Mahler: Symphony No. 7

Description

Gustav Mahler (1860 - 1911) Symphony No.7 in E MinorThe great Viennese symphonic tradition found worthy successorsin two composers of very different temperament and background, AntonBruckner and Gustav Mahler. The latter, indeed, extended the form in an extraordinary waythat has had a far-reaching effect on the course of Western music, among other thingscreating a symphonic form that included in it the tradition of German song in a variedtapestry of sound particularly apt for a twentieth century that has found in Mahler's worka reflection of its own joys and sorrows.Mahler was to express succinctly enough his position in theworld. He saw himself as three times homeless, a native of Bohemia in Austria, an Austrianamong Germans and a Jew throughout the whole world. The second child, and the first offourteen to survive, he was born in Kaliste in Bohemia in 1860. Soon after his birth hisfamily moved to Jihlava, where his father, by his own very considerable efforts, hadraised himself from being little more than a pedlar, with a desire for intellectualself-improvement, to the running of a tavern and distillery. Mahler's musical abilitieswere developed first in Jihlava, before a brief period of schooling in Prague, which endedunhappily, and a later course of study at the Conservatory in Vienna, where he turned fromthe piano to composition and, as a necessary corollary, to conducting.It was as a conductor that Mahler made his career, at first ata series of provincial opera-houses, then in Prague, Budapest and Hamburg, before movingto a position of the highest distinction of all, when, in 1897, he became Kapellmeister ofthe Vienna Court Opera, two months after his baptism as a Catholic, a necessarypreliminary. In Vienna he effected significant reforms in the Court Opera, but made enoughenemies, particularly represented in the anti-semitic press, to lead to his resignation in1907, followed by a final period conducting in America and elsewhere, in a vain attempt tosecure his family's future before his own imminent death, which took place a week afterhis return to Vienna, on 18th May, 1911.Although his career as a conductor involved him most closelywith opera, Mahler attempted little composition in this field. His work as a composerconsists chiefly of his songs and of his ten symphonies, the last left unfinished at hisdeath, together with his monumental setting of poems from the Chinese in >Das Lied von der Erde. The greater part of his musicwas written during summer holidays away from the business of the opera-house, aRliraculous achievement in view of his other obligations.The new century brought a marked change in Mahler's life. In1902, to the amazement of all Vienna, he married the twenty-year-old Alma Schindler,daughter of the painter Anton Schindler and a composition pupil of Zemlinsky, future wifeof the architect Walter Gropius and later of the writer Pranz Werfel. Summer holidays werespent at a villa Mahler had had built at Maiernigg on the Worthers