Alma Mahler | |
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 Mahler in 1909 | |
| Born | Alma Margaretha Maria Schindler (1879-08-31)31 August 1879 Vienna,Austria-Hungary |
| Died | 11 December 1964(1964-12-11) (aged 85) New York City, US |
| Burial place | Grinzing Cemetery, Vienna |
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| Spouses | |
| Children | 4, includingAnna andManon |
Alma Mahler-Werfel (bornAlma Margaretha Maria Schindler; 31 August 1879 – 11 December 1964) was an Austrian composer, author, editor, andsocialite. Musically active from her early years, she was the composer of nearly fifty songs for voice and piano, and works in other genres as well. 17 songs are known to have survived. At 15, she was mentored byMax Burckhard.[1]
In 1902, she married composerGustav Mahler, who died in 1911. Between 1911 and 1914 she had a passionate affair withOskar Kokoschka. In 1915, Alma marriedWalter Gropius, and they had a daughter,Manon Gropius. Throughout her marriage to Gropius, Alma engaged in an affair withFranz Werfel. Following her separation from Gropius, Alma and Werfel eventually married.
In 1938, afterNazi Germany annexed Austria, Werfel and Alma fled, as it was unsafe for the Jewish Werfel. Eventually the couple settled in Los Angeles. In later years, her salon became part of the artistic scene, first in Vienna, then in Los Angeles and New York.
Alma Maria Schindler was born on 31 August 1879 in Vienna, Austria, (thenAustria-Hungary) to the famous landscape painterEmil Jakob Schindler and his wife Anna Sofie. She was tutored at home and brought up in the Catholic Church. In 1886,Crown Prince Rudolf found interest in Emil Jakob Schindler's paintings and commissioned Schindler to take a trip with his family to the Adriatic coast to produce landscape paintings. In 1892, the family also traveled to the North Sea island of Sylt, where Emil Schindler died.[2]: 1–7
After her father's death, Alma focused on the piano. She studied composition and counterpoint withJosef Labor, a blind organist who introduced her to a "great deal of literature". At 15, she was sent to school but attended for only a few months.[2]: 1–7 As she grew older, a case of childhood measles left her with decreased hearing.Max Burckhard, a friend of Emil Schindler and director of Vienna'sBurgtheater theater, became Alma's mentor. On Alma's 17th birthday, Burckhard gave her two laundry baskets full of books. In 1895, Anna Schindler, Alma's mother, marriedCarl Moll, Emil Schindler's student.[3] In 1899 they had a daughter together named Maria.[2]: 8–10
Alma metGustav Klimt through Carl Moll. Moll and Klimt were both founding members of theVienna Secession, "a group organized for the purpose of breaking with Vienna's tradition-bound Imperial Academy of the visual arts". Klimt fell in love with Alma. While she initially was interested in Klimt, her desire cooled soon after. Klimt and Alma were friends until Klimt's death. In autumn 1900, Alma began studying composition withAlexander von Zemlinsky. Zemlinsky and Alma fell in love and kept their relationship a secret.[2]: 10–16
Alma teased Zemlinsky about what she thought were his ugly features, saying she could easily have "ten others" to replace him. She also noted that to marry Zemlinsky would mean she would "bring short, degenerate Jew-children into the world".[4]: 16–35 As the relationship grew strained, Zemlinsky visited her less and less. On 7 November 1901, she attendedZuckerkandl's salon where she began a flirtation withGustav Mahler. In the month of November, while still in a relationship with Zemlinsky, she started an affair with Mahler. By 8 December, Mahler and Alma secretly were engaged; however, it was not until 12 December that she wrote to Zemlinsky about her engagement.[4]: 16–35 The engagement was formally announced on 23 December.[4]: 43
On 9 March 1902, she married Gustav Mahler, who was 19 years her senior and the director of the Vienna Court Opera.[4]: 45 With him she had two daughters, Maria Anna (1902–1907), who died ofscarlet fever ordiphtheria, andAnna (1904–1988), who later became a sculptor.[2]: 233, 251 Gustav was not interested in Alma's compositions, desiring for her to abandon composing. Although one scholar disputes whether or not Gustav outright forbade Alma Mahler to compose,[4]: 43 the lengthy letter Gustav sent her on 19 December 1901 is emphatic that she must give up composing, and Alma did artistically stifle herself and embraced the role of a loving wife and supporter of her husband's music.[2]: 48–54 [5]
In June 1910, after becoming severely depressed in the wake of Maria's death, Alma began an affair with the young architectWalter Gropius (later head of theBauhaus), whom she met during a rest at a spa.[2] Gustav sought advice fromSigmund Freud in August. The 2010 filmMahler on the Couch suggests that Gustav's consultations with Freud might have focused on his curtailing of Alma's musical career as a major marital obstacle, but the actual content of these meetings is not known.[6]
Following the emotional crisis in their marriage after Gustav's discovery of Alma's affair with Gropius, Gustav began to take a serious interest in Alma's musical compositions, regretting his earlier dismissive attitude and taking promotional actions. Gustav edited some of her songs (Die stille Stadt,In meines Vaters Garten,Laue Sommernacht,Bei dir ist es traut,Ich wandle unter Blumen).[2]: 111 [7]: 85–89 Upon his urging and under his guidance, Alma prepared five of her songs for publication (they were issued in 1910, by Gustav's own publisher,Universal Edition).[2]: 113–119
In February 1911, Gustav fell severely ill with an infection related to a heart defect that had been diagnosed several years earlier. He died on 18 May.[4]: 66
After Gustav's death, Alma did not immediately resume contact with Gropius. From 1911 to 1912, she had an affair withPaul Kammerer, a controversial Austrian biologist known for his experiments on living amphibians such asolms andmidwife toads. She even served as his laboratory assistant for a time.[8] Between 1912 and 1914 she had a tumultuous affair with the artistOskar Kokoschka, who created works inspired by their relationship, including his paintingThe Bride of the Wind.[4]: 83–85 Kokoschka's possessiveness wore on Alma, and the emotional vicissitudes of the relationship tired them both.[2]
With the coming of World War I, Kokoschka enlisted in theAustro-Hungarian Army. Alma subsequently distanced herself from Kokoschka and resumed contact with Walter Gropius, who was also serving in combat at that time.[4]: 85–95 She and Gropius married on 18 August 1915 in Berlin during one of his military leaves.[4]: 85–90 They had a daughter together,Manon Gropius (1916–1935), who grew up being friends withMaria Altmann.[2] After Manon died ofpolio at the age of 18, composerAlban Berg dedicated his newly composedViolin Concerto to her, "In Memory of an Angel".[2]: 239–242
Alma became pregnant and gave birth to a son, Martin Carl Johannes Gropius (1918–1919). Gropius at first believed that the child was his, but Alma's ongoing affair withFranz Werfel was common knowledge in Vienna by this time.[2]: 185 Within a year, Alma and Gropius agreed to a divorce. In the meantime, Martin, who had been born prematurely, developedhydrocephalus and died at 10 months. Alma's divorce from Gropius became final in October 1920.[4]: 127
While Gropius's military duties were still keeping him absent, Alma met and began an affair with Prague-born poet and writerFranz Werfel in the fall of 1917. She and Werfel began openly living together after her divorce from Gropius. However, she postponed marrying Werfel until 1929, after which she took the name Alma Mahler-Werfel.[4]: 150
In 1938, following theAnschluss, Alma and Werfel, who was Jewish, were forced to flee Austria for France; they maintained a household in Sanary-sur-Mer on the French Riviera from the summer of 1938 until the spring of 1940.[4]: 163–171 With theGerman invasion and occupation of France during World War II and the deportation of Jews and political adversaries toNazi concentration camps, the couple were no longer safe in France and frantically sought to secure their emigration to the United States. In Marseille, they were contacted byVarian Fry, an American journalist and emissary of theEmergency Rescue Committee, a private American relief organization that aided refugee intellectuals and artists at that time.[7]: 148
As exit visas could not be obtained, Fry and UnitarianWaitstill Sharp arranged for the Werfels to journey on foot across the Pyrenees into Spain to evade theVichy French border officials. From Spain, Alma and Franz traveled to Portugal. They stayed in Monte Estoril, at the Grande Hotel D'Itália, between 8 September and 4 October 1940.[9] On the same day, they boarded the S.S.Nea Hellas headed for New York City, arriving on 13 October.[10]
Eventually they settled in Los Angeles, where Alma continued her role as a hostess, bringing togetherArnold Schoenberg,Igor Stravinsky,Thomas Mann, and many other artists. Werfel, who had enjoyed moderate renown in the US as an author, achieved popular success with his novelThe Song of Bernadette, and the science fiction novelStar of the Unborn, published after his death. Werfel, who had experienced serious heart problems throughout his exile, died of a heart attack in California in 1945.[7]: 150–154
In 1946, Mahler-Werfel became a US citizen. Several years later she moved to New York City, where she remained a cultural figure.Leonard Bernstein, who was a champion of Gustav Mahler's music, stated in hisCharles Eliot Norton lectures of 1973 that Mahler-Werfel had attended some of his rehearsals.[11]Benjamin Britten, considering her to be a "living" link to both Mahler andAlban Berg, dedicated hisNocturne for Tenor and Small Orchestra to her.[7]: 154 In 1951 Alma Mahler-Werfel moved to New York, where she had purchased four small condominiums in a house on theUpper East Side (120 East 73rd Street). She lived herself on the third floor and used one apartment as a living room, the second as a bedroom.[12]
Alma Mahler-Werfel died 11 December 1964 in New York City. She was buried on 8 February 1965 in theGrinzing Cemetery of Vienna in the same grave as her daughter Manon Gropius and a few steps away from Gustav Mahler.[7]: 153–154
In 1999, Mahler-Werfel's granddaughter requested that five artworks seized under the Nazis be restored to the family.[13] The paintings wereA Summer's Night on the Beach (1902) byEdvard Munch and three landscapes by her great-grandfatherEmil Jakob Schindler.[14] Alma Werfel had loaned the paintings to theOesterreichische Galerie before fleeing the Nazis;Carl Moll, a militant Nazi, gained control of them, selling the Munch to the Oesterreichische Galerie in 1940 and keeping the others until, fearing retribution from theRed Army, he committed suicide. Mahler-Werfel filed claims after the war but was only able to recover theKokoschka portrait. When Austria modified its restrictive restitution laws, the granddaughter revived the claims.[15] Austria initially rejected the claim.[16] After a restitution battle that lasted six decades, Austria finally agreed to restitute the stolen Munch in 2006.[17]
Mahler-Werfel's two books on Gustav Mahler influenced studies of the latter. As an articulate, well-connected, and influential woman who outlived her first husband by more than 50 years, Mahler-Werfel was for decades treated as the main authority on the mature Gustav Mahler's values, character, and day-to-day behavior, and her various publications quickly became the central source material for Mahler scholars and music-lovers alike. As scholars investigated her depiction of Mahler and her relationship with him, her accounts have increasingly been revealed as unreliable, false, and misleading. Nevertheless, the deliberate distortions have had a significant influence on several generations of scholars, interpreters, and music-lovers.[18]
Citing the serious contradictions between Alma's accounts and other evidence, including her own diaries, several historians and biographers began to speak of theAlma Problem. According toHugh Wood: "Often she is the only witness, and the biographer has to depend on her while doubting with every sentence her capacity for telling the truth. Everything that passed through her hands must be regarded as tainted".[18] Countering this stance is that of musicologist Nancy Newman,[5] whose study provides a "theoretical foundation" that "grounds extensive critique of both the conventions offin-de-siècle Vienna and the chauvinism of late twentieth-century scholars."
Alma played the piano from childhood and in her memoir (Mein Leben), reports that she first attempted composing at age eight in the beginning of 1888 on the Greek island of Corfu. She studied composition withJosef Labor beginning in 1894 or 1895 and until 1901. She metAlexander von Zemlinsky in early 1900, began composition lessons with him that fall, and continued as his student until her engagement to Gustav Mahler in December 1901, after which she ceased composing. Until this time, she had composed or sketched mostlyLieder, but around 20 piano pieces and a small number of chamber music works, and a scene from an opera. She briefly resumed composing in 1910, but stopped in 1915. The chronology of her compositions is difficult to establish because she did not date her manuscripts[4] and destroyed many of them herself. Attempts to establish a chronological list of her works have been made by Susanne Rode-Breymann in 1999 and 2014 and by Knud Martner in 2018.
A total of 17 songs by her survive. Fourteen were published during her lifetime in three publications dated 1910, 1915, and 1924. The first two volumes appeared under the name Alma Maria Schindler-Mahler, and the last volume was published as "Fünf Gesänge" by Alma Maria Mahler; the cover of the 1915 set was illustrated by Oskar Kokoschka. Three additional songs were discovered in manuscripts posthumously; two of them were published in the year 2000, edited by Susan M. Filler, and one published in 2018, edited by Barry Millington. Her personal papers, including music manuscripts, are held at theUniversity of Pennsylvania, the Austrian National Library in Vienna, and the Bavarian State Library in Munich.[19] These songs have been performed and recorded regularly since the 1980s. Orchestral versions of the accompaniments have been produced. Seven songs were orchestrated byDavid andColin Matthews (published by Universal Edition),[20] and all 17 songs were orchestrated by Julian Reynolds,[21] and byJorma Panula.[22]
Compositions cited fromMahler, A Complete Songs unless otherwise noted.[22]
Posthumously published
American satiristTom Lehrer described her obituary as the "juiciest, spiciest, raciest" obituary he had ever read. It prompted him to write the ballad, "Alma", portraying her as "the loveliest girl in Vienna ... the smartest as well". Lehrer writes, "All modern women are jealous" of her "for bagging Gustav and Walter and Franz", each of whom came under her "spell".[24][25]
In the 1974 filmMahler, by directorKen Russell, Gustav Mahler, while on his last train journey, remembers the important events of his life, such as his relationship with his wife, the deaths of his brother and young daughter, and his trouble with the muses. In the film, Alma was portrayed byGeorgina Hale and Gustav byRobert Powell.[26]
In 1996, Israeli writerJoshua Sobol and Austrian directorPaulus Manker created the polydramaAlma. It played in Vienna for six successive seasons and toured with over 400 performances to Venice, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Petronell, Berlin,Semmering, Jerusalem, and Prague—all places where Mahler-Werfel had lived. The show was made into a three-part TV miniseries in 1997.[27]
Mohammed Fairouz set the words of Alma Mahler in his song cycleJeder Mensch. It premiered in a coupling with songs of Alma Mahler by mezzo-sopranoKate Lindsey in 2011.[28]
A treatment of Mahler-Werfel's life was presented in the 2001Bruce Beresford filmBride of the Wind, in which Alma was played by Australian actressSarah Wynter. Gustav Mahler was portrayed by British actorJonathan Pryce. Swiss actorVincent Pérez portrayed Oskar Kokoschka.[29]
In 1998, extracts from Alma's diaries were published, covering the years from 1898 to 1902, until the time she married Mahler. In the 2001 novelThe Artist's Wife by Max Phillips, she tells her story from the afterlife, focusing on her complicated relationships.[30]
In 2010, the German filmmakerPercy Adlon and his sonFelix Adlon [de] released their filmMahler auf der Couch (Mahler on the Couch), which relates Gustav Mahler's tormented relationship with his wife, Alma, and his meeting with Sigmund Freud in 1910. In the film's introduction, the directors state, "That it happened is fact. How it happened is fiction."[31]
Alma appears in chapter 6, "Montredon" of the 2019 novel,The Flight Portfolio, byJulie Orringer. She and Werfel are depicted meeting withVarian Fry to discuss the arrangements Fry is trying to make in order to effect their escape from France.[32]
Roz Chast, drew a comic serial entitled "The Inescapable Thingness"[33] inThe New Yorker online magazine regarding the doll thatOskar Kokoschka had made of Alma after their affair had ended.
Informational notes
Citations
Paris, Nov. 8 — After an on-and-off restitution battle lasting six decades, the Austrian Culture Ministry agreed on Wednesday to return a painting by Edvard Munch, 'Summer Night on the Beach', to Marina Mahler. She is the granddaughter of the composer Gustav Mahler and his wife, Alma, who originally owned the oil.
Further reading
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