Shadows of doubt

Musical Times, Winter 2006 by Whittall, Arnold

THAT FEDER allows his narrative to extend beyond Mahler's death to embrace a capsule account of Alma's later life fits with the fact that her various writings, along with Mahler's copious letters, are a primary documentary source for him. I don't know whether a definitive, chronologically ordered and absolutely comprehensive collection of Mahler's correspondence is being planned, but it seems both inevitable and necessary, even though - for most of us - a careful selection, designed to minimise the many repetitions and banalities of the unexpurgated collections, would probably suffice. Two recently published volumes reinforce this opinion. The latest translated edition of Letters to his wife undoubtedly benefits from its multiple editorial input, with an introduction and running commentary that pull no punches where Alma's duplicity - as far as her own behaviour and her attempts to manipulate the interpretation of Mahler's last years - are concerned. As for the letters themselves: it is hard to read the constant pleas for response and understanding without wondering with even greater force than usual about what might have happened to Mahler's music had he (a) never met Alma, (b) given up conducting for composition in the 18905, and (c) had no close family to worry him. As it is (and to risk my own dangerous psychological generalisation) his obsessive dependency on Ins faithless wife seems like the neatest mirrorreflection of his decent, driven attempts to cope with the dependency of his family on him in earlier years.

That dependency is the idée fixe running through the 567 family letters given in the Oxford volume. This represents a magnificent achievement for Stephen McClatchie as editor, translator, and annotator. Yet the sheer repetitiousness oi the result, coupled with the almost total absence of matters of wider musical or historical import, make reading the complete sequence something of a trial. Only very occasionally, as when, in Hamburg in 1892, Mahler finds Tchaikovsky a 'very nice old man, apparently exceedingly prosperous, very elegant manner' - even though Eugene Onegin is 'a very mediocre effort1 - does the world of his professional activities enter the frame. Yet this volume will have an important place in the musicological Mahler canon, presenting complete and definitive evidence for the kind of on-going, quotidian responsibilities and activities - mainly in relation to his sister Justine - that puts his life as performer and composer into clear perspective. One might quibble pedantically about this or that detail of translation - McClatchie's insistence on using "dear father', 'dear mother' etc., though the habitual German expressions surely don't need the inclusion of the automatic 'dear' when translated into idiomatic English. Annotation can be curiously laconic, as when a note refers to Bernhard Mahler's birthday but doesn't tell us which one, and makes the occasional slip, as with the reference to the second scene of Dos Rheingold. But footnoting each letter separately is an improvement on Faber's grouping at the bottom of the page.