Gustav Mahler: Letters to His Wife

Not unlike his grand and idiosyncratic musical oeuvre, Gustav Mahler's marriage to Alma Mahler straddled the border between the Romantic 19th and the Modern 20th centuries. Even as they shared a mutual ambition to realize their full potential as artists, Alma soon fell into the traditional role of dutiful wife to her genius husband. Ultimately, their relationship was far more complicated than this single dynamic, but a year before they married, the 22-year-old Alma already sensed the ambiguous influence the much older and fiercely self-dedicated Gustav would have on her. ""Already I am aware of changes in myself, due to him,"" she confided to her diary. ""He is taking much away from me and giving me much in return. If this process continues, he will make a new person of me."" As Gustav's letters suggest, Alma produced her own equal and opposite effect, intimate vibrations that were registered in Mahler's massive structures of sound. Her famous liaisons with other prominent artists of her time--including painter Oskar Kokoschka and architect Walter Gropius--almost seem prefigured here as well, as a vicarious outlet to her own stifled artistic agency. Collectors of Mahleriana will find this expertly compiled volume indispensable. More than half of its 350 letters and postcards are published for the first time, and many of the old letters, which were once heavily emended by the distorting hands of Alma herself, are restored to their original form. Accompanying editorial notes--and generous excerpts from Alma's diaries and memoirs--help bridge the chronological gaps between letters and provide further context for the Mahlers' relationship. But it's the novel-like intensity of the pair's complex and tempestuous love affair that will really broaden the audience for this book beyond its sure-fire appeal to students of modern art and feminism.