Gustav Mahler, Vol. 4: A New Life Cut Short, 1907-1911
by Henry-Louis De La Grange
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Book Summary Information
Author: Henry-Louis De La GrangeEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2008-04-07
ISBN: 0198163878
Number of pages: 1072
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of Gustav Mahler, Vol. 4: A New Life Cut Short, 1907-1911
Book Review: Mahler obsessives need not read this - just buy it. Others, do read on...
Summary: 5 Stars
1758 pages, covering three and a half years! This monster tome, three inches thick and five pounds in weight, tells you everything you could possibly want to know (and a lot you probably don't need to) about the final months of Mahler's life.
Does the subject deserve such in-depth treatment? Of course he does - and la Grange is the man to do it. This will be THE essential work of reference for every Mahler scholar in the future.
Whether it's the ideal work for the average music lover (whoever that may be...). I doubt; there are far shorter and more readable treatments elsewhere. Also the sections of musical analysis manage to be both over-elaborate and simplistic at the same time. La Grange is a compiler and a quantifier, not an interpreter, so his analyses are not really analyses at all, but lists of things that happen. So go elsewhere to find out how the music works (for all his near-unreadability at times, Adorno is peerless in getting under the skin of this profound and complex music).
Every tiny documentary scrap of Mahler's life is gathered into La Grange's study, from the fullest possible documentary account of the Munich premiere of the 8th Symphony in 1910, to details of Mahler's diet (he seemed to live mainly on butter - and died of heart disease). And sometimes the sheer wealth of information is overwhelming: from the moment Mahler decides to consult Sigmund Freud (p.883) it takes ten pages and forty-six footnotes to get to the meeting itself. In between, there is a biography of Freud, a history of the Dutch town of Leiden where they met and a full account of the 'interminable train journey' Mahler undertook to get there (we eventually know how he must have felt). The detail is incredibly rich, but finding out what you want to find out is sometimes incredibly frustrating.
There is also a sheer physical problem in reading the book. It is enormous: impossible to prop up, makes your legs go to sleep if you rest it in your lap for a long time and is so thick that it is sometimes hard to read the text close to the spine. It would have been kinder to have published it as two volumes, perhaps in a slip-case. If it ever comes out in paperback the spine won't last five minutes.
All this seems rather negative - the propective buyer needs to be aware of these drawbacks before shelling out all that money - but this does not detract from the staggering scholarly achievement. The sheer single-minded dedication of the author to his huge task is simply mind-boggling and it is hard to think of a comparable achievement in the history of musical biography. I don't think even Wagner has received this kind of treatment.
If you're new to Mahler and want to get a clear idea of his life and music, this may not be the volume for you. If you are a Mahler obsessive, you probably haven't even bothered to read this review; you already know you need this book. It's a masterpiece. Despite the problems, a rating of less than five stars would be an impertinence.
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