Mahler's Symphonic World by Karol Berger
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.
“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 modernityThe 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 *
“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 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.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780226836027 |
| ISBN 10 | 0226836029 |
| Title | Mahler's Symphonic World |
| Author | Karol Berger |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | The University of Chicago Press |
| Year published | 2025-01-14 |
| Number of pages | 392 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |