Bee Wilson: Alma Mahler, her music and men

More from Bee Wilson in the LRB: lrb.me/q80
Bee Wilson discusses Alma Mahler's life, music, relationships and anti-semitism.
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Since 1979, the London Review of Books has stood up for the tradition of the literary and intellectual essay in English. Each issue contains up to 15 long reviews and essays by academics, writers and journalists. There are also shorter art and film reviews, as well as poems and a lively letters page.
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[@Beukellariteiten]

Thank you for the summary!

[@EmitFlestiKY]

The issue of the proper order of the Scherzo and Andante of Mahler's 6th is far more complicated musically and historically than this woman makes it out to be.

[@AlessandroZir]

very informative, thanks!

[@presbyterosBassI]

For Mahler scholars, Alma is a real problem. You never know what is true, unless you can verify it somewhere else.

[@jackwilmoresongs]

Very interesting. However, if the arrangement of the movements in Mahler's sixth was Alma's idea, I agree with her. The Scherzo is much more effective after the first movement and before the Andanta. There is no question for me about that. After all, she was a composer herself. Gustav was not above getting some help. No?

[@londonreviewofbooks]

+Jacques Wilmore Thanks for the comment. You may be interested to know that your view has had some support on our letters page, in an intriguing dispute on the matter between two brothers: www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n24/letters#letter5

[@EmitFlestiKY]

It wasn't simply Alma's idea. Perhaps she simply remembered the original order when she was asked. Originally Mahler conceived it and published it Scherzo-Andante. Shortly before the first performance, during rehearsals actually, Mahler decided to perform it in the Andante-Scherzo order. The question of the proper order has been complicated, confused, and confusing ever since, and is far more complicated than this woman makes it sound. This lady makes it sound as if, a propos of nothing, Alma just decided to change the order of the movements due to some personal whim.

[@TheTacomaven]

@@EmitFlestiKY agree - thank you for saying so. It seems the woman in the video has already decided she's an unredeemable villain - sounds like she was an alcoholic later in life and a product of her time and influences - but she still had to flee the Nazi's during WWII.

[@mahlernutcase4250]

So Alma greatly admired Wagner. Well guess what? . . . SO DID MAHLER! That was what they both had in common when they first sat down to talk. Mahler was such a great conductor of Wagner's music, that he was Hitler's favorite in his poor Vienna 'student' (vagabond) days. How's that for irony!

[@ThePhilosorpheus]

This video is mostly a cheap attempt at vilifying her.

[@davidmehnert6206]

ThePhilosorpheus I agree.

[@Anaxiphile]

ThePhilosorpheus read the book. The video is less of an attempt to vilify her than a recounting of what is reported in the book, and the video pulls its punches, if anything.

[@frogmouth]

I dont think the speaker is exaggerating at all.

[@TheTacomaven]

He also converted to Catholicism as a career move... also interesting.

[@rjr1967]

this is fascinating, thanks!

[@davidmayhew8083]

Brilliant.

[@oops5414]

Could anyone, please, tell me with which accent she speaks? I don't mean: British; I mean a more specific one. Thank you.

[@aryehfinklestein9041]

Though it's not a very obvious version, this sounds to me like a West Country ( like Cornwall ) or West rural accent - clue is in the word "died", which she pronounces, "doyd".

[@ArsLonga1967]

It's a standard educated British accent, it doesn't really have a regional inflection.

[@hdd4308]

​@@aryehfinklestein9041Thank you for explaining 🙏.

[@hdd4308]

​@@ArsLonga1967Thank you 🙏.

[@evamariadoroszkowska6688]

Frustrating that this is a one sided view without looking deeper into the context and doing real academic research about the era, the time , the language of the Austrian of the diaries and not just some review of one book rather than looking at lots of info to get a real picture ..this is a much more complex issue

[@HandleGF]

Well said.

[@apexxxx10]

*Herra Jumalauta mikä hattu. Paljonko se paiaa? Bangkok-Jomppa CarSanook Media Thailand*

[@warrenleming9049]

alma mahler used to holler one man ain't enough i've had them in twos and threes and not one up to snuff

[@ColdChicago]

a life of the mind is spent twixt the sheets- lets not be unkind alma knew that the intellect was erotic but best of all she was auto hypnotic the boys fell at her feet and worse some composed lovelorn verse

[@danielpincus221]

The Scherzo works over the material of the first movement so much that it seems unnatural for her it to come second.

[@HandleGF]

Love to know what Ms Wilson, unlike Alma, would have achieved on her own in the world of 1900. Who buys this Marie Antoinette-ish tripe about Alma's 'options'? As for all the subsequent virtue-signalling about her antisemitic talk, she saved Werfel's life. In 1940 she got him and a motley crew of refugees over the Pyrenées. She walked the walk, literally.

[@keithwhitehorn5811]

Read the pre-1902 diaries and letters. She desperately wanted to escape the control of Carl Moll and her mother, Ana Schindler/Moll. She failed to realise what an oddball Mahler was, and how the constancy of Mahler's sister Justine would control the event to which she could bully Mahler. Sadly she capitulated to Mahler's ultimatum in relation to her composing,, and the seeds of doom were sown.

[@HandleGF]

I wouldn't use the phrase "escape the control" because Carl and her mother clearly wanted her married off (and out of the house) but you are indeed right to call Mahler an oddball. At any rate, the English version of the early Alma diaries is a travesty, as shown here. johnflynn64travel.wordpress.com/2017/12/12/the-schindler-girl/

[@ulrichcambridge]

Zemlinsky was the son of a Jewish-Muslim mother and a Slovakian Catholic father (Haste 2019)

[@TheTacomaven]

Whoa. Interesting!

[@msteen26]

Brilliant stuff, and so funny too. What a terrible woman Alma was, like so many brilliant people.

[@kauwtjes]

Zemlynski Jewish? He had just one jewish grandfather, an islamitic grandmother, and converted to christiaity before het met Alma.

[@taoyizhi1605]

What does "Aryan" mean?

[@norahj.9970]

Caucasian

[@sentinel9046]

Indo-European. the migration of people from persia, Iran means Aryan. At the beginning of the bronze age. In the age of aries, when animals were domesticated, and civilisations arose with agriculture as opposed to Hunter gatherers. Lactose tolerant.

[@amoswittenbergsmusings]

In context, it means mainly not Jewish.

[@leonardodelarosa3731]

Como de costumbre, para el mundo de habla inglesa Alma representa un problema mayúsculo. No sólo exhiben su muy arraigada misoginia (y su racismo obsesivo adjudicándoselo al personaje que dicen analizar) sino que no perdonan el hecho de que quien ellos suponen que debería ser el genio indiscutido, su primer marido, queda muy mal parado por los testimonios de Alma. Lean lo que Alma escribió, lean los testimonios de la época, hoy muy fácil de acceder a ellos, y ni hacerle caso a "académicos" como ésta señora, a quien se le nota que tiene una agenda.

[@trackhorse9028]

It's maybe colored by the passage of years, but if Alma Mahler was "the most beautiful woman in Vienna", I would purely hate to see the homely ones.

[@dw2062]

Cracking pair of ankles though.

[@DanWotanBarrett]

Ah, ‘it’s gold, Senatah. Well put forth.

[@davidmayhew8083]

My take. All her "loves" are surrogates for her beloved father. She's always looking for a man she can look up to like daddy. But things are never so "perfect" as with daddy. So she rejects the men or emasculates them as a way of getting even with daddy for leaving her in her youth. Then of course there's the psychology of the men. Oyve!!!

[@boogerie]

Mahler had FOUR CHILDREN!?!?!?!

[@keithwhitehorn5811]

No, Alma did.

[@Anaxiphile]

Alma Mahler had four children. Two with Mahler, one of whom died in early childhood. With Gropius, she had one child, who died in her teens. While married to Gropius, she had a baby with Werfel. The baby died in infancy.

[@joyrisley7475]

Is this source accurate?

[@HandleGF]

No, it's bullshit

[@Anaxiphile]

It’s a fairly accurate review of the book.

[@ONeirda]

I find Alma Mahlers music lacking real talent. No chiaro-scuro, no rhytmical modeling, just a tapestry of notes that don't make melodic sense. Sorry to say so, but I do not hear anything in it that I would call precious music. Just tapping around on some notes.

[@marinameilenstein]

Bei dir ist es traut is quite beautiful

[@ONeirda]

@@marinameilenstein Yes, dear Marina I do agree. "Bei dir ist es traut" truly has something that even I can understand. It's about the only Alma Mahler song I have ever sincerely performed. With all the other production that has survived the grave of times, I simply cannot connect, to be honest. Perhaps one day I will mature musically and then I hopefully will be able to appreciate the (for me still hidden) musical secrets in what she had composed. And I truly want to give it a fair chance. But for my state of enlightenment, Alma Mahler's music simply is (not yet?) my cup of tea ...

[@thomasromano9321]

I think Alma Mahler has been treated very unfairly. First of all, she was a composer in her own right. Why is there all this smut about her love life? So she had a lot of affairs with men after her husband's death? I can understand why. Gustav Mahler, egocentric man that he was, caught her composing and strictly forbade her to compose. Like a lot of wives of the time, she bent her own ego to his. As a gifted composer in her own right, she ended up instead editing his scores, which she had the skill to do, but it must have torn her up inside so much. No wonder she had a desperate affair with another man during her marriage to Gustav Mahler. She was probably just seeking some approval and recognition which she never got from her husband. And Mahler himself must have felt guilt over the way he treated his wife. He sought help from Sigmund Freud the famous psychoanalyst. Freud put Mahler under hypnosis, in an attempt to understand what Mahler was feeling. Both men ended up admiring each other's accomplishments greatly, but that is another story. Give Alma Mahler respect here, instead of throwing a lot of smut and yellow journalism at her. She was far more than the crap you're throwing at her.

[@HandleGF]

Be very sceptical about Beaumont's translation of her diaries. There are more than fifty significant omissions (incl. a few sympathetic comments about Jews), compared with the German original. As for the howlers in what IS translated, they include gems such as "psychisch" being rendered as "physical" (Jesus wept) & - even worse - "Schmäh" turned into "smear".

[@samsorbelalkhel7929]

I'm sorry but also looking at the alma problem shows that woman was not as innocent you paint her to be. Everytime a letter was written by Mahler that showed her in a bad light she would edit them. She changed the characteristics of her husband In her tellings. She was manipulative and dishonest. You may respect her work just as anyman would respect the work of another composer. But she was truly vile

[@frogmouth]

There is stacks of evidence of her attitudes. She doesn't get a free pass because Mahler wasn't enlightened. She embraced the life as a muse which is a very dodgy life choice.

[@HandleGF]

@@frogmouth It would be fascinating to know what YOU would have done in 1900, in the same circumstances.

[@HandleGF]

@@samsorbelalkhel7929 Mahler's characteristics were very evident while he was alive. Yeah, he was a real charmer. :-D

[@nevmcc3884]

I never heard of this woman until now, thankfully. She seems like a huge social climbing rogue

[@user-ys4og2vv8k]

And by today's standards, she doesn't even look pretty ... let alone femme fatal.

[@andrewdandens5768]

Alma was a Juicy Lucy. She collected men for their heads and not what was down below below. Endowments are handed out sparingly. But what a collector. Unfortunately the light went out some time ago, so's I canna joint the cue...

[@mickthenick1]

Maybe she collected men for 'what was down below'. Why not? Who will say?

[@scoreanimation4271]

Mick The Nick I think Alma was born in a different era that the one she should be. Off course we will never know, but maybe her desires were bigger than just being a wife with children.

[@yehbuddy4251]

What kind of kinky relationship is this

[@dreic16]

Wow this is fascinating, I never knew any of this. So Alma truly is an asshole after all! lol