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 Mahler,
Gustav (1860-1911), Austrian composer and conductor, whose works mark
the culmination of postromantic development of the symphony and were
a major influence on such 20th-century composers as the Austrians
Arnold Schoenberg and Alban Berg. Mahler was born July 7, 1860, in
Kalischt (modern Kaliste), in what is now the Czech Republic. He studied
at the Vienna Conservatory and in 1880 became assistant conductor
at Bad Hall, Austria. He subsequently held posts as a conductor of
opera in several central European cities. In 1897 he became artistic
director of the Imperial Opera in Vienna. Through his efforts Vienna
attained world prestige as an operatic center in the ensuing decade.
In 1907 Mahler went to New York City, where he conducted at the Metropolitan
Opera from 1908 to 1910 and with the New York Philharmonic in 1910-11.
He died in Vienna on May 18, 1911. Of Mahler's symphonies, the unnumbered
Das Lied von der Erde (Song of the Earth, 1908) and four of the nine
numbered symphonies include solo voices with or without chorus. The
song cycles Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Deaths of Children, 1902)
and Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Boy's Magic Horn, 1888) exist in alternate
versions with piano or orchestral accompaniment; Lieder eines fahrenden
Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer, 1883) is orchestrally accompanied.
Mahler also composed songs for voice and piano and left an unfinished
tenth symphony. In his symphonies, he was the heir of the German composer
Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Wagner and the postromantic Austrian
composer Anton Bruckner. Mahler's use of choral and solo vocal music
in the symphony completes the implications of Beethoven's similar
procedure in his Ninth Symphony and also achieves a musical and dramatic
union akin to that sought by Wagner in his music dramas. Using the
freedom that allowed Wagner and Bruckner to push almost to the limits
of the traditional system of keys and chords, Mahler remained within
that system, but he altered its basic premise so that most of his
symphonies end in a key different from the initial key. As did Wagner
and Bruckner, he employed vast orchestral resources; but his orchestration
anticipated the 20th century in its emphasis on the color of individual
instruments and small combinations of instruments, and its inclusion
of unusual instruments such as the mandolin and harmonium. Likewise,
he foreshadowed the 20th-century concern with counterpoint.
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