Gustav Mahler, Vol. 4. A New Life Cut Short, 1907 1911

Editorial Review
When the earlier volumes of de La Grange's monumental study of Gustav Mahler appeared, they were hailed across America--in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications--as an indispensable portrait of one of the greatest figures in the history of music. Here at last is the final volume of this magisterial work.
The fourth volume illuminates the composer's American period, when he was conductor for the Metropolitan Opera in New York. It contains a treasure trove of new material, in particular many unknown letters from Alma Mahler to her lover, Walter Gropius, and many articles and interviews about the composer and the performances he conducted while in New York. This detailed biography of the composer also includes new and valuable insights into the final year of his life, when he returned to Europe to die.
The crowning point of a decades-long project, during which the author has personally translated each volume from his original French into English, this scrupulously researched and insightfully written biography brings to a triumphant close the definitive account of Mahler's life and work.
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Customer Reviews

For Dedicated Mahlerites Only

2008-07-09
I was very glad to see this final volume finally come out. It is extremely detailed, well researched, and interesting. You learn a lot about New York in this period and many of the people who Mahler was involved with one way or the other: JP Morgan, Oscar Hammerstein, Walter Damrosch, Toscanini...and many, many more. The huge amount of research in presenting critical opinions of the time of his symphonies is fascinating, as is the status of orchestral concerts -- which weren't any better attended than those today! So any Mahler fan will enjoy this, but for most readers there are shorter one-volume biographies that should do nicely.

I only give this four stars because of the production. I wish I had kept track, but it's amazing how many typos there are in it. The author also needs a map of the US, since he mentions on a tour with the NY Philharmonic that from Pittsburgh they continue going east to Cleveland! And he frequently uses the word "alto" when he was refering to the viola. Worst of all was a paragraph that suddenly stops midsentence with blank white at the bottom of the page. The paragraph is repeated in its entirety on the next page. Then, there are many time when you have a sense of deja-vu: sometime information, even quotes, appear then reappear many pages later. I realize this is a vast, even monumental, achievement that will likely never be equalled, and that the staggering amount of information and length is a to praised, but still, I would expect the Oxford Press would do a better job of editing and proofreading. Maybe they figure that the 25 of us in the world who will actually read the book are worth worrying about.

One last complaint: I find the old, original Doubleday vol. 1 much easier to read. Why? It's on off-white paper. I don't know what color it is, but it's much easier on the eyes. The Oxford printing is severe black ink on extremely white paper and tires the eyes faster. On the other hand, I do like the Oxford presentation of footnotes being on the bottom of the pages rather than at the end, like Doubleday.

A Revisionist Take On Mahler's Final Years

2008-03-22
This final installment of Henry-Louis de La Grange's massive four volume biography advances the idea that Mahler was not a death-driven broken man in his final years; rather he was about to embark on a "new life" that was cut short by an unexpected illness. Thus the unfinished 10th Symphony should be heard as a new beginning whose final bars are a paean to love, not a farewell.
I will not pretend that I've read the entire book so soon after publication (it is actually 1758 pages! not the 1072 that Amazon lists). I will focus on the chapter that describes Alma Mahler's "betrayal": by doing so I will hopefully give an idea of rest of the book. The style of writing and presentation is identical to previous volumes. De La Grange assembles what seems to be every fact he could discover about Mahler and weaves them into a chronological narrative. The chapter covers July and August 1910 and is 118 small print pages long, including 411 footnotes of even smaller print. De La Grange quotes extensively from recently unearthed letters between Alma Mahler and the budding architect Walter Gropius (the lover with whom she betrayed Mahler) to further show how willfully deceiving Alma's published memoirs were about the affair. These give insight into the depth of Mahler's despair when he discovered what had happened through a letter that Gropius, in writing to Alma, mistakenly addressed to Mahler himself. De La Grange attempts to give an in-depth analysis of Alma's personality, quoting from unpublished diaries and letters. He also spends 40 pages on Mahler's interview with Sigmund Freud, quoting extensively from all the available sources in which Freud discussed the meeting, as well as present-day psychologists and analysts who have commented on it. Though the psychologist sources he quotes apparently disagree, this does not prevent de La Grange from advocating his belief that Mahler emerged from this crisis a stronger, more life-affirming artist - not as many would like to believe, a broken man.
Following de La Grange's narrative, filled as it is with what one might describe as excruciating detail and exhaustive psychological analysis, can be daunting, but he does manage to keep the narrative flowing. The recitation of fact after detailed fact, as in the other volumes, can be numbing, but one is drawn completely into Mahler's world during the process. This kind of total immersion may not be what the average reader wants, but it is exactly suited to a Mahler freak. And a Mahler freak is whom this book is for.
The bulk of the book (1277 pages) is devoted to the narrative of Mahler's life during these final years. There are 440 pages of appendices and a 35 page index. The appendices include 236 pages of detailed analysis of Das Lied von der Erde and the 9th and 10th Symphonies, an updated catalogue of works, a list of all of all the performances of non-operatic repertoire conducted by Mahler (one wonders why the operas weren't included), essays on the Mahler piano rolls, the order of movements in the 6th symphony, Mahler myths, and the recipe for Mahler's favorite dessert (to list just a few).
While this is the long awaited volume IV of the biography, de La Grange assures us in his introduction that the revision to volume I (published in 1973 and out-of-print) is soon forthcoming: "readers of this biography may be confident that they will not have to wait as long for the new Volume I as they have had to for Volume IV."
My only negative comment regarding this long anticipated volume is the price - nearly 10 times more than what I paid in 1973 for the first volume.