Fri 8 Jun 2007
Gustav Mahler was born on July 7, 1860, in Kaliště, Bohemia. His parents (Bernhard and
Marie) were Jewish and Bernhard was a shopkeeper. Gustav was the second of fourteen children, 5 of whom died as infants, one as a teenager and one at twenty-five. The family soon moved to Iglau in Moravia.
Gustav began to compose by age four. At age ten he made his debut as a pianist at the Iglau Municipal Theater. He went to Prague to pursue his studies but returned in 1872. At age 15, he attended the Conservatory in Vienna to study piano with Julius Epstein who also encouraged his composing. Mahler also admired Anton Bruckner who was a faculty member at the Conservatory at the time. He achieved his diploma in 1878.
In 1880, a financially struggling Mahler finished the cantata Das klagende Lied. In 1881, he was hired to conduct at the opera house in Laibach. He later held conducting positions at Prague, Leipzig, Budapest, and Hamburg. It was at Hamburg that Tchaikovsky was so impressed with Mahler that he requested that Mahler conduct Eugene Onegin for him (the composer himself had been planning to conduct). While his conducting was considered to be among the best in the world, reactions to his music (he continued to compose and completed a number of important works during this time), were considerably more negative.
In 1897, he took the position of Kapellmeister at the Vienna Court Opera, converting to Catholicism to do so. He had complete control over all aspects of production. In 1902, he married Alma Schindler, with whom he had two daughters. His eldest daughter died in 1907, an event that he blamed on his Kindertotenlieder (Songs of Dead Children) which he completed in 1904. Also in 1907, the Mahlers moved to New York where Gustav took
a position with the Metropolitan Opera. In 1911, Mahler collapsed with a streptococcus infection and left for Paris to get treated. Told it was untreatable, he returned to Vienna where he died on May 18, 1911.