Mahler’s Youth and a Brief Analysis of his Second Symphony

2013 Words5 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Effects of music on child development essay

The main focus of this paper is going to be about Mahler’s youth and also his second symphony ‘Resurrection’. Since there is little information regarding his youth in Vienna (1875-1880)it is necessary to do a situational analysis of Mahler’s context, in which I will try to establish a connection between the socio-political context and the young Mahler, based on situational logic. It is also necessary to recall Mahler’s childhood years to understand the whole effect of his work. Therefore, this paper will be divided into a) a brief recount of his childhood, b) a situational analysis of the socio-political factors of Vienna in 1875-1880, and c) a brief analysis of his 2nd Symphony..

Gustav Mahler was born on July 7, 1860 in Kalischt, on the Bohemian-Moravian border, however he moved to Iglau in December of the same year. He would spend his infancy and adolescence there until 1871 when he left for Prague to continue his studies. For the purpose of the study of his work, it is critical to have in account the deep influence of his years in Iglau, or in other words, his early youth. Mahler himself would say on a interview in the last year of his life:

As the child is, so will the man be… So it is in music that the songs which a child assimilates in his youth will determine the musical manhood…the musical influence upon his afterlife and also that the melodies which composers evolve in their maturity are but the flowers which bloom from the fields which were sown with the seed of the folk-song in their childhood. (Barham, 9).

Mahler, whose parents didn’t play any musical instrument and who had virtually no musical heritage, understood later that the absorption of cultural material early in life was essential for his development as ...

... middle of paper ...

...onour of Henry-Louis De La Grange on His Seventieth Birthday. Berne: P. Lang, 1997. Print.

Mosley, David L. "The Material Thinking of Caspar David Friedrich and Gustav Mahler."Interdisciplinary Humanities 27.1 (2010): 99-111. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 28 Jan. 2011

Rosenzweig, Alfred, and Jeremy Barham. Gustav Mahler: New Insights into His Life, times and Work. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2007. Print.

Revers, Peter. "Song and Song Symphony (I). Des Knaben Wunderhorn and the Second, Third and Fourth Symphonies: Music of Heaven and Earth." Cambridge Companion to Mahler. By Jeremy Barham. New York: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.

Solvik, Morten. "The Literary and Philosophical Worlds of Gustav Mahler." Cambridge Companion to Mahler. By Jeremy Barham. New York: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.to Mahler. By Jeremy Barham. New York: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.

Show More
Related

  • essay

    1105 Words  | 3 Pages

    Composers effectively reflect and communicate how universal human experiences can explicitly modify an individual’s understanding and acceptance of one’s sense of identity and maturation. Goldsworthy’s novel Maestro, Don McLean’s song ‘Vincent’ and Baz Luhrmann’s film Australia all inter-relate within the deeper realisation of the impact the appreciation of art, and the development of understanding the concept of love acting as a compelling emotion can create towards one’s self-image.

    Read More

  • Georg Phillip Telemann: The Culture Of The Baroque Period

    1311 Words  | 3 Pages

    From the concrete structure of the Baroque period to the free-form structure of the Modern period each composer brings forth a new understanding and value to their time period. Within these pieces that they creatively compose it brings new light and displays the culture of the time period. The composers each have story to tell and has each creatively constructed their own works within the diameters of their era.

    Read More

  • The Fourth Movement of Mahler Symphony 1

    706 Words  | 2 Pages

    Outline the form of the Fourth movement and comment upon Mahler's conventional and unconventional treatment of the material

    Read More

  • Musicians and Composers of the Renaissance

    1760 Words  | 4 Pages

    John Warrack, author of 6 Great Composers, stated, “Any study of a composer, however brief, must have as its only purpose encouragement of the reader to greater enjoyment of the music” (Warrack, p.2). The composers and musicians of the Renaissance period need to be discussed and studied so that listeners, performers, and readers can appreciate and understand the beginnings of music theory and form. The reader can also understand the driving force of the composer, whether sacred or secular, popularity or religious growth. To begin understanding music composition one must begin at the birth, or rebirth of music and the composers who created the great change.

    Read More

  • Gustav Mahler Research Paper

    1312 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mahler’s family belonged to a German-speaking minority in Bohemians. They were also Jewish. His father and mother moved when he was still an infant and his father started a business. Their family grew fast but of the 12 children they had only 6 lived through the year of infancy. Iglua the town in which they moved when Gustav was only a baby was now a town of 20,000 people of which introduced him to music. He watched street dance, dance tunes, folk melodies, and the trumpet calls and marches of the local military band. At 4 years old Gustav was introduced to the piano and immediately loved it at the age of 10 he had his first public show, but Gustav’s school performance was doing as well so his father sent him to another one but Gustav was very unhappy and soon returned home. Later that year he suffered the horrible loss of his brother to a long illness. After Gustav tried to express his feelings in music he began to work on an opera of his lost brother. Neither the music nor play ever got recognized much.

    Read More

  • Gustav Mahler

    1053 Words  | 3 Pages

    Mahler's early career was spent at a serious of regional opera houses (Hall in 1880, Laibach in 1881, Olmutz in 1882, Kassel in 1883, Prague in 1885, Liepzig in 1886-8, Budapest from 1886-8, and Hamburg from 1891-7), a normal career path, until he arrived as head of the Vienna Opera in 1897. Mahler ended some of the more slovenly performance pra...

    Read More

  • A Brief Biography of Richard Wagner

    1082 Words  | 3 Pages

    Wanger lived in a reactionary and unsettled time, this restlessness is given a creative voice in his music and the condition of the romantic era man, removed from nature and isolated from communion with humanity is expressed in all of his music but especially in his operas. The morality of Wagner’s work has always been controversial, at best thought a work of a clearly flawed and tortured genius and at worst it is suspected to be steeped in subtle but deep racial hatred. For the purposes of this article I will present Wagner’s taking them at face value, without examining the theory stating that Anti-semitism was inherent to Wagner’s operas. I will use Wagner’s music drama Parsifal as the lens through which we can frame Wagner’s early operas and follow the themes of development to his mature style in this his final opera. Examining Wanger’s developments to music especially as regards the genesis of the music drama and how this contribution changed opera forever. His artistic reform, though not executed to the last detail, accelerated the trend towards organically conceived, through-composed structures, as well as influencing the development of the orchestra, of a new type of singer, and of various aspects of theatrical practice.

    Read More

  • The History of Slave Music and its Impact on Modern Music

    2049 Words  | 5 Pages

    Therefore, to endure the pains and sufferings the slaves had to use music. As illustrated above, the advent of music had far reaching results as it encouraged and gave them hope to continue working. The early music composers are the evidence of existence of early music which in turn has shaped today’s music like the blues and pop lyrics. In this case, the culture of the past has been rescued from getting lost.

    Read More

  • Exploring the Life and Works of Johann Sebastian Bach

    1790 Words  | 4 Pages

    This paper will explore the life of the great composer, Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach was considered one of the greatest composers of all time. He created amazing, famous compositions that made a big impact in today’s world. He went through rough times like many people do, the loss of his parents and finding a way back to the old routine was not an easy task. Bach came from generations of musicians and was given a religious education which is something that played a big role in his life when becoming a musician. We will analyze and learn the significance of some of his great compositions, the stories and what inspired him to compose music.

    Read More

  • Johann Sebastian Bach

    595 Words  | 2 Pages

    On the first day of spring, in 1685 in Eisenach, Germany, one of the greatest composers in musical history was born. Johann Sebastian Bach would live on, and distinguish himself in music history and would one day be among the most remarkable musicians who ever lived. Some would designate him as the greatest of them all (Pogue and Speck 24). He was born into one of the most extraordinary musical families the world has ever known. Bach was a devoutly religious man and was acquainted with tragedy. His first wife had died suddenly while he was away, and 12 of his 20 children died in infancy. However, he married again and three of his sons became significant composers (Johann Sebastian Bach). The features of Bach’s life, his styles, and his motivation contribute to part of Bach’s exceptional history.

    Read More

  • Music, Emotion and Language: Using Music to Communicate

    3292 Words  | 7 Pages

    There has yet to be a culture discovered which lacks music. Making music is seen historically to be as fundamental as the characteristically human activities as drawing and painting. Many even go so far as to compare music to language and claim that music functions as a "universal language." But it is rarely the same music, however, that all peoples respond to. What is it that we are responding to when we listen to music? Strictly speaking, music is not a language, (1) because it has neither outside referents nor easily detectable meaning. Ludwig Wittgenstein explains that although we understand music in a similar way as we understand language, music is not a language because we still cannot communicate through music as we can through language. (2) More recently, Susanne Langer argues that although we understand music as symbol, because we are so caught up in seeing symbolic form function like language we tend to want to make music into a language. But, Langer argues, music is not a kind of language (3) because the significance of music lies not in w...

    Read More

  • The Baroque Period And The Baroque From 1580-1750

    525 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Baroque period, traversing from 1580- 1750, was a period in which numerous styles were formed. Affected by progressions in religious deduction also moves in political mentality, the florid music is rich in differentiations and disagreements, and the imaginative beliefs to which one arranger aimed would not so much be the same as an alternate's goals. Be that as it may, there all were steady values imparted by inventive brains, and vital to the reasoning of a Baroque craftsman, whether it was a painter, stone carver or musical performer, was a proclaimed goal to move the enthusiasms. The conviction was that music spoke to the feelings, or affections, of life, and consequently ought to energize the audience's feelings. This point spread past Italy, the 'source of Baroque symbolization in all its structures', to turn into one of the 'recognizing characteristics of creative endeavor'[1] all around the seventeenth and early eighteenth hundreds of years.

    Read More

  • Analysis of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony

    1038 Words  | 3 Pages

    Felix Mendelssohn was one of the most famous composers during the 19th century. Although in his music he did show some features of romanticism, he was strongly influenced by traditional genres such as counterpoint etc. In this essay, the biography of the composer, background of the genre and analysis of the piece will be investigated

    Read More

  • A Complete Analysis of The Violin Concerto No. 1 in G minor, Opus 26

    2023 Words  | 5 Pages

    Historical. This brilliant composition is considered as one of the two most important violin concertos of the German Romantic period, with Mendelssohn’s vi...

    Read More

  • Gaining a “sense of the arts” through music

    1261 Words  | 3 Pages

    This essay highlights the key ideas of how young children between the ages of three to five make sense through art such as music. Furthermore, this essay makes links to early childhood curriculum as a bicultural perspective. It concludes with the role of teachers and adults in providing support during music.

    Read More

More about Mahler’s Youth and a Brief Analysis of his Second Symphony

Open Document