Charles Youmans

Mahler in Context explores the institutions, artists, thinkers, cultural movements, socio-political conditions, and personal relationships that shaped Mahler’s creative output. Focusing on the contexts surrounding the artist, the collection provides a sense of the complex crosscurrents against which Mahler was reacting as conductor, composer, and human being. Topics explored include his youth and training, performing career, creative activity, spiritual and philosophical influences, and his reception after his death. Together, this collection of specially commissioned essays offers a wide-ranging investigation of the ecology surrounding Mahler as a composer and a fuller appreciation of the topics that occupied his mind as he conceived his works. Readers will benefit from engagement with lesser known dimensions of Mahler’s life. Through this broader contextual approach, this book will serve as a valuable and unique resource for students, scholars, and a general readership.

• Explores the educational and social environments within which the young Mahler had to define himself and build his career
• Describes the settings in which Mahler developed and practiced his abilities as a performer, and sheds new light on a vital dimension of his activity as a creative artist
• Highlights the many external influences that profoundly affected his creative activity, from print culture, intertextuality and visual arts to philosophical and literary influences