Gustav Mahler: New Insights into His Life, Times and Work

Alfred Mathis-Rosenzweig (1897a€“1948) was a Viennese musicologist and critic who studied at the universities of Budapest and Vienna. From 1933 he embarked on producing a large-scale study of Mahler but at the time of his death the manuscript was left unfinished. Although it was presumed lost until 1997, the unfinished typescript, written in German, had been deposited in the library of the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. In 2003, the Schoola€?s Research Centre commissioned Jeremy Barham to prepare the first published edition of this important work, and his annotations and commentary add invaluable material to his translation of this historic document. Biographical material is used as a loose framework and platform for Mathis-Rosenzweiga€?s profound examination of the environment within which Mahlera€?s earlier music was embedded. This is an environment in which Wagner, Bruckner and Wolf feature prominently, and in which Mahlera€?s music is viewed from the wider perspective of nineteenth-century German cultural domination and the subsequent rise of political extremism in the form of Hitlerite fascism.

Jeremy Barham is Lecturer in Music at the University of Surrey. His research interests include the music of Gustav Mahler; 19th- and early 20tha€“century music history and aesthetics, interdisciplinary and cultural studies, film studies and jazz. He is the author of numerous articles on Mahler and editor for The Cambridge Companion to Mahler (2005).