Book review

Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis
By Stuart Feder 

Yale University Press, November 16, 2004, (353 pages)
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0-300-10340-9



Reviewed by Borna Bonakdarpour


The meeting of the two great minds of the early 1900s, Gustav Mahler and Sigmund Freud should be considered as a hallmark in the studies of music and the mind. Freud, a genius who with his approach to the human psychology and the origins and motives of normal and pathological human behavior opened the door of scientific studies of the mind barely had a good ear for music and hardly knew Gustav Mahler’s work. His success in Vienna as a revolutionary neurologist who was able to manage psychological problems attracted many of the well-known people of the time, and Mahler was not an exception. Having had difficulties with his marital life with Alma Schindler, Mahler requested to meet Freud in Leiden, Holland. The information about this four-hour “walking” conversation were used by Freud’s contemporary psychoanalysts, who also had a good knowledge of music, to dig in deep into the motives and procedures in a genius mind and how it channels all those environmental stimuli, from the unbearable crises to the most pleasant intoxications with love, into a creative process. 

Stuart Feder, a renowned psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and music scholar, has “the most lucid and the most convincing” approach to Gustav Mahler’s psychoanalysis as put by Henry- Louis de La Grange. In his book Gustav Mahler: A Life in Crisis, he brings to play an enormous literature on Mahler’s biography and examines all the aspects of Mahler’s mind from the memories of childhood and what he learned throughout his life to the challenges that he faced in number of life crises. This is one of the most sophisticated and scientific set of information available to us about the mind of a great composer who was a source of inspiration for generations to come. 

Within eighteen chapters, the author focuses on central psychosocial issues, and also health concerns that challenged Mahler during his life. The book on the other hand unravels the mystery of how a restless psyche of a genius raised to the higher degrees of achievements “under the shadow of death”. Among the crises the most profound ones are: death of Ernst Mahler, family crisis, the severe health problem of 1901 humorously named by Mahler as the “subterranean problem”, his marriage (the eustress), the death of his daughter and the marital crisis of 1910. Each of these crises is both preceded and followed by major musical and life achievements from the planned opera “Ernst von Schwaben” to Veni Creator Spiritus of the Eighth Symphony and finally the ending drum stroke of the fourth movement of the composer’s unfinished Tenth Symphony. 

The book starts with Mahler’s last and unresolved crisis, his marital crisis. It is the summer of 1910, when he was working on the Tenth Symphony, and met Sigmund Freud. Feder takes the place of Freud from here and as an able contemporary psychoanalyst examines in detail the events of psychoanalytical importance by taking us back to the social environment of Gustav’s great-grand father Abraham Mahler’s Moravia and then how Bernhard Mahler and Marie Hermann started their family during the time of Jewish enlightenment and growing anti-Semitism. Many of Gustav’s early life experiences in terms of musical exposures and his relationship with his parents and siblings are described in a chapter focused on “The Mahler Family”. We understand better why Mahler’s first mental obsession was “death” and why he always “lived under the shadow of death”. He lived in the years following the “Golden Years” of microbiological findings, but the age of antibiotics and preventive medicine was yet to come and with them, the achievements in corrective heart surgery. Many individuals died of infections, especially the most vulnerable ones, children and the elderly. His beloved brother dies of pericarditis (infection of the heart sac). Other family members suffered from some sort of heart condition or died from infection, so from the early ages he struggled with the fear of being afflicted by an environmental fatal disease or succumbing to what he has inherited. He finally died of infective endocarditis, an infection secondary to his diseased mitral valve, which substantiated the truth of his fear. 

In addition to these underlying mental struggles the sensitive genius also suffers from periods of major depression, which afflicts him in the stressful points of time in his life. This is well pictured in the book where the writer seeks the backgrounds that contribute to the depressive episodes and the way Mahler found his way out of them with a mass of creative work. 

In 1889 both of Mahler’s parents and his sister Leopoldine died. Being the eldest of his sibling he is now responsible for taking care of the younger ones while working hard at the Budapest Opera. He has already finished the first movement of his Second Symphony having it named Todtenfeier (“Funeral Rites”). The “Family Crisis” affects the next few years of Mahler’s life until through the inspiring Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn) he steps into another period of productive years “The Wunderhorn” years, with two movements of his Second Symphony (the “Scherzo”, based on the music from his setting of “Des Antonius von Padua Fischpredigt” and “Urlicht”) directly inspired by it. Feder calls the music of the last movement “The music of Fratricide” and quite interestingly cites Mahler’s own words added to Klopstock’s poem as an evidence of his aggressive thoughts against his brothers. 

Two chapters of the book are related to the loves of Mahler and his affairs especially with Natalie Bauer-Lechner and following her, Alma Schindler. The former being the most influential figure in his Wunderhorn years, with the latter’s influence extending from the date of their marriage in 1902 until his death. 

The complex relationship with Alma and Alma’s affair with Walter Gropius is further parsed in two separate chapters. Although aspects of lives of Natalie and Alma are quite well covered, using Freud’s notion of “family romance”. There is not much focus here on Mahler’s affair with Johanna Richter and his attraction towards Carl von Weber’s wife, Marion. Hence, not much is said about the grounds on which the First Symphony and the cycle Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer) are based.

Following the marriage of 1902 with Alma, highly productive summers ensue. In “The Splendid Years” Mahler ascends to the peak of his productivity and career achievements, however at the same time his mind is not relieved from his worries. After the daughters are born he has a continuous feeling of instability of love and struggling with fate, which are well reflected in the Sixth Symphony and Kindertotenlieder. And once again at the climax of another successful period, in 1907 he loses his older daughter and is diagnosed for his heart disease, hence falling into another serious crisis of his life. This crisis is yet another prompt for more creativity: Das Lied von der Erde, the Ninth Symphony and a change in his position as a conductor in New York. In 1910 Mahler returns to Europe just to face the marital crisis, the last and the one to be remained unresolved. He meets Freud at this time.

Two of the most significant chapters of the book deal with the Mahler’s meeting with Freud and the “walking cure”. Feder compares the life of the two geniuses with detail in terms of family background, religion, their geographical and social environment and the text meticulously recreates the Austrian atmosphere at the time the two great minds met. To secure the confidentiality of his patient, it was only after Mahler died that Freud started revealing the details of the conversations. All the information available from Freud’s side and what Alma Mahler has cited in her biographies are carefully examined and so we are presented with a non-judgmental and neutral reasoning in terms of what the truth about Mahler’s mind has been. Freud with his authoritative character informs Mahler of his analysis and with the “precious word” gives him some relief through the “walking cure”. 

The book ends with the quote from Mahler: “…and my time will yet come” reminding us also of Mahler’s words in the Second Symphony: “I shall die, to live”.

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