered the conservatory.

Mahler the musician blossomed at the conservatory primarily as a performer-pianist. At the same time, he was deeply interested in symphonic conducting, but as a composer, Mahler did not find recognition within the walls of the conservatory. The first major chamber ensemble works student years(piano quintet, etc.) were not yet distinguished by their independence of style and were destroyed by the composer. The only mature work of this period is the cantata “Song of Lament” for soprano, alto, tenor, mixed choir and orchestra.

The breadth of Mahler's interests during these years was also manifested in his desire to study the humanities. He attended university lectures on history, philosophy, psychology and the history of music. Deep knowledge in the field of philosophy and psychology later had a direct impact on Mahler’s work.

In 1888, the composer completed his first symphony, which opened a grandiose cycle of ten symphonies and embodied the most important aspects of Mahler’s worldview and aesthetics. The composer’s work displays deep psychologism, which allows him to convey in his songs and symphonies the spiritual world of contemporary man in constant and acute conflicts with the outside world. At the same time, none of Mahler’s contemporary composers, with the exception of Scriabin, raised such large-scale philosophical problems in his work as Mahler.

With the move to Vienna in 1896, the most important stage in Mahler’s life and work began, when he created five symphonies. During the same period, Mahler created vocal cycles: “Seven Songs of the Last Years” and “Songs about Dead Children.” The Vienna period was the time of Mahler's heyday and recognition as a conductor, primarily as an opera conductor. Starting his career in Vienna as the third conductor of the court opera, he took over the post of director a few months later and began reforms that put forward Vienna Opera for the first roles among European theaters.

Gustav Mahler - outstanding symphonist of the 20th century, heir to traditions Beethoven , Schubert And Brahms, who translated the principles of this genre into uniquely individual creativity. Mahler's symphony simultaneously ends a century-long period of development of the symphony and opens the way for the future.

The second most important genre in Mahler's work - song - also completes the long path of development of romantic song among such composers as Schumann, Wolf.

It was the song and the symphony that became the leading genres in Mahler’s work, for in songs we find the subtlest revelation of a person’s mental state, and the global ideas of the century are embodied in monumental symphonic canvases, which in the 20th century only symphonies can compare Honeggera , Hindemith And Shostakovich .

In December 1907, Mahler moved to New York, where the last, briefest period in the composer's life began. Mahler's years in America were marked by the creation of his last two symphonies - "Song of the Earth" and the Ninth. The tenth symphony had just begun. Its first part was completed according to sketches and variants by the composer E. Kshenek, and the remaining four parts, based on sketches, were completed much later (in the 1960s) by the English musicologist D. Cook.

In the summer of 1910, in Altschulderbach, Mahler began work on the Tenth Symphony, which remained unfinished. For most of the summer, the composer was busy preparing the first performance of the Eighth Symphony, with its unprecedented composition, which included, in addition to a large orchestra and eight soloists, the participation of three choirs.

Immersed in his work, Mahler, who, according to friends, was, in essence, big child, either did not notice, or tried not to notice how, year after year, the problems that were originally inherent in his family life. Alma never truly loved or understood his music - researchers find voluntary or involuntary admissions of this in her diary - which is why the sacrifices that Mahler demanded of her were even less justified in her eyes. The protest against the suppression of her creative ambitions (since this was the main thing that Alma accused her husband of) in the summer of 1910 took the form of adultery. At the end of July her new lover, the young architect Walter Gropius, sent his passionate love letter addressed to Alma, by mistake, as he himself claimed, or intentionally, as biographers of both Mahler and Gropius himself suspect, to her husband, and later, having arrived in Toblach, convinced Mahler to give Alma divorce. Alma did not leave Mahler - letters to Gropius with the signature “Your wife” lead researchers to believe that she was guided by naked calculation, but she expressed to her husband everything that had accumulated over the years of their life together. A severe psychological crisis was reflected in the manuscript of the Tenth Symphony and eventually forced Mahler to turn to Sigmund Freud for help in August.

The premiere of the Eighth Symphony, which the composer himself considered his main work, took place in Munich on September 12, 1910, in a huge exhibition hall, in the presence of the Prince Regent and his family and numerous celebrities, including long-time admirers of Mahler - Thomas Mann, Gerhart Hauptmann, Auguste Rodin, Max Reinhardt, Camille Saint-Saens. This was the first true triumph of Mahler the composer - the audience was no longer divided into applauding and whistling, the ovation lasted 20 minutes. Only the composer himself, according to eyewitnesses, did not look triumphant: his face looked like a wax mask.

Promising to come to Munich a year later for the first performance of the “Song of the Earth,” Mahler returned to the United States, where he had to work much more than he had expected when signing a contract with the New York Philharmonic: in the 1909/10 season, the committee directing the orchestra obliged to give 43 concerts, in fact it turned out to be 47; the next season the number of concerts was increased to 65. At the same time, Mahler continued to work at the Metropolitan Opera, whose contract was valid until the end of the season in 1910/11. Meanwhile, Weingartner was surviving from Vienna, newspapers wrote that Prince Montenuovo was negotiating with Mahler - Mahler himself denied this and in any case had no intention of returning to the Court Opera. After the expiration of the American contract, he wanted to settle in Europe for a free and quiet life; in this regard, the Mahler couple made plans for many months - now no longer connected with any obligations, which included Paris, Florence, Switzerland, until Mahler chose, despite any grievances, the vicinity of Vienna.

But these dreams were not destined to come true: in the fall of 1910, overexertion turned into a series of sore throats, which Mahler’s weakened body could no longer resist; tonsillitis, in turn, caused complications in the heart. He continued to work and stood at the controls for the last time, already with a high fever, on February 21, 1911. A streptococcal infection that caused subacute bacterial endocarditis became fatal for Mahler.

American doctors were powerless; in April, Mahler was brought to Paris for serum treatment at the Pasteur Institute; but all that Andre Chantemesse could do was confirm the diagnosis: medicine at that time did not have effective means of treating his illness. Mahler's condition continued to deteriorate, and when it became hopeless, he wanted to return to Vienna.

On May 12, Mahler was brought to the capital of Austria, and for 6 days his name did not leave the pages of the Viennese press, which published daily bulletins about the state of his health and competed in praising the dying composer - who, both for Vienna and for other capitals that did not remain indifferent, was still primarily a conductor. He was dying in the clinic, surrounded by baskets of flowers, including from the Vienna Philharmonic - this was the last thing he had time to appreciate. On May 18, shortly before midnight, Mahler passed away. On the 22nd he was buried in the Grinzing cemetery, next to his beloved daughter.

Mahler wanted the funeral to take place without speeches and chants, and his friends carried out his will: the farewell was silent. The premieres of his last completed works - “Songs of the Earth” and the Ninth Symphony - took place under the baton of Bruno Walter.

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) - Austrian composer, conductor, opera director. Since 1880, he was the conductor of various opera houses in Austria-Hungary, including the Vienna Court Opera in 1897-1907; from 1907 - in the USA. Since 1897 he has performed in Russia several times. Mahler's music showed tendencies of late romanticism and features of expressionism, due to the tragic awareness of the social contradictions of the era. 10 symphonies, symphonies for soloists and orchestra “Song of the Earth” (1908), vocal cycles, including for voice and orchestra (“Songs about Dead Children”, 1904).

Mahler Gustav

Beginning of a career as a conductor and composer

Gustav Mahler was born July 7, 1860, in Kalista, in Bohemia, in Austria-Hungary, now the Czech Republic. The boy began studying piano and theory in Iglau (now Jihlava, Czech Republic), where his family moved shortly after his birth. In 1875-1878, he studied at the conservatory of the Vienna Society of Friends of Music, where among his teachers were Yu. Epstein (piano), R. Fuchs (harmony), F. Krenn (composition). In the 1878-1880s, he attended lectures at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Vienna and worked on the cantata “The Song of Lament”; her musical language, although marked by the influences of the operas of Carl Maria von Weber and Richard Wagner, already began to bear the stamp of Mahler's individuality.

In 1880-1883, Mahler worked as an opera conductor in Bad Hall, Ljubljana and Olomouc, and in 1883-1885. - second conductor of the opera house in Kassel. The Kassel years were marked by friction with the theater management and an unhappy love for one of the singers. Mahler's love drama was reflected in his first masterpiece - the vocal cycle "Songs of the Wandering Apprentice" (in the composer's own words). The musical material of these songs was included in the First Symphony several years later.

If what a composer intends to say he is capable of saying in words, he should not bother trying to say it in music.

Mahler Gustav

In opera houses in Europe

At the beginning of 1885, Gustav Mahler was appointed second conductor of the City Theater in Leipzig. A few months later he left the Kassel theater and before taking up his new position (July 1886) he worked at the Deutsches Theater in Prague, where he conducted the operas of Christoph Willibald Gluck, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Wilhelm Richard Wagner. In Leipzig, Mahler's repertoire was initially limited to less serious positions, but in January 1887, replacing the ill Hungarian conductor Arthur Nikisch, he took over the leadership of the performance of Wagner's Ring of the Nibelung. Soon Gustav completed Weber's unfinished comic opera "Three Pintos". Its premiere in 1888, enthusiastically received by the public and critics, made the young composer famous. At the same time, Mahler began an affair with the wife of K. M. Weber’s grandson. Not without the influence of the Weber family, Mahler discovered the collection of German folk poetry “The Boy's Magic Horn,” compiled and published at the beginning of the 19th century by Ludwig Achim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano and which served as a source of inspiration for almost all Austro-German romantics. Almost all of Mahler's vocal works created before the early 1900s were written to poems from this collection.

In May 1888, G. Mahler left the Leipzig theater due to disagreements with colleagues. For a similar reason, he was soon removed from work in Prague, where he was invited to stage “The Three Pintos” and Peter von Cornelius’s opera “The Barber of Baghdad,” which was popular at that time. Soon, however, the conductor was appointed to the more honorable position of music director of the Budapest Royal Opera. Under the leadership of Mahler, the Budapest theater entered the period of artistic and financial success. Nevertheless, the situation of dependence on the administrative director (intendant) became unbearable for Mahler, and in 1891 he once again changed his place of work, becoming the first conductor of the City Theater in Hamburg. The Hamburg period of Mahler's life lasted until 1897. Despite the heavy workload and frequent conflicts with the intendant of the theater B. Pollini, Mahler found time and energy to compose music; during the summer holidays in Salzkammergut he completed the Second and Third Symphonies.

A symphony should be like the Universe. It should have everything.

Mahler Gustav

The year 1895, the beginning of which was overshadowed by the suicide of Mahler's younger brother, ended with the successful premiere of the Second Symphony in Berlin. Mahler's name - now not only as a conductor, but also as a composer - acquired European fame; The prospect of heading the Vienna Court Opera opened before him. The only obstacle remained his Jewish origin. In the spring of 1897, Mahler converted to Catholicism and a few months later was appointed conductor of this mired in routine and intrigue, but nevertheless the most brilliant theater in Austria-Hungary.

Vienna Opera. Maiernigge

The decade of Gustav Mahler's work in Vienna marked the heyday of the Court Opera. During this time, he conducted 63 different operas (most often Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro). The years 1903 to 1907 were especially fruitful, when the outstanding stage designer A. Roller participated in opera productions under the direction of Mahler. In 1901 Mahler built himself a villa in Maiernigg in Carinthia and spent every summer there composing music. In 1902 he married Alma Schindler (1879-1964), daughter of the Viennese painter and sculptor Emil Jakob Schindler. This union was not cloudless (in 1910, tension in family relationships prompted Mahler to even seek advice from psychiatrist and psychologist Sigmund Freud); nevertheless, the newfound stability had a beneficial effect on his work. In Mayernigg, symphonies from the Fifth to the Eighth and the vocal cycle “Songs of Dead Children” were written to the words of the German romantic poet Friedrich Rückert in 1904. With this work, Mahler seemed to have foreseen the tragic event own life: in 1907 his eldest daughter died of scarlet fever. At the same time, Mahler was diagnosed with severe heart disease (later it became the cause of his death).

Tradition is laziness

Mahler Gustav

last years of life

In Vienna, Mahler was surrounded by young composers of the “radical” trend - such as A. von Zemlinski, Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, Anton von Webern. He encouraged and supported their creativity in every possible way. As for Mahler's desire to make his own music available to the general public, it provoked active opposition from part of the Viennese musical elite. The anti-Semitic press waged a furious campaign against Mahler, which ultimately forced him to resign from the Court Opera. In 1907, he was appointed conductor of the New York Metropolitan Opera (he made his debut in early 1908 with the play “Tristan and Isolde”), and in 1909 of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. G. Mahler spent his last winters in New York. During the summer months he returned to Europe, where he performed as a conductor and wrote music. In 1909 Mahler completed a vocal symphony based on poems by medieval Chinese poets; he did not dare to assign it the serial number nine (which turned out to be fatal for Beethoven and Bruckner) and called it “Song of the Earth.” However, he soon wrote a purely instrumental Ninth Symphony and began working on the Tenth, but only managed to complete its first movement.

If you think the audience is bored, proceed more slowly, not faster.

Mahler Gustav

Mahler's contribution to opera

Gustav Mahler's most significant achievements as a conductor were associated with the opera house; Meanwhile, the creative interests of Mahler the composer were limited to the genres of symphony, song and vocal cycle. Already in the early “Plament Song”, such characteristic techniques of Mahler’s mature style are revealed as the combination of orchestras on stage and behind the stage, the convergence of tragic and genre-everyday moments, the widespread use of folk song thematics, the interpretation of the tonal plan as one of the most important elements of musical and dramatic "plot" of the work. This last technique is also used in the cycle “Songs of the Wandering Apprentice”, the tonal plan of which reflects the evolution of the hero’s mental state from sorrowful reflections, through peaceful unity with nature, to despair and tragic detachment. Most of Mahler's symphonies are characterized by an "open" tonal plan, when the work ends in a different key than in which it began; This emphasizes the predominance of the narrative principle over the constructive one, which presupposes the internal integrity of the form.

Influenced by "The Boy's Magic Horn"

In the 1890s, Mahler was heavily influenced by The Boy's Magic Horn. The touching, sometimes ironically naive poems of this collection inspired him to create a number of songs for voice or two voices with orchestra. Vocal movements based on texts from The Magic Horn appear in the Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies, clarifying the concept of each symphony and eloquently “proving” what the composer did not consider possible to express through purely instrumental music. In Mahler's first four symphonies, the element of humor, parody, and grotesque plays an important role; many of their themes are given a deliberately infantile appearance. If the First and Fourth Symphonies are built according to the traditional four-movement scheme, then the Second Symphony is five-movement (between the scherzo and the choral finale it contains the song “Primordial Light” from “The Magic Horn”), and the Third is six-movement, and the first part is equal in volume to all the others, together taken. The stylistic and genre diversity of the first parts of the symphonies is “removed” in the finales, endowed with significant philosophical meaning(musicologist Paul Becker, bearing in mind this feature of Mahler’s symphonic cycles, called them “finale symphonies” - in contrast to the symphonies of the Viennese classics, where the center of gravity usually falls on the first movement). The finale of the First Symphony (also known informally as "Titan") is a large romantic sonata allegro; the finale of the Second is a solemn spiritual hymn; the finale of the Third is a sublime adagio with “divine lengths”; the finale of the Fourth is an idyllic song about heavenly life based on words from “The Magic Horn”.

Mahler symphonies

The Fifth, Sixth and Seventh symphonies are purely instrumental. The five-movement Fifth Symphony emphasizes the heroic element; it opens with a funeral march and ends with a solemn apotheosis. The penultimate movement of this symphony (Adagietto), which acts as a lyrical intermezzo before the finale, is often performed as a separate concert piece. The four-movement Sixth Symphony is deeply tragic; the climax of its finale expressively depicts the death of the implied “hero”. In the five-movement Seventh Symphony, the most interesting are the three middle movements, the figurative structure of which is associated with night and darkness; The first part of the symphony, full of conflicts, is somewhat ponderous, and the optimism of the excessively extended finale turns into pomp and pomposity.

The most monumental of all Mahler's symphonies is the Eighth, intended for a large ensemble of soloists, three choirs and a huge orchestra. Its first part, the Catholic spiritual hymn Veni Creator Spiritus (“Come, O Life-Giving Spirit”), serves as an extended introduction to the second, main part, where the text is used last scene"Faust" by Johann Wolfgang Goethe. This part combines genre features cantata, oratorio, vocal cycle, choral symphony in the spirit of F. Liszt and instrumental symphony. After the Eighth Symphony, addressed to large masses of listeners, Mahler created one of his most intimate works, “Song of the Earth.” It also combines the characteristics of different genres - the vocal cycle (in the six parts of “Song of the Earth” the tenor and contralto or baritone are soloed alternately) and the “finale symphony”. The tendency toward sparse orchestral writing with frequent woodwind solos that appears in “Song of the Earth” is due to the late Mahler’s interest in Johann Sebastian Bach. In the last part of the cycle, “Farewell,” the mood of submission and humility prevails; it also determines the pathos of the slow finale of the four-movement Ninth Symphony. According to popular opinion, the latter, along with the Sixth, is the most meaningful and meaningful of all Mahler's orchestral dramas.

Mahler and world music

Mahler's work is a link between romanticism and expressionism. The impressive scale of his symphonies, the grandiose scope of their climaxes, the characteristic Viennese genre appearance of many of Mahler's themes - all this gave reason to consider Mahler as the heir of Anton Bruckner. On the other hand, Mahler's predilection for exaltedly fractured melodic lines, tonally indefinite successions of altered harmonies, superimpositions of heterogeneous layers of texture, extremely dense counterpoint, intense timbres of instruments playing in extremely high registers, significantly influenced Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. Various aspects Mahler's works were also adopted by other major composers of the 20th century, including Dmitry Dmitrievich Shostakovich, Edward Benjamin Britten, Alfred Garrievich Schnittke.