Written by Robert Greenberg
Format: MP3
Bitrate: 192 Kbps

''I am thrice homeless, as a Bohemian in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, as a Jew throughout the world-everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.''

Thus spoke Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), composer, conductor, symphonist.

More than many other composers, Gustav Mahler's works are highly personal expressions of his inner world, a world characterized by an overwhelming alienation and loneliness.

Some of this feeling can be attributed to Mahler's Jewish heritage and his critics' response to it. Part of his isolation began in childhood, a reaction to a brutal father and the loss of eight siblings, including his beloved brother Ernst.

The tensions created by the mix of Czech, Germanic, and Jewish cultures Mahler was raised in is one of the elements that makes his work so striking and powerful.

Incredibly, Mahler was able to unite the diversity of his world and his often tortured emotional makeup into rich and original music.



8 Lectures
45 minutes / lecture

1 Introduction and Childhood
2 Mahler the Conductor
3 Early Songs and Symphony No. 1
4 The Wunderhorn Symphonies
5 Alma and Vienna
6 Family Life and Symphony No. 5
7 Symphony No. 6, and Das Lied von der Erde
8 Das Lied, Final Symphonies, and the End