Gustav Mahler
Researched Bibliographic Dossier
Verified edition data and a musicological research note prepared specifically for this work.
- Title
- Gustav Mahler
- Author
- Jens Malte Fischer
- Translator
- Stewart Spencer
- Original title
- Gustav Mahler: Der fremde Vertraute
- Original publication
- Paul Zsolnay Verlag, Vienna, 2003
- Edition
- First English edition, hardback
- Publisher
- Yale University Press
- Place
- New Haven and London
- Year
- 2011
- Extent
- x + 766 pages, plus 16 pages of plates
- ISBN
- 9780300134445
- Language
- English (translated from German)
- Type
- Scholarly biography / cultural history
SCOPE & CONTENT
Fischer’s biography is a large-scale reconstruction of Mahler’s life in which personal history, conducting career, compositional development and the cultural world of fin-de-siècle Vienna are treated as parts of one argument. The English edition is a translation by Stewart Spencer of the 2003 German original. The book makes extensive use of letters, diaries and first-hand testimony, including material associated with Alma Mahler and Natalie Bauer-Lechner, while placing Mahler’s work within questions of Jewish identity, anti-Semitism, institutional politics, literary culture and the pressures of modern musical life.
RESEARCH VALUE
Its particular value lies in the breadth of documentary evidence and in its refusal to isolate the symphonies and songs from Mahler’s professional and intellectual environment. Chapters move between biography and works, discussing the major symphonies, Das Lied von der Erde, the unfinished Tenth, the Vienna Court Opera years and the final New York period. For research use, it is especially helpful as a modern synthetic biography; individual claims drawn from retrospective memoirs, particularly those of Alma Mahler, still benefit from comparison with independent documentation.
- Catalogue completeness
- 9 / 10 core bibliographic fields