Mahler in Vienna

Vienna Westbahnhof

Vienna! I've been home over a month and part of me is still there. Is there a more beautiful, civilized, and musical city? I doubt it.

This is not a city to quickly pass through as a superficial sightseer looking for cheap thrills, although one could easily do so and leave satiated.  This is a city of history and nuance. I really needed to spend two weeks, not three days, there. The strange thing is that I didn't put myself in the context of Froberger, Mozart, or Beethoven, but rather I found myself obsessed with Gustav Mahler. Okay, I must admit, I brought Jens Malte Fischer's biography of Mahler with me. That was asking for trouble.

Mahler, you might ask... Mahler?! Yes, it's true: Mahler is something of a guilty pleasure, I guess a bit like Glenn Gould. Both have such sublime moments, interrupted by their theatrics. When I was diagnosed with cancer six years ago, the first thing I bought through the iTunes store was Mahler's Das Lied von der Erde to carry me through the tests and hospitalization. A little macabre, but fitting.

Actually, identifying contemporary Vienna with Mahler, rather than the other big names of music, makes sense: today's surviving architecture is much closer to Mahler's time, the end of the 19th century. I got perhaps a slight flavor of Beethoven's time when I traveled through Grinzing and the Vienna Woods to Heiligenstadt, but it was fleeting. Walking down the Ringstrasse one could just imagine the diminutive Mahler charging down the street, self-absorbed in the turbulent  politics of the Opera, struggling to create a revolutionary musical symphonic language, and probably tied in knots over the lovely and complex Alma.

Of course, I read La Grange's first volume of Mahler's life many years ago. Biographies of Mahler are a wonderful opportunity to explore an important and complex time of political, social, and artistic transition in Europe.  Wikipedia provides a particularly good summary of Mahler's life, minus all of the cultural details.

If I were to time travel, the two places I would visit would be Vienna and Paris right around the dawn of the 20th century. What I wouldn't give to fulfill that image of Mahler charging down the Ringstrasse!