Alma Mahler
Encyclopedia
Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel (born Alma Maria Schindler; 31 August 1879 – 11 December 1964) was a Viennese-born
socialite well known in her youth for her beauty and vivacity. She became the wife, successively, of composer Gustav Mahler
, architect Walter Gropius
, and novelist Franz Werfel
, as well as the consort of several other prominent men. Musically active in her teens, she was the composer of at least seventeen songs. In later years her salon became an important feature of the artistic scene, first in Vienna, then in Los Angeles.
, Austria
(then Austria-Hungary
), to the prominent landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler and his wife Anna von Bergen, in 1879. Although Alma later claimed to have grown up in a privileged environment, the family was only moderately successful. After her father's death (1892), her mother married her late husband's former pupil Carl Moll
, who was a co-founder of the Vienna Secession
.
, among them Gustav Klimt
. As a young woman she had a series of flirtations, including Klimt, theater director Max Burckhard
and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky
.
or diphtheria
, and Anna
(1904–1988), who later became a sculptor. The terms of Alma's marriage with Gustav were that she would forget her own interest in composing. Artistically stifled herself, she embraced her role as a loving wife and supporter of Gustav's music. However, later in their marriage, after becoming severely depressed in the wake of Maria's death, she began an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius
(later head of the Bauhaus
), whom she met during a rest at a spa. Following the emotional crisis in their marriage after Gustav's discovery of the affair, Gustav began to take a serious interest in Alma's musical compositions, regretting his earlier dismissive attitude. Upon his urging, and under his guidance, she prepared five of her songs for publication (they were issued in 1910, by Gustav's own publisher, Universal Edition). After this turbulent period in their marriage, Alma and Gustav traveled to New York, where Gustav was seasonally engaged as a conductor. In February, 1911, he fell severely ill with an infection related to a heart defect that had been diagnosed several years earlier. He died in May, shortly after their return to Vienna.
, who created many works inspired by his relationship with her, including, perhaps most famously, his painting Bride of the Wind. Kokoschka's intense possessiveness wore on Alma, and the emotional vicissitudes of the relationship tired them both. With the coming of World War I, Kokoschka enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army
, and Alma subsequently distanced herself from him and resumed contact with Gropius, who was also serving in combat at that time. She and Gropius married in 1915 during one of his military leaves. They had a daughter together, Manon Gropius (1916–1935), who died of polio at the age of 18. (Composer Alban Berg
wrote his Violin Concerto
in memory of her.)
She became pregnant and gave birth to a son, Martin Carl Johannes Gropius (1918–1919). Gropius at first believed that the child was his, but Alma's ongoing affair with Werfel
was common knowledge in Vienna by this time, and she was soon exposed (see below).
Within a year, they agreed to a divorce. In the meantime, Martin, who had been born prematurely, developed hydrocephalus and died at the age of ten months. Alma's divorce from Gropius became final in 1920.
-born poet and writer Franz Werfel
in the fall of 1917.
She and Werfel began openly living together from that point on. However, she postponed marrying Werfel until 1929, after which she styled herself "Alma Mahler-Werfel".
In 1938, following the Anschluss
, Alma and Werfel, who was Jewish, were forced to flee Austria
for France; they maintained a household in Sanary-sur-Mer, on the French Riviera, from summer 1938 until spring 1940. With the German invasion and occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of Jews and political adversaries to Nazi concentration camps
, the couple were no longer safe in France and frantically sought to secure their emigration to the United States. In Marseille
they were contacted by Varian Fry
, an American journalist and emissary of the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization that came to the aid of many refugee intellectuals and artists at that time. Since exit visas could not be obtained, Fry arranged for the Werfels to journey on foot across the Pyrenees
into Spain, in order to evade the Vichy French border officials. From Spain, Alma and Franz traveled on to Portugal
and then boarded a ship for New York City. Eventually they settled in Los Angeles, where Werfel, who had already enjoyed moderate renown in the U.S. as an author, achieved a huge popular success with his novel The Song of Bernadette
, which was made into a film in 1943
, and the science fiction novel, Star of the Unborn, published after his death. Werfel, who had experienced serious heart problems throughout their exile, died of a heart attack in California in 1945.
, who was a great champion of Gustav Mahler's music, stated in his Charles Eliot Norton lectures
of 1973 that Alma had attended some of his rehearsals. Bernstein considered her to be a "living" link to both Mahler and Alban Berg
, having not had the chance to meet either man since he was of a later generation.
Alma Mahler Werfel died in 1964. She is buried in the Grinziger Friedhof in Vienna
.
(1974) by director Ken Russell
, Gustav Mahler
while on his last train journey, remembers the important events of his life – his relationship with his wife, the death of his brother and of his young daughter, his trouble with the muses, and more. In the film, Alma was played by Georgina Hale
, and Gustav was played by Robert Powell
.
In 1996, Israeli writer Joshua Sobol and Austrian director Paulus Manker
created the polydrama Alma
. It played in Vienna for six successive seasons, and toured with over 400 performances to Venice
, Lisbon
, Los Angeles
, Petronell, Berlin
, Semmering
, Jerusalem and Prague
— all places where Mahler-Werfel had lived. The show was made into a three part mini TV-series in 1997. The scenes of Mahler Werfel's life were performed simultaneously on all floors and in all rooms of a special building. The guests were invited to abandon the immobilized position of a spectator in a conventional drama, replace it with the mobile activity of a traveller, and watch a "theatrical journey". Each audience member chose the events, the path, and the person to follow after each event, thus constructing her or his personal version of the "Polydrama."
Mohammed Fairouz
set the words of Alma Mahler in his song cycle Jeder Mensch. It was premiered in a coupling with songs of Alma Mahler by mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey
in 2011.
A treatment of Mahler-Werfel's life is presented in the 2001 Bruce Beresford
film Bride of the Wind
. In the film, Alma was played by Australian actress Sarah Wynter
. Gustav Mahler
was portrayed by British actor Jonathan Pryce
. French actor Vincent Perez
portrayed Oskar Kokoschka.
Martin Chervin wrote a one-woman play about her first marriage called Myself, Alma Mahler. In 1998 extracts from her diaries were published, covering the years from 1898 to 1902, up until the point she married Mahler. The 2001 novel The Artist's Wife by Max Phillips has her tell her own story from the afterlife
, concentrating on her complicated relationships.
In 2010 the German filmmaker Percy Adlon
and his son Felix Adlon released their film Mahler auf der Couch (Mahler on the Couch), which relates Gustav Mahler
's tormented relationship with his wife Alma and his meeting with Sigmund Freud in 1910. In the film's introduction, the directors stated, "That it happened is fact. How it happened is fiction." In fact, the only source for the Mahler-Freud meeting is a one-page account in Ernest Jones
' biography of Freud (Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, three volumes, 1953–1957, vol. 2, pp. 88–89, Basic Books, 1955; also in the abridged, one-volume edition, pp. 358–359, Basic Books, 1961).
Less amusing is the story of her two books on Mahler and their impact on 'Mahler studies'. As an articulate, well-connected and influential woman who outlived her first husband by more than 50 years, Mahler-Werfel was for decades the main authority on the mature Mahler's values, character and day-to-day behaviour, and her various publications quickly became the central source material for Mahler scholars and music-lovers alike. Unfortunately, as scholars investigated the picture she painted of Mahler and her relationship with him, her accounts have increasingly been revealed as unreliable, false and misleading. Nevertheless, the deliberate distortions have had a significant influence upon several generations of scholars, interpreters and music-lovers. Citing the serious contradictions between Alma's accounts and other evidence, including her own diaries, several historians and biographers have begun to speak of the "Alma Problem
". According to Hugh Wood
,
beginning in 1895. She met Alexander von Zemlinsky
in early 1900, began composition lessons with him that fall, and continued as his student until her engagement with Gustav Mahler (December 1901), after which she ceased composing. Up until that time, she had composed/sketched many Lieder, and also worked on instrumental pieces as well as a segment of an opera. She may have resumed composing after 1910, at least sporadically, but the chronology of her songs is difficult to establish because she did not date her manuscripts.
Only a total of 17 songs by her survive. Fourteen were published during her lifetime, in three publications dated 1910, 1915, and 1924; it is unclear whether she continued composing at all after her last publication. The works appeared under the name 'Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler'; the cover of the 1915 set was illustrated by Oskar Kokoschka. Three additional songs were discovered in manuscript posthumously; two of them were published in the year 2000, and one remains unpublished. Her personal papers, including music manuscripts, are held at the University of Pennsylvania
, and at the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
These songs are regularly performed and recorded. Orchestral versions of the accompaniments have been produced by David
and Colin Matthews
, and Jorma Panula
.
(i) Die stille Stadt ('The Quiet Town'; Dehmel)
(ii) In meines Vaters Garten ('In My Father's Garden'; Hartleben)
(iii) Laue Sommernacht ('Mild Summer's Night'; Falke)
(iv) Bei dir ist es traut ('With You It Is Pleasant'; Rilke)
(v) Ich wandle unter Blumen ('I Stroll Among Flowers'; Heine)
Four Songs for voice & piano (published 1915):
(i) Licht in der Nacht ('Light in the Night'; Bierbaum)
(ii) Waldseligkeit ('Woodland Bliss'; Dehmel)
(iii) Ansturm ('Storm'; Dehmel)
(iv) Erntelied ('Harvest Song'; Falke)
Five Songs for voice and piano (published 1924):
(i) Hymne ('Hymn'; Novalis)
(ii) Ekstase ('Ecstasy'; Otto Julius Bierbaum)
(iii) Der Erkennende ('The Recognizer'; Franz Werfel)
(iv) Lobgesang ('Song of Praise'; Dehmel )
(v) Hymne an die Nacht ('Hymn to the Night'; Novalis)
Posthumously published (2000):
Leise weht ein erstes Blühn ('Softly Drifts a First Blossom'; Rilke ), for voice & piano
Kennst du meine Nächte? ('Do You Know My Nights?'; unknown author), for voice & piano
[one further unpublished song apparently exists]
and Günther Weiss, in Collaboration with Knud Martner. First complete edition, revised and transted by Antony Beaumont (Faber and Faber, London 2004)Karen Monson, Alma Mahler: Muse to Genius: From Fin-de-Siècle Vienna to Hollywood's Heyday (1983)
Susanne Rode-Breymann, Die Komponistin Alma Mahler-Werfel (Hanover, 1999)
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
socialite well known in her youth for her beauty and vivacity. She became the wife, successively, of composer Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
, architect Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
, and novelist Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...
, as well as the consort of several other prominent men. Musically active in her teens, she was the composer of at least seventeen songs. In later years her salon became an important feature of the artistic scene, first in Vienna, then in Los Angeles.
Biography
Alma Schindler was born in ViennaVienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
(then Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary
Austria-Hungary , more formally known as the Kingdoms and Lands Represented in the Imperial Council and the Lands of the Holy Hungarian Crown of Saint Stephen, was a constitutional monarchic union between the crowns of the Austrian Empire and the Kingdom of Hungary in...
), to the prominent landscape painter Emil Jakob Schindler and his wife Anna von Bergen, in 1879. Although Alma later claimed to have grown up in a privileged environment, the family was only moderately successful. After her father's death (1892), her mother married her late husband's former pupil Carl Moll
Carl Moll
Carl Julius Rudolf Moll was a prominent art nouveau painter active in Vienna at the start of the 20th century. He was also the stepfather of Alma Mahler-Werfel .- Biography :...
, who was a co-founder of the Vienna Secession
Vienna Secession
The Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. This movement included painters, sculptors, and architects...
.
Romantic Career
Alma's lively social interactions in her youth included friendships with the artists of the Vienna SecessionVienna Secession
The Vienna Secession was formed in 1897 by a group of Austrian artists who had resigned from the Association of Austrian Artists, housed in the Vienna Künstlerhaus. This movement included painters, sculptors, and architects...
, among them Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects...
. As a young woman she had a series of flirtations, including Klimt, theater director Max Burckhard
Max Burckhard
Max Burckhard was director of the Burgtheater, Vienna, 1890-1898.Max Burckhard, a lawyer, became director of the theatre on May 12, 1890. He remained director of the theatre for eight years. He brought a fresh perspective to the theatre and introduced Sunday matinees at a reduced cost in order to...
and composer Alexander von Zemlinsky
Alexander von Zemlinsky
Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher.-Early life:...
.
Marriage to Mahler
On 9 March 1902 she married Gustav Mahler, who was nineteen years her senior and the director of the Vienna Court Opera. With him she had two daughters, Maria Anna (1902–1907), who died of scarlet feverScarlet fever
Scarlet fever is a disease caused by exotoxin released by Streptococcus pyogenes. Once a major cause of death, it is now effectively treated with antibiotics...
or diphtheria
Diphtheria
Diphtheria is an upper respiratory tract illness caused by Corynebacterium diphtheriae, a facultative anaerobic, Gram-positive bacterium. It is characterized by sore throat, low fever, and an adherent membrane on the tonsils, pharynx, and/or nasal cavity...
, and Anna
Anna Mahler
Anna Justine Mahler was an Austrian sculptor.-Early Life:Born in Vienna, she was the daughter of the composer Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma Schindler. They nicknamed her 'Gucki' on account of her big blue eyes...
(1904–1988), who later became a sculptor. The terms of Alma's marriage with Gustav were that she would forget her own interest in composing. Artistically stifled herself, she embraced her role as a loving wife and supporter of Gustav's music. However, later in their marriage, after becoming severely depressed in the wake of Maria's death, she began an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius
Walter Gropius
Walter Adolph Georg Gropius was a German architect and founder of the Bauhaus School who, along with Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, is widely regarded as one of the pioneering masters of modern architecture....
(later head of the Bauhaus
Bauhaus
', commonly known simply as Bauhaus, was a school in Germany that combined crafts and the fine arts, and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. It operated from 1919 to 1933. At that time the German term stood for "School of Building".The Bauhaus school was founded by...
), whom she met during a rest at a spa. Following the emotional crisis in their marriage after Gustav's discovery of the affair, Gustav began to take a serious interest in Alma's musical compositions, regretting his earlier dismissive attitude. Upon his urging, and under his guidance, she prepared five of her songs for publication (they were issued in 1910, by Gustav's own publisher, Universal Edition). After this turbulent period in their marriage, Alma and Gustav traveled to New York, where Gustav was seasonally engaged as a conductor. In February, 1911, he fell severely ill with an infection related to a heart defect that had been diagnosed several years earlier. He died in May, shortly after their return to Vienna.
Marriage to Gropius
After Mahler's death, Alma did not immediately resume contact with Gropius. Between 1912 and 1914 she had a tumultuous affair with the artist Oskar KokoschkaOskar Kokoschka
Oskar Kokoschka was an Austrian artist, poet and playwright best known for his intense expressionistic portraits and landscapes.-Biography:...
, who created many works inspired by his relationship with her, including, perhaps most famously, his painting Bride of the Wind. Kokoschka's intense possessiveness wore on Alma, and the emotional vicissitudes of the relationship tired them both. With the coming of World War I, Kokoschka enlisted in the Austro-Hungarian Army
Austro-Hungarian Army
The Austro-Hungarian Army was the ground force of the Austro-Hungarian Dual Monarchy from 1867 to 1918. It was composed of three parts: the joint army , the Austrian Landwehr , and the Hungarian Honvédség .In the wake of fighting between the...
, and Alma subsequently distanced herself from him and resumed contact with Gropius, who was also serving in combat at that time. She and Gropius married in 1915 during one of his military leaves. They had a daughter together, Manon Gropius (1916–1935), who died of polio at the age of 18. (Composer Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
wrote his Violin Concerto
Violin Concerto (Berg)
Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was written in 1935 . It is probably Berg's best-known and most frequently performed instrumental piece.-Conception and composition:...
in memory of her.)
She became pregnant and gave birth to a son, Martin Carl Johannes Gropius (1918–1919). Gropius at first believed that the child was his, but Alma's ongoing affair with Werfel
Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...
was common knowledge in Vienna by this time, and she was soon exposed (see below).
Within a year, they agreed to a divorce. In the meantime, Martin, who had been born prematurely, developed hydrocephalus and died at the age of ten months. Alma's divorce from Gropius became final in 1920.
Marriage to Werfel
While Gropius's military duties were still keeping him absent, Alma met and began an affair with PraguePrague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
-born poet and writer Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel
Franz Werfel was an Austrian-Bohemian novelist, playwright, and poet.- Biography :Born in Prague , Werfel was the first of three children of a wealthy manufacturer of gloves and leather goods. His mother, Albine Kussi, was the daughter of a mill owner...
in the fall of 1917.
She and Werfel began openly living together from that point on. However, she postponed marrying Werfel until 1929, after which she styled herself "Alma Mahler-Werfel".
In 1938, following the Anschluss
Anschluss
The Anschluss , also known as the ', was the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938....
, Alma and Werfel, who was Jewish, were forced to flee Austria
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
for France; they maintained a household in Sanary-sur-Mer, on the French Riviera, from summer 1938 until spring 1940. With the German invasion and occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of Jews and political adversaries to Nazi concentration camps
Nazi concentration camps
Nazi Germany maintained concentration camps throughout the territories it controlled. The first Nazi concentration camps set up in Germany were greatly expanded after the Reichstag fire of 1933, and were intended to hold political prisoners and opponents of the regime...
, the couple were no longer safe in France and frantically sought to secure their emigration to the United States. In Marseille
Marseille
Marseille , known in antiquity as Massalia , is the second largest city in France, after Paris, with a population of 852,395 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Marseille extends beyond the city limits with a population of over 1,420,000 on an area of...
they were contacted by Varian Fry
Varian Fry
Varian Mackey Fry was an American journalist. Fry ran a rescue network in Vichy France that helped approximately 2,000 to 4,000 anti-Nazi and Jewish refugees to escape Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.-Early life:...
, an American journalist and emissary of the Emergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization that came to the aid of many refugee intellectuals and artists at that time. Since exit visas could not be obtained, Fry arranged for the Werfels to journey on foot across the Pyrenees
Pyrenees
The Pyrenees is a range of mountains in southwest Europe that forms a natural border between France and Spain...
into Spain, in order to evade the Vichy French border officials. From Spain, Alma and Franz traveled on to Portugal
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
and then boarded a ship for New York City. Eventually they settled in Los Angeles, where Werfel, who had already enjoyed moderate renown in the U.S. as an author, achieved a huge popular success with his novel The Song of Bernadette
The Song of Bernadette (novel)
The Song of Bernadette is a 1942 novel that tells the story of Saint Bernadette Soubirous, who, from February to July 1858 in Lourdes, France, reported eighteen visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The novel was written by Franz Werfel and was published in 1942...
, which was made into a film in 1943
The Song of Bernadette (film)
The Song of Bernadette is a 1943 drama film which tells the story of Saint Bernadette Soubirous, who, from February to July 1858 in Lourdes, France, reported 18 visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary. It was directed by Henry King....
, and the science fiction novel, Star of the Unborn, published after his death. Werfel, who had experienced serious heart problems throughout their exile, died of a heart attack in California in 1945.
Cultural Icon in the USA
In 1946 Mahler Werfel became a U.S. citizen. Several years later she moved to New York City, where she remained a major cultural figure. Leonard BernsteinLeonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein August 25, 1918 – October 14, 1990) was an American conductor, composer, author, music lecturer and pianist. He was among the first conductors born and educated in the United States of America to receive worldwide acclaim...
, who was a great champion of Gustav Mahler's music, stated in his Charles Eliot Norton lectures
Charles Eliot Norton Lectures
The Charles Eliot Norton Professorship of Poetry at Harvard University was established in 1925 as an annual lectureship in "poetry in the broadest sense" and named for the university's former professor of fine arts. Distinguished creative figures and scholars in the arts, including painting,...
of 1973 that Alma had attended some of his rehearsals. Bernstein considered her to be a "living" link to both Mahler and Alban Berg
Alban Berg
Alban Maria Johannes Berg was an Austrian composer. He was a member of the Second Viennese School with Arnold Schoenberg and Anton Webern, and produced compositions that combined Mahlerian Romanticism with a personal adaptation of Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique.-Early life:Berg was born in...
, having not had the chance to meet either man since he was of a later generation.
Alma Mahler Werfel died in 1964. She is buried in the Grinziger Friedhof in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
.
Posthumous reputation
In MahlerMahler (film)
Mahler is a 1974 biographical film based on the life of composer Gustav Mahler. It was written and directed by Ken Russell for Goodtimes Enterprises, and starred Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler and Georgina Hale as Alma Mahler...
(1974) by director Ken Russell
Ken Russell
Henry Kenneth Alfred "Ken" Russell was an English film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. He attracted criticism as being obsessed with sexuality and the church...
, Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
while on his last train journey, remembers the important events of his life – his relationship with his wife, the death of his brother and of his young daughter, his trouble with the muses, and more. In the film, Alma was played by Georgina Hale
Georgina Hale
Georgina Hale is an award-winning English actress notable for many stage, film and television appearances; often in the works of director Ken Russell and writer Simon Gray...
, and Gustav was played by Robert Powell
Robert Powell
Robert Powell is an English television and film actor, probably most famous for his title role in Jesus of Nazareth and as the fictional secret agent Richard Hannay...
.
In 1996, Israeli writer Joshua Sobol and Austrian director Paulus Manker
Paulus Manker
Paulus Manker is an Austrian film director and actor, as well as an author and screenplay writer.Manker is considered one of the most maverick German-speaking actors, and polarizes public opinion like scarcely no other...
created the polydrama Alma
Alma (play)
Alma is a play by Israeli writer Joshua Sobol based on the life of Alma Mahler-Werfel. It opened 1996 in Vienna."Alma" is the story of Alma Mahler-Werfel, the famous femme fatale and muse to many geniuses. She was the wife of composer Gustav Mahler, also married to architect Walter Gropius and...
. It played in Vienna for six successive seasons, and toured with over 400 performances to Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
, Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
, Petronell, Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
, Semmering
Semmering
For the town of the same name, see Semmering, Austria.Semmering is a mountain pass in the Eastern Northern Limestone Alps connecting Lower Austria and Styria, between which it forms a natural border.-Location:...
, Jerusalem and Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
— all places where Mahler-Werfel had lived. The show was made into a three part mini TV-series in 1997. The scenes of Mahler Werfel's life were performed simultaneously on all floors and in all rooms of a special building. The guests were invited to abandon the immobilized position of a spectator in a conventional drama, replace it with the mobile activity of a traveller, and watch a "theatrical journey". Each audience member chose the events, the path, and the person to follow after each event, thus constructing her or his personal version of the "Polydrama."
Mohammed Fairouz
Mohammed Fairouz
Mohammed Fairouz is an Arab American composer.Having fulfilling many commissions and created a substantial body of frequently performed works, he is considered one of the most sought after composers of the young generation. Fairouz began composing at an early age and studied at the New England...
set the words of Alma Mahler in his song cycle Jeder Mensch. It was premiered in a coupling with songs of Alma Mahler by mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey
Kate Lindsey
Kate Lindsey is a mezzo-soprano opera singer from the United States.Lindsey holds a Bachelor of Music Degree with Distinction from Indiana University. Her many awards include the 2007 Richard F. Gold Career Grant, the 2007 George London Award in memory of Lloyd Rigler, the 2007 Lincoln Center...
in 2011.
A treatment of Mahler-Werfel's life is presented in the 2001 Bruce Beresford
Bruce Beresford
Bruce Beresford is an Australian film director who has made more than 30 feature films over a 40-year career.-Early life:...
film Bride of the Wind
Bride of the Wind
Bride of the Wind is a 2001 period drama directed by Academy Award-nominee Bruce Beresford and written by first-time screenwriter Marilyn Levy. Loosely based on the life of Alma Mahler, Bride of the Wind recounts Alma's marriage to famed composer Gustav Mahler and her romantic exploits...
. In the film, Alma was played by Australian actress Sarah Wynter
Sarah Wynter
Sarah Wynter is an Australian actress, most widely known for her roles on American television – such as Kate Warner on the television drama 24 and as Beth on Windfall.-Personal life:...
. Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
was portrayed by British actor Jonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce
Jonathan Pryce, CBE is a Welsh stage and film actor and singer. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and meeting his longtime partner English actress Kate Fahy in 1974, he began his career as a stage actor in the 1970s...
. French actor Vincent Perez
Vincent Pérez
Vincent Pérez is a Swiss-born French speaking actor and director. He is best known internationally for playing the title character Ashe Corven in The Crow: City of Angels, and for starring in Queen of the Damned, playing Marius de Romanus...
portrayed Oskar Kokoschka.
Martin Chervin wrote a one-woman play about her first marriage called Myself, Alma Mahler. In 1998 extracts from her diaries were published, covering the years from 1898 to 1902, up until the point she married Mahler. The 2001 novel The Artist's Wife by Max Phillips has her tell her own story from the afterlife
Afterlife
The afterlife is the belief that a part of, or essence of, or soul of an individual, which carries with it and confers personal identity, survives the death of the body of this world and this lifetime, by natural or supernatural means, in contrast to the belief in eternal...
, concentrating on her complicated relationships.
In 2010 the German filmmaker Percy Adlon
Percy Adlon
Percy Adlon is a German film and television director, screenwriter, and producer. He is best known for his film Bagdad Café aka Out of Rosenheim.-Biography:...
and his son Felix Adlon released their film Mahler auf der Couch (Mahler on the Couch), which relates Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
's tormented relationship with his wife Alma and his meeting with Sigmund Freud in 1910. In the film's introduction, the directors stated, "That it happened is fact. How it happened is fiction." In fact, the only source for the Mahler-Freud meeting is a one-page account in Ernest Jones
Ernest Jones
Alfred Ernest Jones was a British neurologist and psychoanalyst, and Sigmund Freud’s official biographer. Jones was the first English-speaking practitioner of psychoanalysis and became its leading exponent in the English-speaking world where, as President of both the British Psycho-Analytical...
' biography of Freud (Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, three volumes, 1953–1957, vol. 2, pp. 88–89, Basic Books, 1955; also in the abridged, one-volume edition, pp. 358–359, Basic Books, 1961).
Less amusing is the story of her two books on Mahler and their impact on 'Mahler studies'. As an articulate, well-connected and influential woman who outlived her first husband by more than 50 years, Mahler-Werfel was for decades the main authority on the mature Mahler's values, character and day-to-day behaviour, and her various publications quickly became the central source material for Mahler scholars and music-lovers alike. Unfortunately, as scholars investigated the picture she painted of Mahler and her relationship with him, her accounts have increasingly been revealed as unreliable, false and misleading. Nevertheless, the deliberate distortions have had a significant influence upon several generations of scholars, interpreters and music-lovers. Citing the serious contradictions between Alma's accounts and other evidence, including her own diaries, several historians and biographers have begun to speak of the "Alma Problem
Alma Problem
The Alma Problem is an issue of concern to musicologists, historians and biographers who deal with the lives and works of Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma....
". According to Hugh Wood
Hugh Wood
Hugh Wood is a British composer.- Biography :While Wood was brought up in a musical family, it was only after graduating in History from Oxford that he decided to dedicate his energies to composition; and he moved to London in 1954 to study with William Lloyd Webber, Anthony Milner, Iain Hamilton,...
,
"Often she is the only witness, and the biographer has to depend on her while doubting with every sentence her capacity for telling the truth. Everything that passed through her hands must be regarded as tainted"
Composer
Alma played the piano from childhood and in her memoirs reports that she first attempted composing at age 9. She studied composition with Josef LaborJosef Labor
Josef Labor was a Czech pianist, organist, and composer of late Romantic music. Labor was an influential music teacher. As a friend of some key figures in Vienna, his importance was enhanced....
beginning in 1895. She met Alexander von Zemlinsky
Alexander von Zemlinsky
Alexander Zemlinsky or Alexander von Zemlinsky was an Austrian composer, conductor, and teacher.-Early life:...
in early 1900, began composition lessons with him that fall, and continued as his student until her engagement with Gustav Mahler (December 1901), after which she ceased composing. Up until that time, she had composed/sketched many Lieder, and also worked on instrumental pieces as well as a segment of an opera. She may have resumed composing after 1910, at least sporadically, but the chronology of her songs is difficult to establish because she did not date her manuscripts.
Only a total of 17 songs by her survive. Fourteen were published during her lifetime, in three publications dated 1910, 1915, and 1924; it is unclear whether she continued composing at all after her last publication. The works appeared under the name 'Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler'; the cover of the 1915 set was illustrated by Oskar Kokoschka. Three additional songs were discovered in manuscript posthumously; two of them were published in the year 2000, and one remains unpublished. Her personal papers, including music manuscripts, are held at the University of Pennsylvania
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania is a private, Ivy League university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States,Penn is the fourth-oldest using the founding dates claimed by each institution...
, and at the Austrian National Library in Vienna.
These songs are regularly performed and recorded. Orchestral versions of the accompaniments have been produced by David
David Matthews
David Matthews may refer to:* Dave Matthews , singer/guitarist of the Dave Matthews Band* David Matthews , MP for Swansea East 1919–1922* David Matthews , American bi-racial author...
and Colin Matthews
Colin Matthews
Colin Matthews OBE is an English composer of classical music.-Early life and education:Matthews was born in London in 1946; his older brother is the composer David Matthews. He read classics at the University of Nottingham, and then studied composition there with Arnold Whittall, and with Nicholas...
, and Jorma Panula
Jorma Panula
Jorma Panula is a Finnish conductor, composer, and professor of conducting.Panula is a graduate of the Sibelius Academy, where he studied the organ, church music and conducting...
.
Works
Five Songs for voice & piano (published 1910):(i) Die stille Stadt ('The Quiet Town'; Dehmel)
(ii) In meines Vaters Garten ('In My Father's Garden'; Hartleben)
(iii) Laue Sommernacht ('Mild Summer's Night'; Falke)
(iv) Bei dir ist es traut ('With You It Is Pleasant'; Rilke)
(v) Ich wandle unter Blumen ('I Stroll Among Flowers'; Heine)
Four Songs for voice & piano (published 1915):
(i) Licht in der Nacht ('Light in the Night'; Bierbaum)
(ii) Waldseligkeit ('Woodland Bliss'; Dehmel)
(iii) Ansturm ('Storm'; Dehmel)
(iv) Erntelied ('Harvest Song'; Falke)
Five Songs for voice and piano (published 1924):
(i) Hymne ('Hymn'; Novalis)
(ii) Ekstase ('Ecstasy'; Otto Julius Bierbaum)
(iii) Der Erkennende ('The Recognizer'; Franz Werfel)
(iv) Lobgesang ('Song of Praise'; Dehmel )
(v) Hymne an die Nacht ('Hymn to the Night'; Novalis)
Posthumously published (2000):
Leise weht ein erstes Blühn ('Softly Drifts a First Blossom'; Rilke ), for voice & piano
Kennst du meine Nächte? ('Do You Know My Nights?'; unknown author), for voice & piano
[one further unpublished song apparently exists]
Further reading
- Alma Mahler, My Life, My Loves: Memoirs of Alma Mahler Vermilon Books, reprint edition (February 1989) ISBN 0-312-02540-8
- Alma Mahler-Werfel, Diaries 1898-1902 (ed. and translator, Antony BeaumontAntony BeaumontAntony Beaumont is an English and German musicologist, writer, conductor and violinist. As a conductor, he has specialized in German music from the first half of the 20th century, including works by Zemlinsky, Weill, and Gurlitt...
and Susanne Rode-Breymann) Faber and FaberFaber and FaberFaber and Faber Limited, often abbreviated to Faber, is an independent publishing house in the UK, notable in particular for publishing a great deal of poetry and for its former editor T. S. Eliot. Faber has a rich tradition of publishing a wide range of fiction, non fiction, drama, film and music...
(1 February 1999) ISBN 0-571-19340-4
- Gustav Mahler, Letters to his Wife [1901-11]
Henry-Louis de La Grange
Henry-Louis de La Grange is a musicologist and biographer of Gustav Mahler.-Biography:Henry-Louis de La Grange was born in Paris of an American mother and a French father, , who was a senator, one-time government minister, and Vice-President of the International Aviation Federation...
and Günther Weiss, in Collaboration with Knud Martner. First complete edition, revised and transted by Antony Beaumont (Faber and Faber, London 2004)
External links
- Alma Mahler's voice
- Biographical sketch and pictures
- Photograph of Manon Gropius (Archived 2009-10-25)
- Find A Grave: Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel
- song "Alma" by Tom LehrerTom LehrerThomas Andrew "Tom" Lehrer is an American singer-songwriter, satirist, pianist, mathematician and polymath. He has lectured on mathematics and musical theater...