Mahler and his Heaven and some music

According to Neighbor of, (who has read Alma Mahler's memoirs) Mahler worked in a little hut back in the woods near their house on a lake in Austria. In the morning, a housemaid would precede him up the hill, banging pots together, to frighten out the birds. He wanted absolute silence in which to compose.

According to Alma (not always a reliable source), he forbade her to compose, although she had showed some talent before their marriage. Her role, instead, was to bear children and be a good wife to him. She was 22 when they married; he was 41.

According to the lecture we heard today, Mahler intended his 4th Symphony to be a description of the journey from earth to heaven. The last movement is a song he wrote several years earlier describing life in heaven.

According to wikipedia, it is supposed to represent a child's naive view of heaven (because it's a soprano singing). The actual words of the song imply an eternal life of festivals and feasts -- the gardens are full of asparagus and string beans, deer and rabbits run up to you to be slaughtered. Saint Peter goes fishing and Saint Martha cooks it all. (I'm not kidding - the words are here.) This sounds rather naive, indeed, but the music doesn't. The music is rich, lush and mature, even if a soprano is singing. So I think this reflects Mahler's genuine view of heaven -- and the women are still doing the cooking.

Here, due to the wonders of YouTube, you can hear Leonard Bernstein's version from a few decades back. Bernstein is supposed to be the go-to conductor for Mahler. Honestly, I think what I heard today was better, but that may just be from the tinniness of the recording, unfairly compared to a live performance today.

Part of the fourth movement. The singing part.


And here, part of the third movement including the section the BSO played repeatedly this morning, trying to get right. I think it was the passage about 6:40 minutes into it, (but they were practicing out of context, so possibly it was anywhere from 5:15 to 7:00 minutes in).




And finally, because I can never think of Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel without thinking of Tom Lehrer's homage to her: