Gustav Mahler: Letters to his Wife (review)

The relationship between Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma remains a fascinating part of the composer's biography for the insights it gives to his works. Mahler dedicated his Eighth Symphony to his wife, and supposedly attempted to depict her in one of the themes of his Sixth Symphony. For these and other reasons, Alma was a force in Gustav's life, and he wrote to her often throughout their marriage. The publication of the complete extant letters of Gustav Mahler to Alma makes available one side of the correspondence that went on for over a decade, from their first meeting in 1901 through the composer's death in 1911.

These letters are not entirely unknown, since Alma Mahler published a selection of them in Erinnerungen und Briefe (Amsterdam: Allert de Lange, 1940), translated in English as Gustav Mahler: Memories and Letters, 3d ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1975). Yet Alma was selective in compiling her collection and either edited the letters she included or entirely omitted others. This new book is based on the German-language collection Ein Gluck ohne Ruh', edited by the Mahler biographer Henry-Louis de La Grange and Günther Weiss (Berlin: Wolf Jobst Siedler Verlag, 1995), which had previously been available only in German.

In their edition, La Grange and Weiss assembled almost twice the amount of material found in Alma's edition, with approximately 188 letters first published in their edition. The present English translation includes all the letters, including the introductory material that discusses the problems with the earlier edition. Their discussion of editorial matters is particularly helpful in understanding the need for this new collection (especially pp. xvii–xxi), which includes a summary of the different numbers of letters from section to section. In fact, an index of all the letters may be found on pp. 405–13, and those who are interested in doing so can use this list to compare the contents with the earlier Memories and Letters. It is unfortunate that the editors did not include a tabular comparison, like the one that Herta Blaukopf published in her edition of Mahler's Briefe (Vienna: Zsolnay, 1982; rev. ed., 1996). The new Letters to His Wife differs from Ein Gluck ohne Ruh' because of some refinements in the dating of the letters, which is based on further study of materials in the Moldenhauer Collection of the Bayerischer Staatsbibliothek (for an overview of the collection, see Gustav Mahler: Briefe und Musikautographen aus den Moldenhauer-Archiven in der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek. Patrimonia, vol. 157. [Munich: Kulturstiftung der Länder Freistaat Bayern, Bayerische Landesstiftung, Bundesministerium des Innern, 2002]). For this reason, those using the German edition should consult the English translation to confirm the details about the dates and provenance of the letters. (The Kritischer Bericht found in the German edition, but not in the English translation, contains information about the provenance of each letter.)

Nevertheless, in comparing Letters to His Wife with Memories and Letters, the differences become immediately apparent. In the first section of letters found in Letters to His Wife, for example, two of the seven are newly published, and, more importantly some differences occur in the translations. Beaumont's rendering is more accurate, and affords a clearer sense of the German originals. A casual reader might find his phrasing of "vocal compositions" (in letter no. 3, 28 November 1901) wordier than "songs," as expressed in the earlier translation, but it represents better Mahler's original "Gesangscompositionen" as does the translation of "Stufenleiter" as "hierarchy" (rather than the previous "stage by stage") in letter 276 (of 22[?] June 1909), in which Gustav wrote to Alma about some aspects of Goethe's Faust. Similar improvements occur throughout, and only in isolated cases do questions arise.

A translation of "Mär aus meinen jungen Tagen" (in letter no...