Gustav Mahler

Gustav Mahler combined composition with a career in opera conducting. Born at Kaliště in Bohemia and raised in Jihlava, he trained at the Vienna Conservatory and worked upwards through Central European theatres to Hamburg and, in 1897, to the directorship of the Vienna Court Opera, where he worked to integrate musical and stage performance. His works include nine completed symphonies and the unfinished Tenth; the Second and Third include voices and orchestra. His vocal works include Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, the Wunderhorn settings, Kindertotenlieder, and Das Lied von der Erde, which combines the symphony and song cycle. He left Vienna in 1907 for New York, conducting at the Metropolitan Opera and then the New York Philharmonic, and died in 1911 at fifty. He graduated from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, attending lectures in history and philosophy at the university at the same time, and took his first opera post in 1880 in Bad Hall, with Ljubljana, Olomouc, Kassel, Prague, Leipzig and Budapest coming before Hamburg. In Vienna he also led the subscription concerts of the Vienna Philharmonic.