The Life of Mahler [Hardcover]

In this 1997 biography, Peter Franklin re-confronts the myth of Mahler and attempts to find the person behind the legends.As a leading European conductor, and the composer of enormous and controversial symphonies, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) inspired mythologizers in his own lifetime. Some of them were personal friends, concerned to counter biassed criticism of him in which German-nationalist, hide-bound traditionalist or antisemitic elements were often mixed. In this new biography, Peter Franklin re-confronts the myth of Mahler the misunderstood hero and attempts to find the person, or persons, behind the legends: the profoundly sensitive thinker and composer, the dictatorial conductor and husband, the iconoclast, the traditionalist.As a leading European conductor, and the composer of enormous and controversial symphonies, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) inspired mythologizers in his own lifetime. Some of them were personal friends, concerned to counter biassed criticism of him in which German-nationalist, hide-bound traditionalist or antisemitic elements were often mixed. In this new biography, Peter Franklin re-confronts the myth of Mahler the misunderstood hero and attempts to find the person, or persons, behind the legends: the profoundly sensitive thinker and composer, the dictatorial conductor and husband, the iconoclast, the traditionalist.As a leading European conductor and the composer of enormous and controversial symphonies, Gustav Mahler (1860-1911) inspired mythologizers in his own lifetime. Some of them were personal friends, concerned with countering biased criticism of him in which German-nationalist, hide-bound traditionalist or anti-Semitic elements were often mixed. In this new biography, Peter Franklin reconfronts the myth of Mahler-the-misunderstood-hero and attempts to find the person, or persons, behind the legends. His illuminating biography shows Mahler to be a profoundly sensitive thinker and composer, a dictatorial conductor and husband, an iconol³