Section Three: research Basic Biographical Information
Gustav Mahler was born in seven, July 1860 in Bohemian, in a village of Kalischt in the Czech Republic. Mahler was a son to an Australian Jewish distiller, and a tavern keep. Mahler was raised from a poor and humble background as a fourth child even though he lost most of his siblings to death. While in childhood, Mahler experienced various fascinating events that shaped his future in music. Those events included sorrow life through the death of his siblings, racial tensions that were inserted by his parents since his father was violent, and a feeling of being outsider always in the indigenous Czech populations (Cooke, par1-2). Mahler’s unfriendly and poor background had a lot of significance in his artistic life, even though his music was banned until around fifty years after his death in 1911.
Gustav Mahler as the greatest symphonist and a Romantic composer, and a principal conductor during his generation, is known for various events in his life. First, Gustav Mahler’s fascinating life resulted in his expansion of significant compositions that were barred for over fifty years during the Second World War in Europe. Secondly, Mahler is regarded as a crucial forerunner of twentieth-century composition tactics thus helping in welcoming the modern period; and thirdly, Mahler took part in significant engagement to be an artistic director of the Vienna Court Opera from 1897 at Budapest and Hamburg when he was at the age of thirty-seven (Wiener, par, 5). Mahler was influenced by various people throughout his musical life, including Hermann Lotze, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Gustav Fechner. In 1911, eighteen, May, Mahler developed pneumonia and died in Löw sanatorium in Vienna, Australia.
Step Four: Identify Music Characteristics
Mahler music was romantic music that was mainly Symphony. The symphony music that was composed by Mahler had various characteristics. They included most of the themes that appear in a symphony frequently reappear in the next symphonies; Mahler’s first three symphonies are written with extensive programs to help his audience to understand; use of percussion and had soloists and choirs. And Some parts of Mahler’s music are virtuosic, and instrumentalists’ demands are very taxing, sometimes especially in the brass section (Oron, par, 6). During Mahler’s period, classical music was common. The classical and Symphony differed in various features such as, Symphony music that was produced by Mahler had increased use of percussion while classical had contradictions moods and Symphony had limited movements and emotional. In contrast, Classical had no specific feature since its messages depended on a writer. They also had similarities such as both classical music and symphony music used expressive combinations of the instruments in large and small scales, and both types of music at that era had flowing melodies and evocative harmonies between them.
Step 5: List of Musical Works
Mahler is famous for his ten symphonies and numerous orchestra songs with unique features compared to his era’s music. The composed music such as the ten symphonies and the various songs with orchestra are more complex and extensive that other earlier romantics since they were especially suitable for large orchestra due to the large variety of instruments. The music drew many strands of Romanticism together. Though Mahler’s works were based on emotions and romance, it can be categorized into three phases, including; “first period,” “ranging from Das klagende Lied in 1880 to the end of the Wunderhorn phase in 1901; a “middle period” of more concentrated composition ending with Mahler’s departure for New York in 1907. And a brief “late period” of elegiac works before his death in 1911”( Dimitrijevic, pp. 110). Despite the three distinct categories of his music, his work was mainly composed of orchestra, symphonies, and Romanticism.