Word: mahler
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...slight man, Mahler wrote giant-sized, tempestuous music that echoes his countryman, Anton Bruckner; on first hearing, a Mahler piece usually sounds like far-out Brahms with Wagnerian delusions. To Mahler, the symphony was the ideal musical form; he composed no chamber music, no music for solo instruments, no small-scaled choral pieces; even his famous song cycle, Das Lied von der Erde, calls for a full orchestra. Of the ten symphonies he wrote, only the First and Fourth are of normal length; the rest run on for as much as 90 minutes and employ vast orchestras. Symphony...
Thunderously emotional at times, monumentally high-flown at others, the symphonies glow with richly romantic colors and a kind of mystical fervor. Too often they tend to be bombastic and sentimental. But in his finest pages, as in the slow movement of Symphony No. 9, Mahler wrote some of the most eloquent music...
Behind the Curtain. By all reports, he was at least as distinguished a conductor as he was a composer. Born into a non-musical Jewish family (his father owned a distillery) in the town of Kalischt in Bohemia, Gustav Mahler left home to study at the Vienna Conservatory at the age of 15. At 37, after years of composing and a succession of provincial conducting posts in Austria and Germany he became head of the Vienna Opera, and from that time on (1897), he was one of the most powerful men of music in Europe. He renovated the opera company...
...York as in Vienna, Mahler quickly earned a reputation for playing favorites among the orchestra personnel...
...summoned to the home of the chairman of the orchestra's executive committee and accused of "mistaken conduct." When the argument with the angry ladies became heated, Mahler's hostess drew a curtain, revealing a lawyer scribbling verbatim notes. Before Mahler left, he was forced to sign a legal document refusing him the right to choose programs and requiring him to dismiss a member of the orchestra who had kept him informed about what the others were saying about...