Mahler: Symphony No. 5

Description

Gustav Mahler {1860 - 1911} Symphony No.5 Gustav Mahler has come to enjoy a unique position in the musicof our own time. He was able to revivify the symphony of Austro-German tradition, creatingin it a poignant expression of sorrow, a sense of Weltschmerz, but encompassing a muchwider range of feeling. He was able to enlarge the symphony, not only by an expansion ofform and an enlargement of the orchestra itself, but by the use of song, a logicalextension of Beethoven's Choral Symphony, including and summarising a whole tradition ofmusic. Mahler was born in Bohemia in 1860 into a relatively humbleJewish family of no great intellectual or cultural pretensions. His father, at one timelittle more than a pedlar, came to own a successful business that included a distilleryand several taverns. At the same time he read w hat he could, in an attempt to further hisown intellectual interests. Mahler himself was eventually able to study at theConservatory in Vienna and to enrol in other courses at the University.It was as a conductor that Mahler made his name, with a seriesof appointments in resort opera-houses during the summer season. From these he moved tomore important appointments in Prague, Leipzig, Budapest and Hamburg. Finally, in 1897, hereached the summit of any conductor's ambition, when he was made director of the ViennaCourt Opera. During ten years he revived the opera, particularly with his performances ofMozart and of Wagner. By 1907, however, he had aroused sufficient hostility to decide toresign. His high standards in the opera-house made him enemies, and the amount of time hewas obliged to give to performances of his own music and his Jewish origins were enoughreason for his critics to condemn him. 1907 brought not only Mahler's resignation from theVienna Court Opera, but the death of one of his two daughters, a bereavement that deeplydepressed him. There was further cause for anxiety when it was found that he was sufferingfrom a weakness of the heart that made it necessary to avoid any physical exertion. Hisfinal years were spent partly in the United States where he conducted first at theMetropolitan Opera during a difficult period in its history and undertook to reform theNew York Philharmonic Orchestra. At the same time he fulfilled a series of engagements asa conductor in Europe. He died in Vienna in May, 1911. Although his music met oppositionfrom some in his life-time, his subsequent importance has been incalculable, both as oneof the greatest composers of his generation and as an influence on his contemporaries andsuccessors.Mahler's compositions include a number of songs and tensymphonies, the last incomplete, as well as Das Liedvon der Erde (The Song of the Earth), a symphony in fact, if not in name. Hecompleted his Fifth Symphony in 1902 during the summer following his marriage to AlmaSchindler, a young woman of considerable and varied talents, daughter of the landscapepainter Anton Schindler and later wife of Walter Gropius and