CHAMPAIGN, Ill. – A century after composer-conductor Gustav Mahler’s death, his music is perhaps more popular today than it was during the half century that he lived. After his death in 1911, Mahler was nearly forgotten, until conductor Leonard Bernstein’s performances of his work beginning in the mid-1960s sparked a renewed interest in Mahler, propelling the Czech-born composer from virtual obscurity to the cultural-icon status that he has today. The sesquicentennial of Mahler’s birth has been marked during 2010 with a flurry of memorial concerts and releases of recordings of his music; the commemorations will continue in 2011, marking the centenary of his death.
In a new book, “Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish Identity in Fin-de-Siècle Vienna” (Camden House, 2010), Carl Niekerk, a professor of German who also holds appointments in the programs in Comparative and World Literature and in Jewish Culture and Society at Illinois, explores the literary, philosophical and cultural references in Mahler’s work, revealing hitherto unexamined dimensions.
Challenging contemporary images of Mahler and interpretations of his compositions as outside of the ideological and political debates of his time and looking nostalgically back at an idealized version of the past, Niekerk offers a portrait of Mahler as an avant-garde intellectual with unorthodox literary and cultural interests who explored radical philosophical concepts and exposed troubling aspects of German culture and society through his music.
“Mahler is often seen as a romantic who idealized German cultural history” through his use of traditional German folk songs and lyrics that referred to a Utopian past, but Mahler was actually critical of the budding cultural nationalism of his time and resisted and attempted to subvert efforts to read a nationalistic and conservative agenda into German cultural history, Niekerk said.
Mahler was, in fact, a sophisticated cultural critic who was very aware of the world around him. Through his music, Mahler challenged conventional views on love, death, religion and nature.
By detailed examination of the program notes that Mahler wrote for his symphonies along with Mahler’s letters and statements about his work, Niekerk reveals the influence of intellectuals such as the novelist Jean Paul, Mahler’s close friend the Austrian poet Siegfried Lipiner, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, poet Friedrich Rückert and composer and essayist Richard Wagner.
One of the most controversial aspects of Mahler’s compositions is “the sometimes very sudden shifts from deep desolation to (ostensibly) uninhibited and unambiguous joy,” Niekerk wrote. Mahler’s music frequently polarizes listeners, who are either moved by the divergent emotions it conveys or are repelled by them.
However, Niekerk theorizes that these contrasting elements are not reflections of the composer’s tormented psyche; rather they are Mahler’s musical interpretation of Nietzsche’s post-metaphysical philosophy about the cathartic role of suffering and its transformation into joy.
A facet of Mahler’s life often given scant attention by scholars is Mahler’s Jewish heritage and the institutionalized anti-Semitism that surrounded him in fin-de-siècle Vienna. Niekerk examines how this ideology influenced Mahler’s reception in the public sphere and manifested itself in his choices as a composer and as a conductor. Niekerk also explores Mahler’s relationship with Wagner, whom Mahler admired as a creative artist and intellectual but who advocated a cultural agenda of German nationalism and anti-Semitism.
