Anybody familiar with this book on Mahler?

[barry guerrero]

Looks pretty darn interesting. "Gustav Mahler: New Insights into his Life, Times and Work"

http://books.google.com/books?id=VIcSAX6tY1IC&pg=PA198&lpg=PA198&dq=gustav+mahler+letters&source=bl&ots=VOwiO36Kok&sig=1TnWgcZfcq_Nsz8kFgQ_LDA4jwk&hl=en&sa=X&ei=btDNU8KLGKS7igLc_YFY&ved=0CFUQ6AEwDDgK#v=onepage&q=gustav%20mahler%20letters&f=false

[pianobaba]

Found this description:

Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig (1897–1948) was a Viennese musicologist and critic who studied at the universities of Budapest and Vienna. From 1933 he embarked on producing a large-scale study of Mahler but at the time of his death the manuscript was left unfinished. Although it was presumed lost until 1997, the unfinished typescript, written in German, had been deposited in the library of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. In 2003, the School’s Research Centre commissioned Jeremy Barham to prepare the first published edition of this important work, and his annotations and commentary add invaluable material to his translation of this historic document. Biographical material is used as a loose framework and platform for Mathis-Rosenzweig’s profound examination of the environment within which Mahler’s earlier music was embedded. This is an environment in which Wagner, Bruckner and Wolf feature prominently, and in which Mahler’s music is viewed from the wider perspective of nineteenth-century German cultural domination and the subsequent rise of political extremism in the form of Hitlerite fascism.


And a pdf link to the introduction:
http://www.ashgate.com/pdf/SamplePages/Gustav_Mahler_Intro.pdf

[barry guerrero]

Thank you. What is of interest is that Rosenzweig makes the incredible assertion that Mahler was opposed to Wagner and Bayreuth, because it represented pre-WWI Prussian Imperialism. I think that's quite a stretch and I'm curious to read how he supports that supposition.

For one thing, Bayreuth is technically in northern Bavaria. Second, Wagner had little to do with northern German affairs. Wagner may have been both an anti-Semite and pan-German, but that doesn't mean that he carried a pro-Prussian agenda. Maybe that's splitting hairs, but there's no denying that Mahler was among the foremast conductors of Wagner's dramas in those days. Yes, I get it that Cosima was something of an adversary to Mahler. But that doesn't mean that Mahler harbored any grudge against Wagner himself. All the evidence seems to point to just the opposite.

[pianobaba]

That does seem unlikely. I am sure that if at the end of Mahler's time with the VSO, if he were offered the Bayreuth festival, he would have jumped at the chance. Mahler's whole career had been in the midst of vociferous anti-Semitism, reading some of the diatribes in the anti-Semitic press of Vienna it was just vile, and unrestrained. Mahler had a thick enough skin and served music above all that I'm sure he was hardly bothered by the Wagners' anti-Semitism. Though, I am interested in reading this work by Rosenzweig, particularly because he started it in 1933.

[barry guerrero]

"I am interested in reading this work by Rosenzweig"

Me too. A particular 'Mahler angel' in London has picked up a paperback copy for me. I should receive it near the middle of August, as they're coming out here.