Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler (1860–1911) spent his career as the most respected and least understood composer of his era — idolized as a conductor (he was one of the greatest of all time, ran the Vienna Court Opera and later the New York Philharmonic), dismissed as a composer of gargantuan and incoherent works that would be forgotten within a decade. He was right about the second part, in a sense: his symphonies took 50 years to become accepted as the towering works they are now considered.

The symphonies are built like houses with too many rooms. The first three run 45–70 minutes each; the second has a choral finale requiring an orchestra, offstage brass, and soloists; the third runs 90+ minutes and ends with a slow movement that Mahler called 'the gentlest and most profound thing I have ever written.' His Ninth — and last completed symphony — is a single long farewell in four movements, one of the most personal works ever written for orchestra.

Mahler was also a profound lyricist in the Beethoven/Bruckner line. His song cycles — especially Das Lied von der Erde and the Kindertotenlieder — take folk texts and turn them into orchestral songs of extraordinary emotional directness. He died in 1911, halfway through the symphony that would become the Ninth. His wife Alma burned his letters and diaries after his death, so we have an incomplete picture of the man.

StyleLate Romantic Austrian symphonism at its most expanded. Folk-inflected melodies, massive orchestral forces, slow movements of unusual intimacy. Music that feels like a comprehensive survey of human experience.

Listen: Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection) — the fifth movement will give you everything you need. Then Symphony No. 9 for the other extreme. If you have four hours, the complete cycle.