MAHLER MUSIC : SYMPHONY NO. 7, RONDO-FINALE: TEMPO I
Gustav Mahler was born July 7th, 1860 in Austria to Jewish parents and died May 18th, 1911 in Vienna.
During his life he was better known as a conductor. Since his death he has been recognized as the leading Romantic to Modernist composer.
As a young teen he was admitted to the Vienna Conservatoire and studied piano and went on to attend Vienna University.
At the university he made his first attempt at composing with the cantata Das Klagende Lied. When it was unsuccessful he focused on conducting starting at a small opera hall and gradually working his way to the bigger opera houses.
To get an appointment to the Vienna Court Opera, Mahler converted to Catholicism and conducted there for the next ten years.
For nine months of the year he conducted the opera and during the summers he retreated to Maiernigg where he composed. It was there where he wrote Symphonies 4 through 8.
In 1901 he married a young music student Alma Schindler while working on Symphony No. 5 and the fourth movement composed for strings and harp displays his love for her through the melody.
During his later years to escape growing anti-Semitism in Europe, Mahler accepted a season of conducting at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1908. He returned to New York the next year as the first conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
In his life his works generally were not accepted, but by the middle of the 20th century Leonard Bernstein’s recordings of his compositions attracted widespread interest that has grown until today.
His musical projects were huge. His most popular work during his lifetime was Symphony No. 2 that lasts an hour and a half.
In 1911 during a visit to America he was found to be suffering from heart disease and returned to Vienna where he died four months later uttering as his last word, Mozart.
