This follows closely
after the paperback (Faber and Faber,
London, 2005) English edition of Gustav
Mahler Letters to his Wife edited
by Henry-Louis De La Grange and Günther
Weiss (in collaboration with Knud Martner).
This is a book of 500+ letters based
on those in the Mahler-Rosé Collection
in the Music Library of the University
of Western Ontario in London, Ontario,
Canada. In addition to all of these
letters it also includes a number of
other family letters from a variety
of sources. Every effort has been made
to transcribe the letters from originals.
Since Mahler seldom
dated his letters, this set Stephen
McClatchie a considerable problem; dates
of performances and events mentioned
has helped, as well as type of notepaper
and the chronological arrangement of
their storage within the vaults of Bank
of Montreal before their donation to
the Music Library.
Intriguingly Dr McClatchie
notes that he ‘has also read many hundreds
of unpublished letters from Mahler in
search of references connected to the
family letters’. How many letters are
there still to be published? If I include
the other recent book there are well
over 800 letters already in the public
domain covering about thirty years of
a creative and private life.
As Dr McClatchie
writes in his Introduction: ‘Gustav
Mahler’s letters to his family are
almost entirely unknown, yet they
form the largest and probably most
important single source of information
about all aspects of his life before
the mid-1890s: his personality;
his relationships with his family
and several close friends; his first
position in Kassel, Prague, Leipzig,
Budapest and Hamburg; and several
of his earliest compositions. They
also document significant later
events such as his campaign to be
named director of the Vienna Hofoper.’
Even at their most
banal there is often a hint of Mahler’s
struggles:
To (his sister)
Justine from Budapest c late 1880s
Dear Justi,
Why don’t you write
how you are?
For whom do you
need the seats?
I chose them in
the back rows, since they cost me
20 groschen less there.
I enclose an article
that appeared in the Wiener Fremdenblatt
yesterday.
Kindest regards,
I will come over soon. Your Gustav
So saving every groschen
was important to Gustav even as director
of the Royal Hungarian Opera!
Every so often it is
possible to read something more personal
and revelatory:
To Justin from
Maiernigg some time between 1903
and 1906 (on the eve of the darkest
times in Mahler’s personal life).
Like the other example above it
is one of a few letters that cannot
be dated with certainty.
Dearest Justi,
The news you
gave me about all of you was very
welcome. Your pouring rain must
be very unpleasant – but my usual
country rain isn’t pleasant either.
And for somebody who relies on hiking
all by himself to have to stay close
to his room and entertain himself
must almost be considered a catastrophe.
But the main thing after all, is
that one must come face to face
with oneself, which humans often
don’t experience in a lifetime.
Every year a person should be retired
to an Alpine pasture for 14 days
(naturally with a dairymaid á
la Elise), then he would
surely give peace and receive peace
(…)
We should not be surprised
by these insights into Mahler’s remarkable
personality and these letters are probably
part of the evidence towards confirming
the autobiographical nature of his compositions
– not that there was any real doubt
about this. They also embody an important
commentary on the fin de siècle
social and cultural changes which this
remarkable artist experienced. For the
‘end of century’ changes for the twentieth
century we have no such record, what
could we publish: ‘The Selected Emails
of Person X’ is the best we could possibly
manage?
The book is divided
into chapters from ‘The Early Years’
to ‘Vienna’ and each is given a concise
chronology. There is a photo gallery
to illustrate the main correspondents.
The last ‘letter’ in
Stephen McClatchie’s tremendous labour
of love is incredibly poignant. It was
a postcard, this time from Alma to Justine,
postmarked Neuilly 8th May
1911.
Pulse - 120
Temp - 37.3
Appearance - good
Appetite - good-?Satisfactory
Mood - better
Night - bad-fever
Sleep - no sleep
Medicine - no effect
Three days later Mahler
left the clinic at Neuilly and departed
for Vienna. On 18th May 1911
he died in the Loew Sanatorium.
Jim Pritchard
Stephen McClatchie’s
tremendous labour of love ... incredibly
poignant. ... see Full Review
