Bee Wilson: Alma Mahler, her music and men

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.

A typical issue moves through political commentary to science or ancient history by way of literary criticism and social anthropology. So, for example, an issue can open with a piece on the rhetoric of war, move on to reassessing the reputation of Pythagoras, follow that with articles on the situation in Iraq, the 19th-century super-rich, Nabokov’s unpublished novel, how saints got to be saints, the life and work of William Empson, and an assessment of the poetry of Alice Oswald.

[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.

[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?

[presbyterosBassI]

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

[evamariadoroszkowska]

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

[oops]

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

[mahlernutcase]

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!

[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.

[ulrichcambridge]

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

[warrenleming]

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

[danielpincus]

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

[leonardodelarosa]

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.

[kauwtjes]

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

[trackhorse]

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.

[davidmayhew]

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!!!

[thomasromano]

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.

[msteen]

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

[nevmcc]

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

[yehbuddy]

What kind of kinky relationship is this

[ysogvvk]

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

[andrewdandens]

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...