Gustav Mahler

An approachable critical biography of the late nineteenth-century Viennese composer.

Gustav Mahler’s status as an icon of fin-de-siècle Viennese music is assured, and while his life story has been told in numerous biographies, films, and novels, he remains an ambiguous, provocative figure. Supposedly haunted by death and trapped in a torrid marriage, Mahler’s brief meeting with Freud has spurred psychoanalytical speculations, but there are other questions to explore as well. Mahler challen...