The Mahler Family Letters (review)

One day it might become possible to embark upon a complete edition of Mahler's letters. Those currently published are scattered in various states of textual completeness among a number of volumes, and more are continually coming to light. The first collection was somewhat idiosyncratically edited (and expurgated) by the composer's wife (Gustav Mahler Briefe 1879-1911, ed. Alma Maria Mahler (Vienna, 1924)); it was followed by Alma's similarly selective and tailored (if still generous) collection of his letters to her that made up the second part of her 1940 Gustav Mahler: Erinnerungen und Briefe (Amsterdam, 1940 and 1949). Both of those collections have since been extended and subjected to revealing modern textual scholarship: the first by Herta Blaukopf (Gustav Mahler Briefe (Vienna, 1982)) and the second by Henry-Louis de La Grange and Günther Weiss (Ein Glück ohne Ruh': Die Briefe Gustav Mahlers an Alma (1st edn., Berlin, 1895), translated and revised by Antony Beaumont as Gustav Mahler: Letters to his Wife (London, 2004)). A good many other letters had been published piecemeal in catalogues, journal articles, and memoirs. Some found their way into the Mahler-Strauss correspondence (Gustav Mahler Richard Strauss Briefwechsel 1888-1911, ed. Herta Blaukopf (Munich, 1980), trans. Edmund Jephcott as the Mahler-Strauss Correspondence (London, 1984)) and the later volume of Mahler's unknown letters (Gustav Mahlers Unbekannte Briefe, ed. Herta Blaukopf (Vienna, 1983), trans. Richard Stokes as Mahler's Unknown Letters (London, 1986)). In 2006 came two important new additions: the correspondence with Anna von Mildenburg, edited by Franz Willnauer (Gustav Mahler 'Mein lieber Trotzkopf, mein süsse Mohnblume': Briefe an Anna von Mildenburg (Vienna, 2006)), and then at last this new collection of 'family' letters, the bulk of which had been carefully preserved by Mahler's devoted sister Justine.

They had found their way to Canada, thanks to the continued custodianship of the family (specifically of Justine and Arnold Rosé's daughter-in-law, Maria Rosé, who donated them to the Music Library of the University of Western Ontario in 1983). As Stephen McClatchie points out in his introduction, they had been consulted by Henry-Louis de La Grange in the 1950s, and translated extracts were incorporated into his enormous biography of the composer; but in some cases he had relied on faulty transcriptions and, more importantly, he appears to have seen only part of the collection published here. To be able then to read these letters in their entirety is wonderful—and McClatchie is to be praised for his painstaking efforts at textual reclamation and dating. The joy is not entirely unalloyed: the translations are sometimes uneasy and often seem idiomatically confused. Mahler begs Justine and others to 'write him'; accommodation is always in the plural—and would Mahler really have kept his reading matter (p. 184) in a 'book armoire'? Detailed textual critique is now usefully facilitated by the German edition, Gustav Mahler, 'Liebste Justi!': Briefe an die familie (Bonn and Weidle, 2006).

What is so important about this collection is that it covers the earlier, 'pre-Alma', part of Mahler's life. Over-eager Mahlerians might at first feel a little disappointed by so much apparent trivia concerning family management, bookkeeping, and budgeting and so relatively little in the way of revelations about his compositional and intellectual preoccupations. But there are jewels buried here, and cumulatively this correspondence reveals a very great deal about Mahler's character and psychology, as about his closest family and friends.

The 568 letters are presented chronologically in five sections, each prefaced by a brief summary of the period in question. The first, 'The Early Years (Vienna, Kassel, Prague and Leipzig)', comprises sixty-two letters in just over forty pages; 'Budapest, September 1880-March 1891' is slightly longer, including forty-seven letters; the longest by far covers 'Hamburg, March 1891—April 1897 (nearly 200 pages and 283 letters). The last two sections, 'Vienna, April 1897—November 1907' and 'The Last Years...