Mahler biography book

Jonathan Carr's Mahler, A Biography () represents a masterful telling of the life of Gustav Mahler, composer & conductor who attempted to respond to every question & uncertainty with a programmatic musical statement.

Many of Mahler's musical statements employ intensely religious themes that are often eclectic in nature, occasionally bordering on the mystical, driven by what the composer termed Urlicht or "primal light". In fact, Mahler commented in reviewing his own very successful but often tragic life: "What thou has fought for shall lead thee to God."



Carr's biography of Mahler is one authored by a journalist-music lover & not a musicologist and so perhaps not geared to please everyone; the author concentrates far more on the life & times of Gustav Mahler than on notation or harmonics or instrumentation.

Always, Mahler seemed to embed his own life & struggles for recognition in a way that made his symphonies & other mus