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A01=Stephen Downes
Alma Mahler
antisemitism
Author_Stephen Downes
biography
Category=AVLA
Category=AVN
Category=DNBF
classical music
Conducting
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Freud
German Enlightenment
Gustav Mahler
Jewish
Jewish heritage
Johannes Brahms
Lieder songs
Modernist music
music
music icon
New York Philharmonic
Romanticism
Symphonies
Vienna
Vienna Court Opera
Product details
- ISBN 9781836390305
- Dimensions: 130 x 200mm
- Publication Date: 01 Apr 2025
- Publisher: Reaktion Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
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Gustav Mahler’s status as an icon of fin-de-siècle Viennese music is assured, with his works now staples of the concert repertoire. His life story has been told in numerous biographies, films and novels, yet he remains an ambiguous, provocative figure. Mahler was a composer who challenged musical form and style but identified with German Enlightenment and Romantic culture, disliking many contemporary artistic trends. He was a Jewish conductor who reached the pinnacle of his profession in antisemitic Vienna. He was supposedly haunted by death, embroiled in a torrid marriage, and his brief meeting with Freud has spurred posthumous psychoanalytical speculations. This book, reflecting the latest research, constructs a fresh interpretation of Mahler’s music in relation to his life.
Stephen Downes is Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. His books include Music and Sentimentalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2021).
