Composer. He is known for his epic-scale symphonies and orchestral song-cycles, which provided an important link between the late 19th Century Romantic and early Modern periods. His music was thought to be so baffling and idiosyncratic that it was not fully appreciated until 50 years after his death. He was also an outstanding conductor. Mahler was born in Kalischt, Bohemia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in the Czech Republic), one of 11 children of a poor Jewish couple. Tragedy stalked his youth. Six of his siblings died of childhood diseases; an older brother committed suicide, an older sister went insane. Still another brother was born mentally handicapped and later became a criminal. Mahler himself grew into a hypersensitive and very neurotic adult, but he also had musical gifts and an iron will that helped him contend with life's adversities. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory from 1875 to 1880, where he won a prize in composition and absorbed the influences that would shape his work: Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner. After writing a failed opera, "Das Klagende Lied" (1880), Mahler embarked on a career as one of the greatest conductors of his era, specializing in theatre music. In this capacity he was ahead of his time in demanding multiple rehearsals and absolute fidelity to the composer's intentions, presenting scores without cuts or interpolations. After several minor appointments, during which he gained a well-deserved reputation as a martinet, Mahler conducted the Budapest Opera from 1888 to 1891, and the Hamburg Opera from 1891 to 1897. He was noted for his Mozart and Wagner productions. In 1897 he was named Music Director of the prestigious Vienna State Opera, where he remained for a decade. His dramatic reforms and pitiless perfectionism made him many enemies there, but they also turned the Vienna Opera into the finest in Europe. Far less successful were Mahler's attempts to promote his own music. He often battled for years to get his symphonies performed, only to have them hissed by audiences and panned by the critics. With single-minded determination he swept aside all disappointments and kept working. In 1902 he married Alma Schindler, who was 19 years his junior and considered one of the most beautiful women in Vienna. They had two daughters, Maria and Anna; Anna later became a famous sculptor. Maria's death of scarlet fever at age five in 1907 devastated the composer, especially because he superstitiously believed he had tempted fate by writing his 1904 song-cycle, "Kindertotenlieder" ("Songs on the Death of Children"). Further marital woes with Alma led Mahler to briefly consult Sigmund Freud for psychoanalysis. Also in 1907, the most fateful year of his life, he was diagnosed with a terminal heart disease (infective myocarditis) and resigned from the Vienna Opera. Weary of the Vienna musical establishment's petty intrigues, he served as director of the New York Philharmonic from 1908 to 1910 and also conducted at the Metropolitan Opera for three years; but in time he found the creative atmosphere there even more stifling. In February 1911 Mahler's health took a sudden turn for the worse and he returned to Vienna, where he died in a nursing home. His obituaries eulogized his eminence as a conductor but said almost nothing about his music. It took younger generations to carry the torch for him. Mahler's compositions, though vast in scope, are not many in number. His heavy workload as a conductor left him only his summer vacations for composing, and he maximized this time by concentrating on what he considered "great works." Apart from songs, all his creative energies were poured into symphonies of unheard-of dimensions. Mahler tried to write music so varied and grandiose that the whole world was reflected in it. He used a larger orchestra than any composer before him, and made frequent use of vocal forces and unorthodox instrumentation. His Symphony No. 3 (1896), in six movements lasting almost two hours, is the longest such work in the current repertoire. The Symphony No. 8 (1906), nicknamed the "Symphony of a Thousand," requires two mixed choruses, a boys' chorus, eight solo voices, an organ, and a gigantic orchestra. Mahler's symphonies were initially criticized as over-pretentious, navel-gazing, bombastic, and vulgar; there are elements of truth in these assertions. But along with the artistic faults, and making them pale in comparison, are the wealth of emotion in his music, the nobility and grandeur of his best pages, his profligate melody, and his awesome resources as an instrumental colorist. Mahler's first important works were songs, and word-setting remained a constant in his career. The "Songs of a Wayfarer" (1885), written to his own lyrics, reflect his lifelong feelings of personal isolation, later expressed in his remark that he felt "three times homeless: as a Bohemian among Austrians, an Austrian among Germans, and a Jew throughout the world." (He was dogged by anti-Semitism and in 1897 he had to convert from Judaism to Catholicism in order to secure his post at the Vienna Opera). Mahler's settings of songs from the folk collection "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" ("The Youth's Magic Horn"), composed between 1892 and 1901, had a notable effect on his concurrent symphonic music. The "Ruckert Songs" (1902) and "Kindertotenlieder," set to poems by Friedrich Rückert, are more somber and emotionally probing. "The Song of the Earth" (1909) is Mahler's most perfect masterpiece; both a symphony and a song cycle, it represents the culmination of his art and a distillation of its essence. The texts are German translations of old Chinese poems, their themes the transitory nature of all living things. Excluding the Symphony No. 1 (the "Titan," 1888), historians tend to group Mahler's symphonies into three periods. The Second Symphony ("Resurrection" 1894), the Third, and the Fourth (1900) are called the "Wunderhorn Symphonies" because they quote material from the "Das Knaben Wunderhorn" songs. Nos. 5 (1902), 6 ("The Tragic," 1905), and 7 ("The Song of the Night," 1905) are austere and darker, especially the Sixth, with its "hammer stroke of fate" motif and unrelieved gloom. The Fifth's Adagio, for harp and strings, is Mahler's best-known single movement. It is sometimes performed as a separate piece. The Eighth and the Ninth (1910) mark a new phase, inspired by Mahler's recent study of J. S. Bach, in which he favored linear counterpoint over classical harmony. Mahler began, but did not live to finish, a Tenth Symphony; only the opening Adagio was completed in full score. In the 1970's musicologist Deryck Cooke fashioned a performing version of the full Tenth based on the composer's sketches, but most conductors shy away from it, playing only the Adagio. Mahler's difficulties in getting the public to accept his music led him to predict, with resignation but with confidence, "My day will come." And in the 1960's it finally did, thanks to the unflagging efforts of such conductors as Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and Leonard Bernstein. In the meantime Mahler had a decisive influence on several important composers, among them Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Dimitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten, as well as on Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who spread the Mahlerian style to Hollywood movie scoring. Director Luchino Visconti's film "Death in Venice" (1971) modeled its hero after the composer (though there is no evidence Mahler was gay), and used the Adagio from the Fifth Symphony as its theme music. He was also the subject of an even more unconventional biopic by Ken Russell, "Mahler" (1974).
Composer. He is known for his epic-scale symphonies and orchestral song-cycles, which provided an important link between the late 19th Century Romantic and early Modern periods. His music was thought to be so baffling and idiosyncratic that it was not fully appreciated until 50 years after his death. He was also an outstanding conductor. Mahler was born in Kalischt, Bohemia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now in the Czech Republic), one of 11 children of a poor Jewish couple. Tragedy stalked his youth. Six of his siblings died of childhood diseases; an older brother committed suicide, an older sister went insane. Still another brother was born mentally handicapped and later became a criminal. Mahler himself grew into a hypersensitive and very neurotic adult, but he also had musical gifts and an iron will that helped him contend with life's adversities. He studied at the Vienna Conservatory from 1875 to 1880, where he won a prize in composition and absorbed the influences that would shape his work: Beethoven, Franz Schubert, Richard Wagner, Anton Bruckner. After writing a failed opera, "Das Klagende Lied" (1880), Mahler embarked on a career as one of the greatest conductors of his era, specializing in theatre music. In this capacity he was ahead of his time in demanding multiple rehearsals and absolute fidelity to the composer's intentions, presenting scores without cuts or interpolations. After several minor appointments, during which he gained a well-deserved reputation as a martinet, Mahler conducted the Budapest Opera from 1888 to 1891, and the Hamburg Opera from 1891 to 1897. He was noted for his Mozart and Wagner productions. In 1897 he was named Music Director of the prestigious Vienna State Opera, where he remained for a decade. His dramatic reforms and pitiless perfectionism made him many enemies there, but they also turned the Vienna Opera into the finest in Europe. Far less successful were Mahler's attempts to promote his own music. He often battled for years to get his symphonies performed, only to have them hissed by audiences and panned by the critics. With single-minded determination he swept aside all disappointments and kept working. In 1902 he married Alma Schindler, who was 19 years his junior and considered one of the most beautiful women in Vienna. They had two daughters, Maria and Anna; Anna later became a famous sculptor. Maria's death of scarlet fever at age five in 1907 devastated the composer, especially because he superstitiously believed he had tempted fate by writing his 1904 song-cycle, "Kindertotenlieder" ("Songs on the Death of Children"). Further marital woes with Alma led Mahler to briefly consult Sigmund Freud for psychoanalysis. Also in 1907, the most fateful year of his life, he was diagnosed with a terminal heart disease (infective myocarditis) and resigned from the Vienna Opera. Weary of the Vienna musical establishment's petty intrigues, he served as director of the New York Philharmonic from 1908 to 1910 and also conducted at the Metropolitan Opera for three years; but in time he found the creative atmosphere there even more stifling. In February 1911 Mahler's health took a sudden turn for the worse and he returned to Vienna, where he died in a nursing home. His obituaries eulogized his eminence as a conductor but said almost nothing about his music. It took younger generations to carry the torch for him. Mahler's compositions, though vast in scope, are not many in number. His heavy workload as a conductor left him only his summer vacations for composing, and he maximized this time by concentrating on what he considered "great works." Apart from songs, all his creative energies were poured into symphonies of unheard-of dimensions. Mahler tried to write music so varied and grandiose that the whole world was reflected in it. He used a larger orchestra than any composer before him, and made frequent use of vocal forces and unorthodox instrumentation. His Symphony No. 3 (1896), in six movements lasting almost two hours, is the longest such work in the current repertoire. The Symphony No. 8 (1906), nicknamed the "Symphony of a Thousand," requires two mixed choruses, a boys' chorus, eight solo voices, an organ, and a gigantic orchestra. Mahler's symphonies were initially criticized as over-pretentious, navel-gazing, bombastic, and vulgar; there are elements of truth in these assertions. But along with the artistic faults, and making them pale in comparison, are the wealth of emotion in his music, the nobility and grandeur of his best pages, his profligate melody, and his awesome resources as an instrumental colorist. Mahler's first important works were songs, and word-setting remained a constant in his career. The "Songs of a Wayfarer" (1885), written to his own lyrics, reflect his lifelong feelings of personal isolation, later expressed in his remark that he felt "three times homeless: as a Bohemian among Austrians, an Austrian among Germans, and a Jew throughout the world." (He was dogged by anti-Semitism and in 1897 he had to convert from Judaism to Catholicism in order to secure his post at the Vienna Opera). Mahler's settings of songs from the folk collection "Des Knaben Wunderhorn" ("The Youth's Magic Horn"), composed between 1892 and 1901, had a notable effect on his concurrent symphonic music. The "Ruckert Songs" (1902) and "Kindertotenlieder," set to poems by Friedrich Rückert, are more somber and emotionally probing. "The Song of the Earth" (1909) is Mahler's most perfect masterpiece; both a symphony and a song cycle, it represents the culmination of his art and a distillation of its essence. The texts are German translations of old Chinese poems, their themes the transitory nature of all living things. Excluding the Symphony No. 1 (the "Titan," 1888), historians tend to group Mahler's symphonies into three periods. The Second Symphony ("Resurrection" 1894), the Third, and the Fourth (1900) are called the "Wunderhorn Symphonies" because they quote material from the "Das Knaben Wunderhorn" songs. Nos. 5 (1902), 6 ("The Tragic," 1905), and 7 ("The Song of the Night," 1905) are austere and darker, especially the Sixth, with its "hammer stroke of fate" motif and unrelieved gloom. The Fifth's Adagio, for harp and strings, is Mahler's best-known single movement. It is sometimes performed as a separate piece. The Eighth and the Ninth (1910) mark a new phase, inspired by Mahler's recent study of J. S. Bach, in which he favored linear counterpoint over classical harmony. Mahler began, but did not live to finish, a Tenth Symphony; only the opening Adagio was completed in full score. In the 1970's musicologist Deryck Cooke fashioned a performing version of the full Tenth based on the composer's sketches, but most conductors shy away from it, playing only the Adagio. Mahler's difficulties in getting the public to accept his music led him to predict, with resignation but with confidence, "My day will come." And in the 1960's it finally did, thanks to the unflagging efforts of such conductors as Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Dimitri Mitropoulos, and Leonard Bernstein. In the meantime Mahler had a decisive influence on several important composers, among them Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern, Alban Berg, Dimitri Shostakovich, and Benjamin Britten, as well as on Erich Wolfgang Korngold, who spread the Mahlerian style to Hollywood movie scoring. Director Luchino Visconti's film "Death in Venice" (1971) modeled its hero after the composer (though there is no evidence Mahler was gay), and used the Adagio from the Fifth Symphony as its theme music. He was also the subject of an even more unconventional biopic by Ken Russell, "Mahler" (1974).
Find a Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/1298/gustav-mahler: accessed
), memorial page for Gustav Mahler (7 Jul 1860–18 May 1911), Find a Grave Memorial ID 1298, citing Friedhof Grinzing, Grinzing,
Wien Stadt,
Vienna,
Austria;
Maintained by Find a Grave.
Add Photos for Gustav Mahler
Fulfill Photo Request for Gustav Mahler
Photo Request Fulfilled
Thank you for fulfilling this photo request. An email has been sent to the person who requested the photo informing them that you have fulfilled their request
There is an open photo request for this memorial
Are you adding a grave photo that will fulfill this request?
Oops, some error occurred while uploading your photo(s).
Oops, something didn't work. Close this window, and upload the photo(s) again.
Make sure that the file is a photo. Photos larger than 8Mb will be reduced.
All photos uploaded successfully, click on the <b>Done button</b> to see the photos in the gallery.
General photo guidelines:
Photos larger than 8.0 MB will be optimized and reduced.
Each contributor can upload a maximum of 5 photos for a memorial.
A memorial can have a maximum of 20 photos from all contributors.
The sponsor of a memorial may add an additional 10 photos (for a total of 30 on the memorial).
Include gps location with grave photos where possible.
No animated GIFs, photos with additional graphics (borders, embellishments.)
You are only allowed to leave one flower per day for any given memorial.
Memorial Photos
This is a carousel with slides. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate, or jump to a slide with the slide dots. Use Escape keyboard button or the Close button to close the carousel.
Quickly see who the memorial is for and when they lived and died and where they are buried.
Show Map
If the memorial includes GPS coordinates, simply click 'Show Map' to view the gravesite location within the cemetery. If no GPS coordinates are available, you can contribute by adding them if you know the precise location.
Photos
For memorials with more than one photo, additional photos will appear here or on the photos tab.
Photos Tab
All photos appear on this tab and here you can update the sort order of photos on memorials you manage. To view a photo in more detail or edit captions for photos you added, click the photo to open the photo viewer.
Flowers
Flowers added to the memorial appear on the bottom of the memorial or here on the Flowers tab. To add a flower, click the Leave a Flower button.
Family Members
Family members linked to this person will appear here.
Related searches
Use the links under See more… to quickly search for other people with the same last name in the same cemetery, city, county, etc.
Sponsor This Memorial
Remove advertising from a memorial by sponsoring it for just $5. Previously sponsored memorials or famous memorials will not have this option.
Share
Share this memorial using social media sites or email.
Save to
Save to an Ancestry Tree, a virtual cemetery, your clipboard for pasting or Print.
Edit or Suggest Edit
Edit a memorial you manage or suggest changes to the memorial manager.
Have Feedback
Thanks for using Find a Grave, if you have any feedback we would love to hear from you.
You may not upload any more photos to this memorial
"Unsupported file type"
Uploading...
Waiting...
Success
Failed
This photo was not uploaded because this memorial already has photos
This photo was not uploaded because you have already uploaded photos to this memorial
This photo was not uploaded because this memorial already has photos
This photo was not uploaded because you have already uploaded photos to this memorial
Invalid File Type
Uploading 1 Photo
Uploading 2 Photos
1 Photo Uploaded
2 Photos Uploaded
Added by
GREAT NEWS! There is 1 volunteer for this cemetery.
Sorry! There are no volunteers for this cemetery. Continuing with this request will add an alert to the cemetery page and any new volunteers will have the opportunity to fulfill your request.
Enter numeric value
Enter memorial Id
Year should not be greater than current year
Invalid memorial
Duplicate entry for memorial
You have chosen this person to be their own family member.
Reported!
This relationship is not possible based on lifespan dates.
0% Complete
Saved
Sign in or Register
Sign in to Find a Grave
Sign-in to link to existing account
There is a problem with your email/password.
There is a problem with your email/password.
There is a problem with your email/password.
We encountered an unknown problem. Please wait a few minutes and try again. If the problem persists contact Find a Grave.
We’ve updated the security on the site. Please reset your password.
Your account has been locked for 30 minutes due to too many failed sign in attempts. Please contact Find a Grave at [email protected] if you need help resetting your password.
This account has been disabled. If you have questions, please contact [email protected]
This account has been disabled. If you have questions, please contact [email protected]
Email not found
Please complete the captcha to let us know you are a real person.
Sign in to your existing Find a Grave account. You’ll only have to do this once—after your accounts are connected, you can sign in using your Ancestry sign in or your Find a Grave sign in.
We found an existing Find a Grave account associated with your email address. Sign in below with your Find a Grave credentials to link your Ancestry account. After your accounts are connected you can sign in using either account.
Please enter your email to sign in.
Please enter your password to sign in.
Please enter your email and password to sign in.
There is a problem with your email/password.
A system error has occurred. Please try again later.
A password reset email has been sent to EmailID. If you don't see an email, please check your spam folder.
We encountered an unknown problem. Please wait a few minutes and try again. If the problem persists contact Find a Grave.
Password Reset
Please enter your email address and we will send you an email with a reset password code.
Registration Options
Welcome to Find a Grave
Create your free account by choosing an option below.
or
Ancestry account link
To create your account, Ancestry will share your name and email address with Find a Grave. To continue choose an option below.
or
If you already have a Find a Grave account, please sign in to link to Ancestry®.
New Member Registration
Email is mandatory
Email and Password are mandatory
This account already exists, but the email address still needs to be confirmed. Resend Activation Email
Your password is not strong enough
Invalid Email
You must agree to Terms and Conditions
Account already exists
Please check the I'm not a robot checkbox
Internal Server error occurred
If you want to be a Photo Volunteer you must enter a ZIP Code or select your location on the map
You must select an email preference
We have sent you an activation email
Your new password must contain one or more uppercase and lowercase letters, and one or more numbers or special characters.
We just emailed an activation code to
Please check your email and click on the link to activate your account.
cemeteries found in will be saved to your photo volunteer list.
cemeteries found within miles of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list.
cemeteries found within kilometers of your location will be saved to your photo volunteer list.
Within 5 miles of your location.
Within 5 kilometers of your location.
0 cemeteries found in .
0 cemeteries found.
Add a cemetery to fulfill photo requests
You can customize the cemeteries you volunteer for by selecting or deselecting below.
Search above to list available cemeteries.
Getting location…
Loading...
Loading...
No cemeteries found
Find a Grave Video Tutorials
Default Language
Translation on Find a Grave is an ongoing project. If you notice a problem with the translation, please send a message to [email protected] and include a link to the page and details about the problem. Thanks for your help!
Preferred Language
We have set your language to based on information from your browser.