ORIGIN AND CHILDHOOD / VIENNA - PRENTICE YEARS
Origin and childhood
Gustav Mahler was born on July 17th 1860 in Kalischt (Bohemia)
and grew up as eldest of fourteen surviving children - seven of his brothers
and sisters died early. Therefore, the part of the eldest was assigned
to him and after the death of the parents the partof the head of the family.
The mother Marie Hermann (1837-1889), he loved her particularly,
came from a Jewish middle-class family. Weakened by the numerous births,
she suffered all her life from the domineering temper of her husband. The
father Bernhard Mahler (1827-1889) was the son of a Jewish peddler
and came from a poor family. In the course of his life, he rose from a
driver to an owner of a distillery. In December 1860, the family
moved to Iglau (Jihlava), the second biggest city in Moravia.
Mahler himself is supposed to have said once about his descent:
„I am triply stateless, as Bohemian among Austrians, as Austrian among
Germans and as Jew in the whole world."
First music lessons
Mahler's musical talent became manifest early. From 6 years onwards, the
theater conductor of Iglau Franz Viktorin gave him regularly piano
lessons. In 1869, Johannes Bosch became Mahler's piano teacher.
Bosch had opened with Viktorin a music school for piano and violin in Iglau
and spared obviously no effort to make the child a virtuoso.
On October 13th 1870, the ten-year-old Gustav had his first
public performance as pianist at the municipal theater of Iglau. The local
press talked about the „future piano virtuoso" and attested the „son of
a local Isrealite businessman" a „great and honorable success". Already
before his concert debut, Mahler is supposed to have given other children
piano lessons.
The father wanted to give his son a better school education and
to introduce him also into circles, which could be beneficial to the development
of his musical talent. He place the son with a family in Prague, which
was supposed to take also the responsibility for Gustav's further piano
lessons. But it did not work. Gustav was left on his own, failed at school
and returned finally to Iglau.
Studies at the conservatory
Through his school-day friend Josef Steiner (1857-1913) -
they went both to the secondary school in Iglau - the fifteen-year-old
Mahler became acquainted with Gustav Schwarz, a relative of Steiner's father.
Schwarz was impressed by Mahler's virtuoso piano playing and became Mahler's
first patron. He convinced Mahler's parents of the musical talent of their
son and offered to get him the access to the study of music at the conservatory
of Vienna. He succeeded through his acquaintance with the piano professor
at the conservatory, Julius Epstein (1832-1926).
On September 10th 1875, Mahler was admitted to the Konservatorium
für Musik und darstellende Kunst der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde
(conservatory for music and interpretative arts of the society of music
lovers) and attended the class of Julius Epstein, who ran the piano training.
Obviously, Epstein regarded the abilities of his student as sufficient
to recommend him also as piano teacher. He entrusted to Mahler even his
own son Richard, who became later a concert pianist.
Mahler's harmony teacher during the first year was the composer
Robert
Fuchs (1847-1927). Mahler absented himself quite often from classes,
because he remained at the same time day student at the secondary school
in Iglau. Later, Fuchs liked to relate that Mahler was always proficient
in everything and that his colleagues admired him therefore as „new Schubert".
In June 1876, Mahler was awarded the first prize at a piano
contest of the conservatory for the recital of a Schubert sonata and in
July also the first prize in the composition subject for the first movement
of a piano quartet.
At the composition contest of 1878, he won the first prize
with a piano quintet, which was performed school-leaving concert. Mahler
played himself the piano part. One of his four colleagues was the violoncello
student Eduard Rosé, the elder brother of the famous concertmaster
of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, Arnold Rosé. Later,
the relations the the Rosé brothers became even more close, as Mahler's
sister Justine married Arnold Rosé and his sister Emma the cellist
Eduard.Between
1877 and 1880, Mahler was also student at the University of
Vienna, but without having finished his studies.
Gustav Mahler and Anton Bruckner
Anton Bruckner (1824-1896) taught harmony and counterpoint since
1868
at the conservatory of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and worked since
1875/76
as instructor for these subjects at the University of Vienna. Mahler had
the opportunity to study under Bruckner, but we do not know for sure, if
he did it. Later, he stated explicitly that he has never been Bruckner's
student formally, although he called himself a successor and student of
the great symphonist in a wider sense. Already in his student days, he
numbered among Bruckner's most loyal fans.
The episode of the failure of the première of Bruckner's
Third Symphony is noted: Among the few listeners, who were enthusiastic
about the work and applauded composer who was the absolutely down, were
Mahler and his fellow student Rudolf Krzyzanowski as well as the
publisher Theodor Rättig.
In a letter to the admired composer, Mahler assured that he deemed
it one of his goals in life to help Bruckner's art to find its merited
triumph.
In 1886, he presented the scherzo of Bruckner's Third Symphony
to the pubic of Prague. In Hamburg, he conducted the whole symphony, the
Mass in D minor and the „Te Deum", which „mighty structure"
and „elevated ideas" impressed deeply the public, as Mahler wrote
to Bruckner in April 1892. He performed the scherzo of Bruckner's
Fourth Symphony during the world's fair in Paris in 1900.
But he did the perhaps most kind deed for the beloved master in
1910.
To enable the publication of Bruckner's works by a Viennese publishing
house, Mahler charged a sum of 50,000 crowns to his own account.
The Viennese Beethoven contest
Already in 1878, Mahler had participated in the Beethoven
contest with the overture of an opera („Die Argonauten"). But the jury
awarded no prize at that time. Three years later, he presented a cantata
„Das klagende Lied" a composition for solos, choir and orchestra, on
which text he had worked since 1878.
All the previous compositions, which remained mostly unfinished,
were destroyed, are missed or exist only in fragments, have to be considered
as juvenilia.
Later, Mahler regarded „Das klagende Lied" as his first
fully valid work and labeled it as op 1. He altered a bit the story of
the „singing little bone" from Ludwig Bechstein's „Neues Deutsches Märchenbuch"
(new German book of fairy tales) and divided the ballad into three sections:
„Waldmärchen",
„Der Spielmann" and „Hochzeitsstück".
Despite the today discernible early mastery in instrumentation
and voice treatment, his entry for the Beethoven prize was not successful.
The jury awarded the first prize to Mahler's teacher, Robert Fuchs, for
a piano concerto in B-flat minor. The second prize went to Victor R. con
Herzfeld.
Mahler revised „Das klagende Lied" several times. In 1898,
it was finally published in a two-part version (without „Waldmärchen).
The cantata was performed for the first time only in 1901 in Vienna.
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