A new analysis of Mahler's symphonies, placing each within the context of his musical way of being in and experiencing the world.
Between 1888 and 1909 Gustav Mahler completed nine symphonies and the orchestral song cycle Das Lied von der Erde; his tenth symphony was left incomplete at his death in 1911. Mahler's Symphonic World provocatively suggests that over his lifetime, the composer pursued a single vision and a single, ideal symphony that strived to capture his personal outlook on human existence. Writing at the turn of the twentieth century, when all trust in firm philosophical and spiritual foundations had evaporated, Mahler's music reflected a deep preoccupation with human suffering and transience and a search for sources of possible consolation.
In Karol Berger's reading, each of the symphonies follows a similar trajectory, with an opening quest leading to the final unveiling of a transcendent, consolatory vision. By juxtaposing single movements—the opening Allegros, the middle movements, the Finales—across different works, Berger traces recurring plotlines and imagery and discloses the works' multiple interrelationships as well as their cohesiveness around a central idea. Ultimately, Mahler's Symphonic World locates Mahler's music within the matrix of intellectual currents that defined his epoch and offers a revelatory picture of his musical way of being in the world.
By:
Karol Berger
Imprint: Chicago University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Spine: 30mm
Weight: 653g
ISBN: 9780226836027
ISBN 10: 0226836029
Pages: 392
Publication Date: 17 March 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface Prologue: The Lesson of Mahler 1. Cycles: The Norm and Its Extensions 2. Allegro: The March of the World The First: Art before Art The Second: Building and Breaking The Third: The Rite of Summer The Fourth: Neoclassicism and Exhaustion The Fifth: The Tentative Triumph The Sixth: The Programmatic Temptation The Seventh: The Intransitive Anticipation The Ninth: The Amalgamation of Forms The Tenth: Music and Autobiography 3. Andante: The Respite The Funeral March The First: Jewishness in Music The Dance-Based Andante The Second: Remembrance of Music’s Past The Third: The Dance of the jeunes filles en fleurs The Serenade The Sixth: Night Music I The Seventh: Night Music II and III 4. Scherzo: The Run of the World The First: Danse à la campagne and Danse à la ville The Second: An Outsider Looks In The Third: Animals Listen The Fourth: Dancing till We Drop The Fifth: La Valse The Sixth: The Invention of Cubism The Seventh: Night Music IV The Ninth: The Development of Cubism The Rondo-Burleske of the Ninth: The Wild Chase Postscript: The Tenth 5. Finale: In Search of Consolation The Allegro-Finale The First: The Breakthrough The Sixth: The Unmotivated Catastrophe The Rondo-Finale The Fifth: The Taking Back of the Ninth The Seventh: On the Nuremberg Meadow The Adagio-Finale The Third: Love Descending The Ninth: On the Heights The Vocal Finale The Second: The Taking Up of the Ninth The Fourth: Finding the Solution 6. The Vocal Cycles The Eighth Symphony I. Hymnus: Veni, creator spiritus II. Schlußszene aus “Faust” Das Lied von der Erde I. Das Trinklied vom Jammer der Erde II. Der Einsame im Herbst III. Von der Jugend IV. Von der Schönheit V. Der Trunkene im Frühling VI. Der Abschied 7. Symphonies for the Age of Uncertainty The Sense of an Ending How Poor a Yea-Sayer Was Mahler? The Worldview Music Epilogue: The Lesson of Proust Acknowledgments Symphonic Works Chronology Notes Bibliography Index
Karol Berger is the Osgood Hooker Professor in Fine Arts, Emeritus in the Department of Music at Stanford University. He is an award-winning author of a number of books, most recently Bach’s Cycle, Mozart’s Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity and Beyond Reason: Wagner contra Nietzsche.
Reviews for Mahler's Symphonic World: Music for the Age of Uncertainty
“Deploying a brilliant range of literary and philosophical sources in tandem with innovative analyses of all that is most striking in Mahler’s symphonic world, Karol Berger grants the composer his greatest reach as a cultural force during a time when the once reassuring foundations of reason were rapidly giving way to the existential alarms of modernity. The book’s creatively designed structure stems from the imaginative supposition that Mahler composed one ideal symphony, emanating from resonant features shared by the movement types of his real symphonies.” * Scott Burnham, Graduate Center, City University of New York * “Berger’s book provides important suggestions for a new reading of Mahler’s compositional world. By analyzing his symphonies not work by work but rather through comparisons of individual movements of the same kind, Berger clearly brings into focus their role in either fulfilling the Viennese symphonic norms, expanding them, or altogether exploding them. This immensely insightful treatise opens up challenging new perspectives that will be of great importance for future research—not only into the dimensions of Mahler’s symphonic oeuvre but also in the multifaceted history of symphony in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” * Peter Revers, University of Music and Performing Arts Graz * ""Karol Berger’s new Mahler’s Symphonic World: Music for the Age of Uncertainty thrives on the author’s singular breadth of perspective. The outcome is nothing if not a 'fresh attempt': a philosophical-analytical study yielding an exigent message. . . . I find this reading of Mahler—the man, the composer—both credible and moving. In fact, it is essential."" -- Joseph Horowitz * The American Scholar *
