Mahler in his time

Vienna around 1900 was a vibrant centre of culture and innovation under Emperor Franz Joseph. Gustav Mahler, a bridge between romanticism and modernism, was influenced by Wagner and Bruckner and was in dialogue with Strauss, Schoenberg and Wolf. In Vienna's salons and Kaffeehäuser, art, debate and philosophy flourished. Amid religious and social changes, Mahler found his unique musical voice, which resonates to this day.

Introduction

𝄢The fin de siècle, a magical word that almost sounds like perfume. And that era was dominated by one empire and one emperor: the Habsburg Empire with its emperor Franz Joseph, better known as Sissi's husband. Emperor, later also king , Franz Joseph was in power for so long that Gustav Mahler only knew one monarch. In fact, Franz Joseph's reign ran from 1848-1916 and Mahler lived from 1860-1911.

The year 1848 marked itself in Europe as the year of the great revolutionary wave. There were also uprisings in the Danube Monarchy, as the Habsburg Empire was also called because the Danube flowed through it like a lifeline.

Eight nationalities were under the Austrian emperor's rule and they all tried to achieve some degree of independence in 1848, but in vain.

A year later, much to everyone's surprise, the situation was back to square one. The crowned heads were more firmly in the saddle than ever, as was the case in Austria-Hungary, than had been merged in a personal union from 1867 to form the so-called K & K Empire. This empire shared one monarch, one army, one foreign policy and one official language, German. Its capital, of course, was Vienna.

The Bildungsbürger

𝄞What should we imagine under Bildungsbürger? Actually, we don't have a word for it in Dutch. It is something like someone with a far-reaching general development, especially in the field of music, fine arts and literature. Bildung was a magic word: anyone who had made it, including financially, only counted if he had a Salon where he could receive people to talk about high brow things, had a box at the opera or theatre, in short, things that had once been reserved for the nobility only, but now, in a reverberation of the revolution, appeared to be available to the bourgeoisie as well.

A distinct group within the Bildungsbürger were the Jews, whose great artistic talents and growing abilities had become more or less 'salonable' due to new decrees. What exactly did that mean? Whereas before the nobility refused to mix with the 'common' people, now high-ranking officials and, for instance, directors of big theatres , including the Burgtheater and the Hofoper, where Mahler was in charge from 1897 onwards, were welcome guests in the salons. During an evening in one such salon, Mahler met Alma Schindler, who was a welcome guest as 'the most beautiful girl in Vienna' and as the daughter of the court painter Emil Schindler. The topics discussed there were all related to what one had just read, heard or seen, a bidding seems to be going on with who was most 'bildet'!

The Secession

𝄢One of the most characteristic appellations and directly linked to the Fin de Siècle in Vienna is Secession, a group of artists who banded together to give a new direction to art. Names like Gustav Klimt (painting), Otto Wagner (buildings) and Kolo Moser (founder of the Wiener Werkstätte, a new direction in arts and crafts) buzzed through the Viennese streets, where Kaffeehäuser appeared on the most important corners, say a Salon for the poor artists, who could sit there all day and discuss, sometimes on one cup of coffee, because they had no more to spend. Flaming were the discourses, for want of a sandwich food for thought! For instance, the poet Peter Altenberg was a regular, but also the writers Arthur Schnitzler and Stefan Zweig , the painter Egon Schiele and Sigmund Freud, the founder of depth psychology.

Mahler too went to the Kaffeehaus when he had time, but unfortunately this was rare. The high point of the Secession became the building of the same name (which is still there) containing an amalgamation of Klimt's paintings and friezes, among others, and a beautiful sculpture of Beethoven by Max Klinger. Klimt's Beethoven figure seems to have Mahler's features! During the opening of the Secessions building, music from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, conducted by ...Gustav Mahler, resounded.

Philosophy and religion

𝄞In the vast amalgam of all kinds of nationalities under the K & K regime, was there time for a unified religion? Yes and no. Before anything else, the main religion, a must if you wanted to achieve anything, was Roman Catholicism. The emperor set a good example by going to mass every day and so 'people' went too. Thus, one proved to be a good subject. But of course there was room for other religions too, led by Protestantism, which was not embraced but was more than tolerated. A problem were the Jews, not so much because they professed their own religion, which they did mostly at home so as not to attract too much attention, but because time and again they had to deal with ever-increasing anti-Semitism. So how to make a virtue of necessity? They did so by converting (we would now say retraining) and being baptised into a Christian faith, either Roman Catholic or Protestant. Mahler's friend Siegfried Lipiner, for instance, chose to become a Protestant; Mahler converted to Roman Catholic in Hamburg . In this way, the road to the much-coveted position of director of the Hofoper also seemed to be open, but that ultimately turned out to be a sham. After ten years he had to step down, converted and all.

And what about philosophy? It was a strange time in Vienna, where the intelligentsia, on the one hand, lived as if they were off the hook, nightly brawls with girls of loose morals (there was a strict protocol that 'respectable girls' had to enter marriage as virgins!) were commonplace at the Prater. Memories of this can be found in Arthur Schnitzler's plays and in Stefan Zweig's famous book, ' The World of Yesterday'. So was there room for philosophy? Yes there was! After people had scrambled through, they went to the Kaffeehaus with wooden heads and put up a tree about the thoughts of Friedrich Nietzsche and those of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The world was in danger of coming apart at the seams, one was dancing on a volcano that could erupt at any moment, but one had another good glass of Veltiner and boomed on...Nihilism, in particular, was a favourite topic, Nietzsche's 'Umwertung aller Werte' and his ideas that God was dead and a new man had to come, offered a way out from the clouded thoughts.

Mahler as trait-d'union between romantics and modernists?

𝄢An interesting question, because who then were the romantics and modernists between whom he formed a trait-d'union. To this end, we need to go back in time to define Romanticism and Romantics. Romanticism is strongly linked to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's illustrious book 'Die Leiden des jungen Werther', from which the basic concept of Romanticism can be distilled: "Himmelhoch jauchzend, zum Tode betrübt". It also rained suicides in those days when weary young people could no longer see through it: love was failing and social security was also non-existent. Many a person put the gun to his temples and pulled the trigger

If we extend this line to the music of our time, we naturally come across the grand love drama of Tristan and Isolde, so wonderfully captured in text and notes by Richard Wagner. He was the new trendsetter: big, grander, biggest! An orchestra of giga size that could also make chamber music(!) and a music that harmonically never seemed to resolve. Sighs and sighs, harmonic twist after harmonic twist: the wait was for redemption, but it only came at the very end and one had already finished several hours of music in the theatre. Yet this very work is the foundation on which Mahler and his contemporaries built further, though mostly in a symphony rather than an opera. Wagner's musical interludes, however, were so symphonic in structure that Bruckner's and Mahler's symphonies could fit in seamlessly.

Mahler and his contemporaries

𝄞Gustav Mahler was very interested in the music of other composers. Some he studied with extra interest because their works could mean a lot to him as a composer. The most important are: Anton Bruckner, Hugo Wolf, Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg. Absent from this article, but very present for Mahler, is Richard Wagner, who influenced almost everyone around 1900, although each composer processed that influence differently.

Anton Bruckner

Bruckner (1824-1896) was working at the Vienna Conservatory when Mahler and Wolf received their training there in the late 1970s. They did not take composition classes with Bruckner, but did take lectures and developed warm feelings for the little man, although they had mixed feelings about his music.

Anton Bruckner's life was dominated by the worship of God (he had a prayer chair in his room) and of Richard Wagner, a combination that was perfectly natural for him. Mahler recognised the power of Bruckner's religious music, even though in 1892 he was incredulous. On 16 April that year (Mahler was then working in Hamburg), he wrote to his old teacher: 'Highly revered master and friend. I have performed a work of yours. Yesterday (Good Friday) I conducted Your delightful and wonderful Te Deum. Both the performers if it public were moved to the depths of their souls by this mighty edifice and the truly sublime thoughts expressed in it, and I experienced something at the end of the performance that I consider a triumph of a piece of music: the audience remained dead silent, and it was only after the conductor and the other collaborators left their seats that a storm of applause broke out. 'You would have enjoyed the performance.' The press was also highly complimentary. 'Bruckner has now made a blessed entry into Hamburg as well.'

Mahler's admiration for his teacher could sometimes take a form that we now interpret not so positively. First of all, when Mahler had the honour of giving Bruckner's Sixth Symphony its world premiere in Vienna, Mahler picked up a red pencil and started to shorten the symphony considerably! Bruckner, by the way, would not have been surprised by that. As a doubter of his own creativity, Bruckner was used to revising his own work and also allowed benevolent conductors to polish his pieces. Mahler, unlike us now, did not see his interventions in the score as a detriment to Bruckner's music, but rather as an attempt to make the music better. Admiration for his teacher was his driving force.

He also took Bruckner's Fourth Symphony in this way. For that reason, he also polished symphonies by Schumann and Beethoven.

Mahler showed his admiration for Bruckner early on. As a test of competence, by way of an examination, he had made a piano excerpt of Bruckner's Third Symphony with a conservatoire colleague. In it, he did not change a single note of the symphony. That extract was so good that it even appeared in print in 1880 and was even given a place of honour in Mahler's study. When Alma wanted to flee from Vienna across the Pyrenees to America after the Anschluss in 1938, it was imperative that she took it with her and lugged it along in a heavy suitcase.

Hugo Wolf

𝄢Hugo Wolf, now known mainly for his songs, was born in the same year as Mahler (1860). Initially, he and Mahler were very close friends, but through various developments he became his enemy, at least in Wolf's opinion. In their student days, they shared a room and sometimes had to sleep in the park if no bed was available for them that night. They also sang parts of Wagner's Götterdämmerung and were full of admiration for Anton Bruckner.

However, at some point Wolf became infected with syphilis and began suffering from haunting and delusions of grandeur. His opera Der Corregidor (1895) he had submitted for review to Mahler, who was then director of the Vienna Court Opera. Wolf naturally assumed that his friend Mahler would put this opera on the programme right away, but things turned out differently. His former friend saw many difficulties and continually postponed the decision (the famous 'giving the go-ahead') until poor Wolf ran screaming through the streets around the opera house and exclaimed: 'I have to be up there behind that desk'. Shortly afterwards, he was admitted and locked up in a mental institution. Mahler has Der Corregidor not performed. Nevertheless, Mahler saw the qualities of Wolf's music: after his death, he played some of his songs. In his song oeuvre, Wolf was certainly not inferior to Mahler.

Richard Strauss

While Wolf was only of equal calibre in the songs, Richard Strauss was so on all fronts. Although they were only four years apart, there is a world of difference between these two representatives of the late-nineteenth century. Strauss (1864-1949), a Catholic, seemed to have everything in his lap; Mahler, a Jew, had to fight for everything. Both wanted to reach the top as composers and conductors, and both succeeded. For a long time, their paths as composers ran parallel.

Strauss' 'hobbyhorse', the symphonic poem, also initially found an audience with Mahler and he even composed a symphonic poem of his own, Totenfeier, which, in slightly reworked form, would later become the first movement of his Second Symphony. On the concert stage, they performed each other's works from the outset, adhering to the motto: 'If you put a work of mine on the programme, I'll do a piece of yours at the next concert!' Mahler's big breakthrough with his Third Symphony was partly due to the fact that Strauss selected this work for the 1902 Music Festival in Krefeld. Until his death, Mahler repeatedly Tondichtungen - as Strauss called them - performed, in America as many as 11 times Till Eulenspiegels lustige Streiche. Strauss in turn occasionally conducted works by Mahler.

Mahler also wanted Strauss' opera Salome perform, which he said was one of the masterpieces of its time. Unfortunately, Mahler had not taken censorship into account in doing so. We should not forget that Austria was very Roman Catholic and that it is an opera in which morals are very much trampled upon and in which a head is carried in on a silver platter and even that of a prophet. That was definitely a bridge too far for many a moralist in 1905.

Strauss soon learned about it in the Kaffeehaus (the customary place to hear the latest news), was unpleasantly surprised and spoke to Mahler about it. The latter exhausted himself in apologies, but had to admit that it really was 'the sad truth'. 'The censors have since Salomedenied. So far no one knows, but I am trying heaven and earth to reverse this decision.' Mahler appreciated the free spirit expressed in the work.

This persistence against the odds also had a musical reason: 'Dear Strauss, I must tell you how thrilled I am with your work, which I recently reread. It is your highlight so far! Yes, I claim it cannot be compared to anything you have written so far. Here every note is in its proper place; you are a born dramatist.' But all this praise notwithstanding, the gentlemen would fail to Salome to be premiered in Vienna and thus not under the baton of Mahler, who had oh so much wanted it. Despite this disappointment, Strauss continued to hold Mahler in high regard. After Mahler's death, he wrote a stirring memoriam in a letter.

Arnold Schoenberg

𝄞The founder of the Second Viennese School was a composer at the crossroads of two centuries: on the one hand, the old tradition with its strong attachment to tonality and, on the other hand, the new era, which sought to shift and transcend tonal boundaries. Wagner had shown him the way with especially harmonically revolutionary opera Tristan und Isolde, Strauss picked up on this and Mahler, in his Ninth and unfinished Tenth Symphony, came close to the expressionist language of Schoenberg and his. Schoenberg was at the end of that 'old road' around 1910 and shortly after 1920 replaced 'our normal tonality', in which a composition is in a particular key, with a new system: the twelve-tone technique. Here, there is no longer a keynote, but all 12 notes found on the chromatic scale are equally important.

Because of that career, Schoenberg is known as the man who put an end to classical tonality. Mahler followed Schoenberg's course with fascination and excitement: how would this continue? To Brahms, who around 1890 believed that music had had its best and ended with Brahms, Mahler said that development always goes on, though he too did not know what would come after him.

However, Schoenberg was not a rebel away from tonality all his life. In his younger years, he was still a true Wagner-adept: 'Sounds never heard before, orchestral scoring never heard before, stories on stage never seen before, you couldn't avoid it'. Those words fit equally well with Schoenberg's Gurrelieder as with Wagner's Tristan. Mahler's symphonies are orchestral dramas.

Mahler recognised Schoenberg's talent, though he did not understand the music, and decided to give him some kind of annual stipend, nice gesture! After Mahler's death, Schoenberg called him a saint. Schoenberg's piano piece opus 19 No 6 is dedicated to Mahler's memory.