Language:
German
Year of publication:
2012
Titel der Quelle:
Jahrbuch des Simon-Dubnow-Instituts
Angaben zur Quelle:
11 (2012) 245-258
Keywords:
Mahler, Gustav,
;
Jews Music
;
History and criticism
;
Antisemitism in music
Abstract:
Discusses the reception of Gustav Mahler's music since his death in 1911, mainly in Germany. Shows that the negative qualities attributed to his work were based on Richard Wagner's views, presented in "Das Judentum in der Musik", in which he emphasized lacking creativity and flawed musicality of Jewish composers. With the exception of a brief Mahler-boom in the early 1920s, the Austrian-born composer was consistently hated or at least mistrusted by most concertgoers and musical experts until the 1960s. During the Nazi era, German musicologists hardly dealt with Mahler, hoping to downplay his importance. Although his music was not officially forbidden, it was not performed outside Jewish circles in the Third Reich. However, in Austria, Mahler's music was played until the Anschluss and a street in Vienna was named after him. After 1945 musical experts continued to recycle Wagner's anti-Jewish arguments, but left out the word "Jewish". Mahler's music was labelled "eclectic", "trivial", "split between ambition and capacity", "seeking effect", and "shallow". Theodor Adorno's view in 1949, that Mahler was a definite authority in the field of modern music, did not affect musicologists. Anti-Jewish assessments kept flourishing until the 1960s. These stopped, at least in public, only after Mahler's international breakthrough at that time.
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