In June 1901, he moved into a fine new villa on the lake in Maiernigg, Carinthia (
http://www.gustav-mahler.at/). On
March 9 1902, Mahler married
Alma Schindler (
1879 –
1964), twenty years his junior and the stepdaughter of the noted Viennese painter
Carl Moll. Alma was a musician and composer, but Mahler forbade her to engage in creative work, although she did make clean manuscript copies of his hand-written scores. Mahler did interact creatively with some women, such as viola-player
Natalie Bauer-Lechner, two years his senior, whom he had met while studying in Vienna. But he told Alma that her role should only be to tend to his needs. Alma and Gustav had two daughters, Maria Anna ('Putzi';
1902 –
1907), who died of
diphtheria at the age of only five, and
Anna ('Gucki';
1904 –
1988), who later became a
sculptor.
The death of their first daughter left Mahler grief-stricken; but further blows were to come. That same year he discovered he had a heart disease (
infective endocarditis), and was forced to limit his exercising and count his steps with a pedometer. At the Opera, his obstinacy in artistic matters had created enemies, and he was also increasingly subject to attacks in anti-Semitic portions of the press. His resignation from the Opera, in 1907, was hardly unexpected.
Mahler's own music aroused considerable opposition from music critics, who tended to hear his symphonies as 'potpourris' in which themes from "disparate" periods and traditions were indiscriminately mingled. Mahler's juxtaposition of material from both "high" and "low" cultures, as well as his mixing of different ethnic traditions, often outraged conservative critics at a time when workers' mass organizations were growing rapidly, and clashes between Germans, Czechs, Hungarians and Jews in Austro-Hungary were creating anxiety and instability. However, he always had vociferous admirers on his side. In his last years, Mahler began to score major successes with a wider public, notably with a Munich performance of the Second Symphony in
1900, with the first complete performance of the Third in
Krefeld in 1902, with a valedictory Viennese performance of the Second in 1907, and, above all, with the Munich premiere of the gargantuan Eighth in
1910. The music he wrote after that, however, was not performed during his lifetime.
The final impetus for Mahler's departure from the Vienna Opera was a generous offer from the
Metropolitan Opera in
New York. He conducted a season there in
1908, only to be set aside in favor of
Arturo Toscanini; while he had been enormously popular with public and critics alike, he had fallen out of favor with the trustees of the board of the Met. Back in
Europe, with his marriage in crisis and Alma's infidelity having been revealed, Mahler, in 1910, had a single (and apparently helpful) consultation with
Sigmund Freud.
Having now signed a contract to conduct the long-established
New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Mahler and his family travelled again to America. At this time, he completed his
Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), and his
Symphony No. 9, which would be his last completed work. In February
1911, during a long and demanding concert season in New York, Mahler fell seriously ill with a
streptococcal blood infection, and conducted his last concert in a fever (the programme included the world premiere of
Ferruccio Busoni's Berceuse élégiaque). Returning to Europe, he was taken to
Paris, where a new serum had recently been developed. He did not respond, however, and was taken back to Vienna at his request. He died there from his infection on
May 18 1911 at the age of 50, leaving his
Symphony No. 10 unfinished.
It is said that his last word was "Mozartl" ('Little Mozart'). He was buried, at his request, beside his daughter, in Grinzing Cemetery outside Vienna. In obedience to his last wishes, he was buried in silence, with the gravestone bearing only the name "Gustav Mahler." Mahler's good friend
Bruno Walter describes the funeral: "On May 18, 1911, he died. Next evening we laid the coffin in the cemetery at Grinzing, a storm broke and such torrents of rain fell that it was almost impossible to proceed. An immense crowd, dead silent, followed the hearse. At the moment when the coffin was lowered, the sun broke through the clouds" (Walter 1957, 73).
Alma Mahler quotes Gustav as saying "I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in
Austria, as an Austrian among
Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed." However, this is astonishingly close to a remark written by
Anton Rubinstein in the
1860s or
1870s, and may therefore have been adapted, for its appositeness, by Mahler (or indeed Alma).
Alma outlived Gustav by more than 50 years, and in their course, she was active in publishing material about his life and music. However, her accounts have been attacked as unreliable, false, and misleading.This constitutes the
Alma Problem. For example, she allegedly tampered with the couple's correspondence and, in her publications, Gustav is often portrayed more negatively than some historians might like.
