199
See also: Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune 228–231 ■ Le Sacre du printemps
246–251 ■ November Steps 314–315 ■ L’Amour de loin 325Gustav Mahler
The second of 14 children of
Jewish parents, Mahler was
born in 1860 and spent his
childhood in the Czech-
speaking town of Iglau (now
Jihlava). He gave his first
piano recital at age 10 and five
years later entered the Vienna
Conservatory. His cantata Das
klagende Lied (1880) showed
amazing early self-awareness,
exploring a spectral, folk-tale
world in a vivid orchestral
style. A stellar conducting
career led to the composer’s
appointment in 1897 as artistic
director of the Vienna Court
Opera. Mahler wrote most
of his music—largely song
settings and symphonies—
during summers among the
Austrian lakes.
Departure from the Vienna
Court Opera in 1907 was
followed by conducting work
in New York. Mahler died soon
after returning to Europe from
America, in 1911.of unknown regions. The decisive
impetus for the cult of exoticism
came in the 19th century, as
European powers busily pursued
global empire-building rivalries.
At home, industrialization created
rapid growth in towns and cities,
with populations living and
working in oppressive conditions
that generated an inner need for
psychological escape.Selling the exotic
The world of literature latched
onto the sales possibilities of exotic
subject matter, as in the South Seas
tales of Robert Louis Stevenson
(1850–1894) or the romanticized
Native American world depicted
in The Song of Hiawatha by Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882).
Exoticism also flourished among
painters. French artist Paul Gauguin
(1848–1903) moved to the French
Polynesian island of Tahiti in 1891,
to explore new avenues of artistic
expression, aware that the European
vogue for the exotic would ensure
sales of his work in Paris.
European classical music, too,
was drawn to the imagined sounds
of enticing worlds to the south andeast. Operas were set in alluringly
foreign settings, such as Giuseppe
Verdi’s Aida (1871), a fictional story
of ancient Egypt. In orchestral
music, Russia’s Nikolai Rimsky-
Korsakov based his symphonic
suite Scheherazade (1888) on
stories from a collection of Middle
Eastern folk tales that became
known as The Arabian Nights. The
French composer Claude Debussy
found the piano especially suitable
for suggesting images of remote
worlds, using Javanese melodies
in Pagodes (Pagodas), from his
Estampes (Engravings) of 1903.Life through new eyes
Before he composed Das Lied von
der Erde, Mahler did not seem to be
influenced by the growing European
love of exoticism. His choice of texts
for his songs and symphonies had
come mostly from one particular
area of Austro-German culture: the
folk poetry, usually anonymous, ❯❯ROMANTIC 1810 –1920
Other key works1888–1894 Symphony No. 2
(“Resurrection”)
1892–1901 Des Knaben
Wunderhorn (The Boy’s
Magic Horn)
1908–1909 Symphony No. 9Mahler wrote Das Lied von der Erde
while staying at the Hotel Bellevue in
the Italian town of Cortina. The peaks
of the Dolomites provided a dramatic
backdrop for his compositions.US_198-201_Mahler.indd 199 26/03/18 1:01 PM