The Mahler Enigma

Intended for lovers of the arts, this "big think" book engages the dynamic of culture and the creative mind. It deconstructs, layer by layer, misconceptions about Gustav Mahler. A unique and much deeper understanding of his mind and world emerges.

By the early 1970s Franz Loschnigg realized that a myth was developing around Mahler based on the assumptions of Henri de la Grange. Rather than accepting this work as definitive, the author turned to primary sources, the contemporary writers and poets of fin de siècle Vienna, and to the mid-20th century sciences of cultural anthropology and social psychology, as well as the author's own familiarity with Vienna's musical culture. With this synthesis of disciplines, he revealed the illusions of an established narrative around Mahler, upon which decades of interpretations are based. 

This study did not begin with a theory, but discovered inductively that a deeper, simpler wellspring drove Mahler's interior life, and this author knew where to find it.

Something like a work of investigative reporting, anchored in meticulous research, this is an inquiry into the dynamic of an artist and his culture: Mahler embedded in his culture, deconstructing notions of his childhood, with marvelous stories of ordinary life in imperial Vienna, a surprising critique of the Conservatory's composition training, and his subsequent breaking free to become a singular creative mind.