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"Only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience anything.".
Gustav Mahler
With the invaluable help of the archives department of the Musikverein in Vienna and the Mahler media library in Paris, we take a new look at Mahler as conductor and opera director. With a parallel study of his relationship with literature and nature, key sources for his work, the exhibition aims to put forward a more complete view of Mahler's life and his creative process.
Curators
Guy Cogeval, director of the public establishment of the Musée d'Orsay and the Musée de l'OrangeriePierre Korzilius, director of the French Institute, Düsseldorf
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Exhibiting Mahler
One hundred years after his death, Gustav Mahler is remembered purely as a symphonic composer. This is because the two key roles of orchestra conductor and opera house director that helped transform him into the brilliant composer that we think we know, have disappeared from the collective memory.
His exceptional talent as a conductor propelled him to the top of the most prestigious orchestras of his time. Alongside this, for most of his life he was a director of an opera house.
In this role too, he became totally involved as manager, conductor and sometimes even stage director, thus revealing his overriding desire for control – an element he considered essential to achieve his artistic goals in music. His genius for musical interpretation and his revolutionary approach as an opera director have been almost forgotten, but it was these aspects of his musical life that brought him to "experience" music, an essential precondition for "composing" it.
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was born on 7 July 1860 in Kalište (Kalischt) and spent his childhood in Jihlava (Iglau), now in the Czech Republic, halfway between Prague and Vienna, on the borders of the Margraviate of Moravia and the Kingdom of Bohemia then part of the Austrian Empire. The popular music of this region and the marching band from the local barracks both influenced the young prodigy.
At the age of 10, he gave his first piano recital, and graduated from the Vienna Conservatoire in 1878 after a short period of brilliant studies. A passionate reader from an early age, he also studied literature and philosophy. Kant, Goethe, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Dostoyevsky and above all the poetry of Jean Paul became his basic points of reference. He was fascinated by the fragile, mysterious beauty of nature, this "calm, welcoming home" which often appeared in his literary choices, as for example in the collection of songsDes Knaben Wunderhorn[The Youth's Magic Horn].
To enable him to compose, he had "Komponierhäuschen" built [small composing huts] in the places where he used to holiday: Toblach in the Dolomites, Steinbach in the Alps, near to the Attersee and the Wörthersee. His many references to nature, literature and philosophy are essential to a deep understanding of his work.
In the long musical tradition of Vienna, from Mozart and Beethoven, whom he venerated, to his contemporaries, Brahms, Bruckner and Wolf, from whom he differed, Mahler occupies a special place at the start of the great upheavals of the 20th century.
Symphony no. 4 in G major
Of the ten symphonies, it is Symphony no. 4, with its breadth and joyful character, that seems to be one of the lightest and most accessible.
Composed at the height of his fame (1899-1900), it also resonates with a certain irony. Classically structured, the progression of the four movements culminates withDas himmliche Leben[Celestial Life] sung by a soprano.
Conductor and opera director
In 1880, at the age of 20, Mahler obtained his first position as conductor at the Bad Hall Theatre (Austria). This was the beginning of a brilliant career that would take him from Laibach to New York. As musical director for orchestras and opera, Mahler acquired a solid, professional grounding in these different places, and established his repertoire: Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Italian opera, and above all, Wagner. He had to deal with orchestras and soloists who could not satisfy his demands. Disputes with his superiors and musicians had immediate consequences, and often required him to cut short his engagements.
Mahler, who until then had been quite removed from the world of the visual arts, discovered the artists of the Secession, a group whose members included Klimt, Moser, Hoffmann, Moll, Orlik and the stage designer Alfred Roller. His meeting with Roller in 1902 was a turning point. Faced with the rigid traditions of the Vienna Opera, he seized this opportunity to move right away from the classical sets as put forward by the nonetheless highly talented Heinrich Lefler between 1900 and 1903. Together with Roller, Mahler became unprecedentedly involved with all aspects of the performance. His demands on the musicians were a source of conflict: "I didn't spare myself and therefore I could demand others to give their all" he said in his farewell address to the Vienna Opera. His final production in Vienna, Beethoven'sFidelioon 15 October 1907, was a resounding success. In 1909 he became musical director of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, giving his last performance with them on 21 February 1911.
The Composer
"I have been playing and composing music since I was four years old, before I even knew how to read music". Mahler had no great fondness for chamber music or opera. Only a fragment of Quartet with piano eveals his early leanings towards composition.
From very early on, he turned to his literary world for inspiration when undertakingDas klagende Lied[Song of Lamentation] and Des Knaben Wunderhorn[The Youth's Magic Horn], that characterise this first stage of his career. Mahler used folkloric and popular material in the libretto and the music. The instrumental and vocal performers he chose were impressive as Debussy commented after hearing his Symphony no. 2: "Let's open our eyes (and close our ears)... French tastes will never accept these pneumatic giants as anything other than publicity for Bibendum".
However, this apparent facility concealed an exceptional polyphonic sophistication and a very demanding use of the voice.
Symphony no. 5 and theKindertotenlieder[Songs on the Death of Children], heralded a new, severe and tragic approach. He continued to turn to non-musical sources to express his vision of the world, as for example the Veni creator spiritus and Goethe's Faustin his "Symphony of a Thousand", this Symphony no. 8 with its huge instrumental and vocal forces. His Symphony no. 10 remained unfinished.
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