Mahlerman marvels at the remarkable, racy and musically-significant shenanigans of Mrs Mahler…
Reading, as I have been, the surviving letters of Gustav Mahler to his frisky (to put it mildly) wife Alma, I’m not sure I can answer my own question. Her apparent need to be economical with the truth dated back to her modest working-class childhood, around which she projected a miasma of half-truths and lies that sustained her into old age. Alma Schindler was born in 1879 to the landscape painter Emil Schindler and his mousy wife Anna, and when Emil died in 1892, her mother took-up immediately with Carl Moll, another artist who, five years later with a few friends (Klimt, Moser, Hoffmann etc), founded the Vienna Secession. It was during the early years of her mother’s relationship with Moll that Alma clearly developed her taste for powerful men, a taste which found its most important expression in her romance and marriage to Mahler in 1902. He was 41, Alma 21. The conductor Bruno Walter described her as ‘the most beautiful girl in Vienna’ and early photographs, before she overdid the sachertorte and apple strudel, support his view. She was a talented pianist, and composed a small collection of touching Lieder that still surface from time to time. Here, from the Five Songs (1910) is the brief Die stille Stadt (The Quiet Town), sung by the American Baritone Thomas Hampson.
When we consider the number of liaisons that Alma conducted, well into old age (she died in New York in 1964), it is not surprising that she found little time for composition. One of her early victims was the randy Austrian symbolist painter Gustav Klimt, and he was followed by another Austrian, her tutor, the composer Alexander von Zemlinsky who, through a combination of physical ugliness and poor prospects, was eventually dumped – but not before Alma had inspired him to create some wonderful music with his clothes on. Here, with tonality hanging on by a slim thread, the early Sinfonietta, opus 23.
Her skill as a muse reached a high point in her union with Gustav Mahler, but her unwillingness to completely turn her back on the salon life she had previously enjoyed, and Mahler’s intransigence over his workload as director at the Court Opera, and his growing reputation as a composer, made for a stormy marriage – and it would seem from her diaries that Gustav came up a little short in the trouser department, not something that this rampant libertine could put up with for long. There is no doubt from Mahler’s letters to Alma that his love for her was genuine and profound; he loved her beauty, as did many other men, but he also loved her intensity and her alert mind. The 5th Symphony, with its well known Adagietto, was a love letter to Alma; the 8th Symphony was dedicated to her; and the second subject of the first movement of the 6th Symphony has come to be known as ‘Alma’s theme’, starting in this short extract at 2:20
Gustav Mahler died on May 18th, 1911, and during his last illness he was was attended by Josef Fraenkel, a talented doctor and champion of Mahler’s music. As the great composer’s life ebbed away his wife began a short affair with Fraenkel, but this liaison was already overlapping with another, started in 1910, with the architect-founder of the Bauhaus, Walter Gropius who, in 1915 married the perky widow and sired a daughter with her, Manon. This ‘exquisite creature’ captivated all who beheld her but, tragically, contracted polio and died, aged 19, following complications brought on by the disease. Her death devastated all who had come within her orbit, not least the composer of the Second Viennese School, Alban Berg who dedicated his wonderful Violin Concerto to ‘the memory of an angel’. Starting from the point in the second (and last) movement where Berg introduces a quotation from a Bach chorale, Es ist genug (‘It is enough’), it is typical of Berg’s aesthetic finesse that he was able to reconcile the rapprochement between two sorts of musical language, and explain the yielding of our human fever before the tranquil touch of death, as he does in this masterpiece.
It is a measure of this extraordinary woman that soon after her marriage to Gropius in 1915, she started an affair with the novelist and playwright Franz Werfel, an affair that had already produced a child (Martin) that, at first, Gropius had thought was his own. She eventually married Werfel in 1929 and outlived him by almost twenty years after he died in California in 1945. From that time onward, she styled herself Alma Mahler-Gropius-Werfel, a mouthful, but useful to cut some ice on the cocktail circuit. Among the famous who enjoyed her company but passed on marriage, were the painter Oskar Kokoschka, the biologist Paul Kammerer (a Gustav Mahler obsessive who threatened to kill himself at Mahler’s funeral ‘to join him’), and the composer Franz Schreker. Muse or Monster? Discuss.
Oskar Kokoschka was so smitten with Alma that, when she dumped him, he had a life-size rag doll lookalike made, which he used to drag around town to accompany him on visits to the opera etc.
Quite so Frank – and in fact I put forward an image of ‘Self Portrait with Doll’ from 1921 for inclusion here instead of the strumpet at the top of the page, but as this is a culture blog, usually read before the nine o’clock watershed, the editor pressed the delete button. Old Oskar was a weird cove anyway, and the story goes that when he had finally ‘got over’ Alma, and the doll became surplus to requirements, he beheaded it and poured red wine over the remains. What a card he must have been!
I’m sadly disappointed to find no mention of Tom Lehrer’s song “Alma, Tell Us.”
I’ve read that Mahler’s Eighth Symphony is called the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ because, ideally, that’s the number of performers required to do full justice to its magnificence, but having read your post, MM, including the point that Gustav dedicated the work to Alma, I now wonder if this is simply the composer referring to the number of blokes the missus got through during their married life.
Quite a woman.
Hot stuff this. Here’s the offending painting, you might want to shield the eyes of your wives and servants…
(In fact it was merely picture quality and deadline pressure that meant I couldn’t use it…it seems that Oskar was pretty unashamed of his disturbing fetish.)
Exactly, George. Thank you. How can he not know the marvellous Tom Lehrer song, viz: “Alma, tell us, all modern women are jealous… “etc etc.
tsk, I’ll just have to post a link – if YouTube don’t have it, the lyrics at least (you and I can hum along…)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hH4J8CIBc7Q
This is just superb in so many ways. This has the lyrics only on screen – I did find the video version, but can’t find it again (it’s under TW3 in YouTube). Anyway, I was about to start enthusing about TL but I think that belongs somewhere else. i don’t mean to sound nasty, but, (it’s like that ‘with the greatest respect) but it amazes me that someone can write so much about the fragrant Alma, take the time to write a comprehensive piece, and despite all that, be unaware of the song. (on a more personal note, it makes me think that The Dabbler is not for me, but I’m still trying – except you, George, of course).
hope this has been interesting and will entertain Dabblers who love a comic song.
Jane
(nearly put an ‘x’ there, but realised I’m not posting on Facebook).
p.s. my mother is Viennese,’nuff said.
p.p.s. I know about the song because an aunt (on the other – Liverpool/Irish side of the family) played this to us when we were children – she’s 91 tomorrow and as wonderful as ever).
p.p.p.s. I always have in my head, “Nazi, Schmazi says Werner von Braun” – George, at least, will understand. And possibly have read/heard of Leo Rosten’s ‘The Joys of Yiddish’.
p.p.p.p.s. Noel Coward was a similar lyric writer, but I digress. if I don’t go away now, I might even mention Richard Stilgoe and Mitch Benn. And yes, of course I know Flanders and Swan and all that stuff (but again, this is beginning to sound like something which should belong somewhere else).
LOL (ironically – I don’t mean the sentiment, just the way of expressing it).
Thank you Jane (and George) for extending the debate. It is of course possible to admire an artist, musical or otherwise, without actually liking, much less loving them. This is the case for me with, say, Liszt and Verdi – and Tom Lehrer. But how could you not admire somebody who could rhyme “Gustav’ with ‘must have’ or, when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, announce that satire ‘was now dead’?
My fortnightly outings do not aim to be particularly inclusive – in fact I spend more time weeding-out than raking-in. And this time, Tom had to go.
My idea of musical hell? Close friends telephoning late to say that they have tickets for Fascinating Aida, and am I free?
mahlerman – I feel bad now for assuming you didn’t know about Tom. Hmm FA – there time came and went a long, long time ago, so I’m with you on that one.
I really did enjoy your interesting post – I just got a bit – ahem – carried away. apologies if I was a bit heavy handed and I look forward to your next post!