This is the third volume of de La Grange's monumental study of the life and music of Gustav Mahler, one of the most influential composers of the 20th century. Forty years of research and a vast array of documentary material are here co-ordinated into the definitive study of this supremely gifted musician. This volume, covering the years 1904-1907, shows Mahler in his final years at the Hofoper coping with the rival demands on his energy and creative powers of the Opera on the one hand and his continuing struggle for recognition as composer in his own right. It describes the tragic events of 1907, Mahlers last year in Vienna: the death of his daughter Putzi, the crisis which led him to leave the Opera, and the alarming medical diagnosis which made him cut down on much loved physical activities, at least for a time.
When the second volume of de La Grange's monumental study of Mahler appeared, it was hailed in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications as an indispensable portrait of the great composer. Here at last is the third volume of this magisterial work. Ranging from 1904 to 1907, it explores Mahler's final years as administrator, producer, and conductor of the Vienna Opera. It was a time of intense inner struggle, with Mahler's energy and creative powers drained by the competing demands of running the Hofoper and struggling for recognition as a composer. And they were tragic years as well, especially 1907, Mahler's last year in Vienna, when the death of his daughter and the diagnosis of heart disease forced him to leave the Opera. Throughout the book, de La Grange offers true-to-life portraits of Mahler the human being, the family man, and the composer, and he weaves in innumerable testimonies and anecdotes that throw new light on the great composer's complex personality. The product of forty years of research, here is the definitive study of a musical giant. It is, as The Wall Street Journal said of volume two, "a work of the first importance, one that nobody seriously interested in Mahler can possibly afford to skip."
This text shows Mahler in his final years at the Hofoper coping with the demands on his energy and creative powers of the Opera and his struggle for recognition as a composer. It also shows the first signs of marital difficulties with Alma emerge.
In 2015, The MX Book of New Sherlock Holmes Stories burst upon the scene, featuring adventures set within the correct time period, and written by many of today's leading Sherlockian authors from around the world. Those first three volumes were overwhelmingly received, and there were soon calls for additional collections. Since then, their popularity has only continued to grow. And now we present a new three-volume set. Like 2017's two-volumes set, Eliminate the Impossible, this new collection, Whatever Remains ... Must Be the Truth features tales of Holmes's encounters with seemingly impossible events - ghosts and hauntings, cults and curses, mythical beasts and mediums, angels and demons, and more. In "The Sussex Vampire", Holmes tells Watson: "This agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. The world is big enough for us. No ghosts need apply." In each of the stories presented in this huge three-volume collection, Holmes approaches the varied problems with one of his favorite maxims firmly in place: "...When you have eliminated the impossible whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth..." But what, exactly, is the truth? A Study in Scarlet, the first recorded adventure of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John H. Watson, was first published in 1887. What an amazing journey the years since then have been! In addition to the pitifully few sixty tales originally presented in The Canon, published between 1887 and 1927, there have been literally thousands of additional Holmes adventures in the form of books, short stories, radio and television episodes, movies, manuscripts, comics, and fan fiction. And yet, for those who are true friends and admirers of the Master Detective of Baker Street, where it is always 1895 (or a few decades on either side of that!) these stories are not enough. Give us more! The forty-nine stories in these three companion volumes represent some of the finest new Holmesian storytelling to be found, and honor the man described by Watson as "the best and wisest ... whom I have ever known." All royalties from this collection are being donated by the writers for the benefit of the preservation of Undershaw, one of the former homes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Part XVIII - Whatever Remains Must Be the Truth (1899-1925) features contributions by: Thomas A. Burns, Jr., Roger Silverwood, Robert Stapleton, Craig Janacek, Gareth Tilley, Paul Hiscock, Arthur Hall, M.J. Elliott, Harry DeMaio, Tom Turley, Tracy J. Revels, Kelvin Jones, Matthew White, David Marcum, Nick Cardillo, and S.F. Bennett, with a poem by Christopher James, and forewords by David Marcum, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Roger Johnson, and Steve Emecz
The author's second book on the life and work of Gustav Mahler focuses principally on Mahler's first settings of Wunderhorn texts, volumes I and II of the Lieder und Gesaenge; his first song-cycle, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen; and the later orchestral settings of Wunderhorn poems. The central section of the book explores the extraordinary and often eccentric chronology of the First, Second and Third Symphonies' composition, an often minute exploration which reveals the interpenetration of song and symphony in this period of Mahler's art, emphasizes the significance for these works of imagery drawn from the Wunderhorn anthology, and calls attention to the ambiguous position occupied by much of Mahler's music at this time, suspended as it was between the rival claims - and forms - of symphony and symphonic poem. The final section of the book not only looks at the Fourth Symphony as the final, perhaps most perfect, flowering of Mahler's Wunderhorn symphonies, but also investigates such fascinating topics as the relationship between Mahler and Berlioz, and the influence of Bach on Mahler's later masterpieces. This new edition of the book offers an entirely new preface, in which Mitchell gives a unique account of the influence of politics, nationalism and fascism on the reception and rejection of Mahler's music, after the composer's death until the Mahler Renaissance of the 1950s and 1960s. It also includes extensive corrigenda and amplifying addenda, making it clear that the Wunderhorn influence persisted beyond the end of the period during which the Wunderhorn anthology was a constant source of inspiration. It is completed by an international bibliography which documents chronologically the reception and study of his music both in the past, and the prodigiously different circumstances of the present.
From the composer's lifetime to the present day, Gustav Mahler's music has provoked extreme responses from the public and from experts. Poised between the Romantic tradition he radically renewed and the austere modernism whose exponents he inspired, Mahler was a consummate public persona and yet an impassioned artist who withdrew to his lakeside hut where he composed his vast symphonies and intimate song cycles. His advocates have produced countless studies of the composer's life and work. But they have focused on analysis internal to the compositions, along with their programmatic contexts. In this volume, musicologists and historians turn outward to examine the broader political, social, and literary changes reflected in Mahler's music. Peter Franklin takes up questions of gender, Talia Pecker Berio examines the composer's Jewish identity, and Thomas Peattie, Charles S. Maier, and Karen Painter consider, respectively, contemporary theories of memory, the theatricality of Mahler's art and fin-de-siècle politics, and the impinging confrontation with mass society. The private world of Gustav Mahler, in his songs and late works, is explored by leading Austrian musicologist Peter Revers and a German counterpart, Camilla Bork, and by the American Mahler expert Stephen Hefling. Mahler's symphonies challenged Europeans and Americans to experience music in new ways. Before his decision to move to the United States, the composer knew of the enthusiastic response from America's urban musical audiences. Mahler and His World reproduces reviews of these early performances for the first time, edited by Zoë Lang. The Mahler controversy that polarized Austrians and Germans also unfolds through a series of documents heretofore unavailable in English, edited by Painter and Bettina Varwig, and the terms of the debate are examined by Leon Botstein in the context of the late-twentieth-century Mahler revival.
Since its emergence in sixteenth-century Germany, the magician Faust's quest has become one of the most profound themes in Western history. Though variants are found across all media, few adaptations have met with greater acclaim than in music. Bringing together more than two dozen authors in a foundational volume, The Oxford Handbook of Faust in Music testifies to the spectacular impact the Faust theme has exerted over the centuries. The Handbook's three-part organization enables readers to follow the evolution of Faust in music across time and stylistic periods. Part I explores symphonic, choral, chamber, and solo Faust works by composers from Beethoven to Schnittke. Part II discusses the range of Faustian operas, and Part III examines Faust's presence in ballet and musical theater. Illustrating the interdisciplinary relationships between music and literature and the fascinating tapestry of intertextual relationships among the works of Faustian music themselves, the volume suggests that rather than merely retelling the story of Faust, these musical compositions contribute significant insights on the tale and its unrivalled cultural impact.
Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig (1897-1948) was a Viennese musicologist and critic who studied at the universities of Budapest and Vienna. From 1933 he embarked on producing a large-scale study of Mahler but at the time of his death the manuscript was left unfinished. Although it was presumed lost until 1997, the unfinished typescript, written in German, had been deposited in the library of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. In 2003, the School‘s Research Centre commissioned Jeremy Barham to prepare the first published edition of this important work, and his annotations and commentary add invaluable material to his translation of this historic document. Biographical material is used as a loose framework and platform for Mathis-Rosenzweig‘s profound examination of the environment within which Mahler‘s earlier music was embedded. This is an environment in which Wagner, Bruckner and Wolf feature prominently, and in which Mahler‘s music is viewed from the wider perspective of nineteenth-century German cultural domination and the subsequent rise of political extremism in the form of Hitlerite fascism.
In 2010, the composer Gustav Mahler celebrates his one hundred fiftieth birthday. In Mahler Re-Composed, linguist George Cummins shares a collection of six interrelated essays that provide a fresh perspective on difficult questions familiar to Mahler lovers. Cummins, a teacher of Russian and Czech at Tulane University, brings a uniquely Czech perspective to the study of Mahlers personality and work. In his careful examination of the composers life and work, Cummins begins with an introduction that provides a glimpse into Mahler the Czech and continues with an account of Mahlers conversion from Judaism to Catholicism while making his way to the Vienna Hofoper directorship. Cummins also takes a skeptical look at the legend of Mahler as an impotent, humorless neurotic and recreates the friendship between Strauss and Mahlertwo of the greatest musicians of the early twentieth century.
