Inside Mahler’s mind
The arc of Gustav Mahler’s career was staggering. Born in 1860 to a poor Jewish family in Bohemia, through tenacity and talent he climbed to dizzying heights, nabbing the conductorship of the Vienna Hofoper, New York’s Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. He became a celebrity, hounded by paparazzi as he zipped back and forth across the Atlantic by steamer, a forerunner of today’s globetrotting conductors with their NetJet commutes. Yet Mahler was plagued throughout his life by nagging existential fears, serious illness and marital strife. He poured this angst into his composing. “Why have you lived?” Mahler wrote in a letter to a friend. “Why have you suffered? Is it all some huge, awful joke?
