The publishing history of HenryLouis de La Grange's epic Mahler biography is extremely tangled. The first volume was published in English (with a notoriously windy preface by Stockhausen) in 1973/4, followed by an updated version in French (de La Grange's native language) in 1979. Two further French volumes followed in 1983-4, completing the initial project. However, rather than simply translating the latter volumes into English, de La Grange has expanded them into three, the first of which appeared in 1995 as volume two: Vienna: The Years of Challenge. It is hoped that volume four will shortly appear, to be followed by a revised edition of volume one! . . .
While Mahlerians, towards whom de La Grange's labours are primarily directed, will joyfully take this elegant muddle in their stride, other music-lovers might well feel a little intimidated. They might further baulk at the proliferation of footnotes (providing biographical data for even the lowliest bitplayers, as well as digressions of near DeSelbyan prolixity) and the lengthy citations from the press of Mahler's day (de La Grange, in volume two, compares the latter to a "Greek chorus commenting on the contemporary comedy and tragedy being played before them"). However, those who persist will enjoy an incomparable immersion in the life of an era - the turn of the last century - that has still not exhausted its seminal power. De La Grange clearly empathises deeply with that era, and has the breadth of culture and depth of insight to bring it to vibrant life for us.
"Is he a serious man? " was the question that Mahler asked concerning any new (male) acquaintance, and it is undoubtedly the phrase that best qualifies himself. As composer, conductor and opera producer he strove ferociously after perfection (the critic Albert Kauders called him "a great terrorist genius who, striving for unattainable goals, meets the fate of Icarus"), and was sorely impatient with those whose aim was lower. While he had his lighter side (he loved and was loved by children, enjoyed a glass of beer, and revelled in Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest), he cannot have been easy company and could scarcely have found a more inappropriate partner than the vain, flirtatious and ambitious Alma Schindler who was, furthermore, almost 20 years his junior.
This volume culminates in the appalling coincidence of Mahler's forced resignation from his post as director of the Court Opera (a result of characteristic Viennese envy combined with the relentless and often anti-Semitic malice of the critics, Julius Korngold being an honourable exception), the death of his favourite daughter from diphtheria and scarlet fever, and the rash diagnosis (by a simple country doctor) of "heart disease" that unnecessarily forced the surprisingly athletic and muscular composer to give up his favourite forms of exercise. Meanwhile, we encounter such figures as Zemlinsky (according to Alma, Mahler found her former lover's music "chinless, like his face"), Sibelius ("they are the same everywhere, these national geniuses . . . in Italy the country is over-run by these whores and their ponces" - devastating words, uttered when Mahler only knew a couple of Sibelius' shorter pieces), and, repeatedly, Richard Strauss and his unspeakable wife Pauline (the most amusing anecdote here has Strauss entreating the Mahlers to tell Pauline how angry he had been after a botched performance of his Sinfonia Domestica in order "to frighten her a bit" because "she never believes me when I tell her how angry I can be!").
Most chillingly, we meet a would-be opera composer with a high regard for Jewish musicians and for Mahler in particular, who comes to Vienna from Linz with a letter of introduction to Mahler's collaborator Alfred Roller, but is too shy to present it. The name of this young aesthete, undoubtedly "a serious man "? Adolf Hitler . . .
We take leave of Mahler as he and Alma set out for their new life in New York, abandoning a rather shamefaced Vienna that will very soon regret his departure. Remarkably, Mahler's final, American years are the ones least documented in English, so the fourth volume of this biography is to be awaited with bated breath. Meanwhile, the book before us is a triumphant - and profoundly enjoyable - vindication of Henry-Louis de La Grange's uncompromising methods.
Raymond Deane is a composer; his new orchestral work Ripieno will be heard at the NCH on April 14th