This guide introduces concertgoers, serious listeners, and music students to Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony, one of the composer's most popular and most powerful works. It examines the symphony from several perspectives: Mahler's struggle to create what he called the New Symphony; his innovative approaches to traditional musical form; how he addressed the daunting challenges of writing music on a monumental scale; and how he dealt with the ineluctable force of Beethoven's symphonic precedent, especially that of the Ninth Symphony. The central focus of Inside Mahler's Second Symphony is on the music itself: how it works, how it works its magic on the listener, how it translates the earnest existential concerns that motivate the symphony into powerful and highly expressive music. Beyond this, the book ushers the Listener's Guide into the digital age with 185 exclusive audio examples. They are brief, accessible, and arranged to flow from one to another to simulate how the symphony might be presented in a classroom discussion. Each movement is also presented uninterrupted, accompanied by light annotations to remind the reader of what they learned about the movement. Each musical event in the uninterrupted presentation is keyed to its location in the orchestral score to accommodate readers who may wish to refer to one. An innovative combination of in-depth analysis and multimedia exploration, Inside Mahler's Second Sonata is a remarkable introduction to a masterpiece.

"Hurwitz describes the emotional extravagance that lies at the root of Mahler's popularity, the consistency of his symphonic thinking, and his dazzling and revolutionary use of orchestral instruments to create an expressive musical language that is varied in content and immediate in impact."--BOOK JACKET.

This guide introduces concertgoers, serious listeners, and music students to Gustav Mahler's Second Symphony, one of the composer's most popular and most powerful works. It examines the symphony from several perspectives: Mahler's struggle to create what he called the New Symphony; his innovative approaches to traditional musical form; how he addressed the daunting challenges of writing music on a monumental scale; and how he dealt with the ineluctable force of Beethoven's symphonic precedent, especially that of the Ninth Symphony. The central focus of Inside Mahler's Second Symphony is on the music itself: how it works, how it works its magic on the listener, how it translates the earnest existential concerns that motivate the symphony into powerful and highly expressive music. Beyond this, the book ushers the Listener's Guide into the digital age with 185 dedicated audio examples. They are brief, accessible, and arranged to flow from one to another to simulate how the symphony might be presented in a classroom discussion. Each movement is also presented uninterrupted, accompanied by light annotations to remind the reader of what they learned about the movement. Each musical event in the uninterrupted presentation is keyed to its location in the orchestral score to accommodate readers who may wish to refer to one. An innovative combination of in-depth analysis and multimedia exploration, Inside Mahler's Second Symphony is a remarkable introduction to a masterpiece of the symphonic repertoire.

Conceived as a musical picture of the natural world, the composition of Mahler's grandiose work is described here in the context of the ideas that inspired it and the artistic debates and social conflicts that it reflects.

(Amadeus). Mahler's 10 symphonies and Das Lied von der Erde are intensely personal statements that have touched wide audiences. This survey examines each of the works, revealing their programmatic and personal aspects, as well as Mahler's musical techniques.

'Mahler's Symphonic Sonatas' examines Gustav Mahler's career-long engagement with sonata form. It argues that a dynamic, process-based sonata-form concept factors into all of his early and middle-period symphonies, informing not just their schematic design, but also their narrative/expressive character.

Popular, accessible work by great late-Romantic composer. A purely instrumental composition that is both hopeful and romantic in feeling. Reprinted from the authoritative German edition of 1909.

Mahler in Context explores the institutions, artists, thinkers, cultural movements, socio-political conditions, and personal relationships that shaped Mahler's creative output. Focusing on the contexts surrounding the artist, the collection provides a sense of the complex crosscurrents against which Mahler was reacting as conductor, composer, and human being. Topics explored include his youth and training, performing career, creative activity, spiritual and philosophical influences, and his reception after his death. Together, this collection of specially commissioned essays offers a wide-ranging investigation of the ecology surrounding Mahler as a composer and a fuller appreciation of the topics that occupied his mind as he conceived his works. Readers will benefit from engagement with lesser known dimensions of Mahler's life. Through this broader contextual approach, this book will serve as a valuable and unique resource for students, scholars, and a general readership.

“With their intellectual brilliance, humor and wonderful eye for detail, Leonard Bernstein’s letters blow all biographies out of the water.”—The Economist (2013 Book of the Year) Leonard Bernstein was a charismatic and versatile musician—a brilliant conductor who attained international superstar status, and a gifted composer of Broadway musicals (West Side Story), symphonies (Age of Anxiety), choral works (Chichester Psalms), film scores (On the Waterfront), and much more. Bernstein was also an enthusiastic letter writer, and this book is the first to present a wide-ranging selection of his correspondence. The letters have been selected for the insights they offer into the passions of his life—musical and personal—and the extravagant scope of his musical and extra-musical activities. Bernstein’s letters tell much about this complex man, his collaborators, his mentors, and others close to him. His galaxy of correspondents encompassed, among others, Aaron Copland, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Thornton Wilder, Boris Pasternak, Bette Davis, Adolph Green, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and family members including his wife Felicia and his sister Shirley. The majority of these letters have never been published before. They have been carefully chosen to demonstrate the breadth of Bernstein’s musical interests, his constant struggle to find the time to compose, his turbulent and complex sexuality, his political activities, and his endless capacity for hard work. Beyond all this, these writings provide a glimpse of the man behind the legends: his humanity, warmth, volatility, intellectual brilliance, wonderful eye for descriptive detail, and humor. “The correspondence from and to the remarkable conductor is full of pleasure and insights.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “Exhaustive, thrilling [and] indispensable.”—USA Today (starred review)