A monument in Mahler studies, this volume concentrates on the composer's vocal music and, in particular, on some of his most famous, most original and best loved compositions: the late Rueckert orchestral songs and Kindertotenlieder; Das Lied von der Erde, one of the composer's supreme masterpieces, and the vast Eighth Symphony. Much new ground is broken but the author bases his conclusions on a meticulous examination of the principal manuscript sources, especially those for Das Lied. He offers an unprecedented exploration of the original Chinese texts for that work and indeed of the whole...

Available again for a new generation of Mahlerians, Donald Mitchell's famous study of the composer's early life and music was greeted as a major advance on its first appearance in 1958. Revised and updated in the early 1980s, this paperback edition includes a new introduction by the author to bring this classic work once again to the forefront of Mahler studies. From his birth in Bohemia, then part of the mighty Austro-Hungarian empire, to a survey of his early works, many now lost, Gustav Mahler: The Early Years forms an indispensable prelude to the period of the great compositions. The...

A work of painstaking and imaginative scholarship presented in eminently readable language. MUSICAL QUARTERLY Mitchell has amassed and processed an imposing amount of material, most of it new... It includes a section on Mahler and Freud, discusses Bach's influence on Mahler, and reproduces contemporary criticism... Invaluable for Mahler scholars and lovers. ECONOMIST Donald Mitchell's second book on the life and work of Gustav Mahler focuses principally on Mahler's first settings of Wunderhorn texts, volumes I and II of the Lieder und Gesaenge; his first song-cycle, the Lieder eines fahrenden...