GUSTAV MAHLER’S DAS KLAGENDE LIED. THE STORY OF A BEGINNING
GUSTAV MAHLER’S DAS KLAGENDE LIED. THE STORY OF A BEGINNING

Summary/Abstract: Together with Beethoven and Mozart, Mahler is one of the most analyzed composers in the history of music. The notes he wrote on his manuscripts, rich in extra-musical meaning, allowed the clinicians and musicologists to analyze both the man and the musician. The controversies built around his personality reached a level almost without precedent. The permanent conflict that one can feel in Mahler’s music has been explained in terms of the struggle between his activity as a conductor and the necessity for creation. Furthermore, his music reflects the turbulent social-cultural environment typical for the last days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as well as the tensions of his childhood and youth. Mahler began working on Das klagende Lied when he was still a student. The composer himself considered it as his opus 1. Indeed, in this work, one can find the roots to his later works that occupied the next thirty years of his career as a composer.

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