Mahler's Symphonic World

"Between 1888 and 1910 Gustav Mahler composed nine symphonies and part of his tenth before his death in 1911. Music for the Age of Uncertainty makes a radical claim: that over his lifetime, Mahler really composed just one ideal symphony. While each of his symphonies was distinct, Mahler strived to capture in his music a philosophical outlook on human existence. This book uncovers that worldview in the single symphony that Karol Berger asserts Mahler was composing all his life. Composing at the turn of the twentieth century, Mahler found himself in a spiritual situation in which all trust in firm foundations had evaporated. In Berger's analysis, each of Mahler's symphonies reflects his preoccupation with the suffering and transience of human existence. Through detailed analysis of the allegros, middle movements, and finales of Mahler's symphonies, Berger traces how the same images and plots appear in different works and the borderlines between each symphony can get porous. Music for the Age of Uncertainty locates Mahler's music within the matrix of intellectual currents that defined his epoch and offers a revelatory picture of the composer's musical way of being in the world"--