This course focuses on the career of composer and conductor Gustav Mahler, including detailed discussions of his symphonies and song cycles as well as his influence as a conductor. The course also examines fin de siècle Vienna, including musical feuds between Brahms, Bruckner, and Hugo Wolf. And how can we ignore Vienna’s most glamorous personality, Alma Mahler, whose diaries are Vienna’s looking glass? Providing context, such spectacular personalities as Gustav Klimt and Sigmund Freud are discussed alongside Mahler as exemplars of an emerging modernist ethos.
