Perspectives on Gustav Mahler (review)

The essays collected in Perspectives on Gustav Mahler represent the broad spectrum of current Mahler scholarship, and they contain something for everyone with an interest in Mahler: scholars and students of music and interdisciplinary fields, performers and their audiences, and the general public. Although some essays are works-in-progress, the collection as a whole fills gaps and dispels myths. If there is a theme to the collection, it is that of reconciling contradictions and controversies in Mahler's reception history and proving that Mahler defies labels.

Perspectives on Gustav Mahler is organized into five sections: "Nature, Culture, Aesthetic," "Reception: The Jewish and Eastern European Questions," "Analytic Approaches," "Mahler in Performance," and "Sketches, Editions and 'Performing Versions.' " The first section provides background for recurring issues. In the opening essay, "Vocal Music in the Symphonic Context," Zoltan Roman shows how the duality of Mahler as innovator and synthesizer has given him his unique place in music history. Roman illustrates how Mahler's First Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde mark the endpoints of a continuous development central to his oeuvre and characterized by an innovative expansion of "vocal music" (both with and without words) in the symphonic context, through which he synthesized symphonic trends at the end of the nineteenth century. Julian Johnson's essay "Mahler and the Idea of Nature" delves beyond duality in Mahler's treatment of nature in his music, which offers a discourse on rather than a representation of nature. Just as Mahler distances his music from conventional representations of nature, so too the idea of nature is distanced from the earthly and associated with the heavenly, but as a vision rather than a reality, and one that is not always idyllic and comforting.

In "Mahler the Thinker: The Books of the Alma Mahler-Werfel Collection," Jeremy Barham provides a "systematic examination of the contents of the collection, and includes a concordance lining these contents with pertinent references in the Mahler literature" (p. 38). Barham highlights important annotations and inscriptions as well as problems of provenance and ownership. Nevertheless, without more evidence, it is questionable whether the presence of certain books in Mahler's library indicates their influence on Mahler. "Mahler's Untimely Modernism" by Morten Solvik returns to the theme of Mahler's dualities, specifically, his innovations as a composer and conductor as opposed to his cultural conservatism "in the philosophical traditions he embraced, the artistic works he admired and the intellectual ground he defended" (p. 153). It is interesting to note, however, that Solvik's essay is consistent with Barham's description of the contents of Mahler's library in acknowledging that Mahler was well-read and familiar with the latest currents of thought.

Part 2 focuses on Mahler's "Jewishness" in both the abstract and the concrete. In "Jewish Identity and Anti-Semitic Critique in the Austro-German Reception of Mahler, 1900–1945," Karen Painter traces the attempts of music critics to establish an inherently Jewish character in Mahler's music, either for anti-Semitic purposes or matters of Jewish pride. But such writers encountered a problematic duality in the "Germanic" symphonic character of Mahler's music. Painter maintains that Mahler was the most important composer in the Austro-German anti-Semitic literature, and the anti-Semitism he faced from musicians and critics had a continuous presence in his life, arguably influencing his creative work and assimilist goals. Although Painter notes the lack of any overt engagement with Jewish culture in Mahler's work, Vladimír Karbusick´y, in "Mahler's Musical Jewishness," documents Mahler's familiarity with Jewish music and musicians, and the influence of the Old Testament and incorporation of Hasidic-Yiddish motives in his symphonies, such as in the ideas of resurrection and lamentation. Here, as elsewhere in the essay collection, the reader will perceive dualities not only in Mahler but also in Mahler scholarship.

Part 3, "Analytic Approaches," demonstrates that Mahler not only defies labels but also...