November 25, 1901: Symphony No. 4 in G major, by Gustav Mahler, premieres at the Kaim-Saal, a concert hall in Munich, Germany. Felix Weingartner was the conductor, chosen by the composer.
This work was so highly anticipated that not only did cities compete for the right to host the premiere, Vienna losing out to Munich, but other conductors practically begged Mahler for the right to conduct it, including Richard Strauss, composer of Also Sprach Zarathustra (the theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey). But Mahler, himself one of the world's leading living conductors at the time, had promised it to Weingartner, feeling too anxious to do it himself.
Mahler was born on July 7, 1860 in Kaliště, in what was then the Austrian Empire, and is now in Czechia, a.k.a. the Czech Republic. Raised in nearby Jihlava by German-speaking Jewish parents, he graduated from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878.
From 1880 onward, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera, the Hofoper, converting to Catholicism to secure the post. He still faced anti-Semitism from newspaper coverage of his music. He was noted for conducting the works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Richard Wagner (still alive when he began working, living until 1883), and Pyotr Tchiakovsky (who lived on until 1893).
Deryck Cooke and other analysts have divided Mahler's composing life into three distinct phases: a long "first period", extending from Das klagende Lied in 1880 to the end of the Wunderhorn phase in 1901; a "middle period" of more concentrated composition ending with Mahler's departure for New York in 1907; and a brief "late period" of elegiac works before his death from heart trouble on May 18, 1911, at the age of 50.
For much of his life, composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are generally designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists.
These works were frequently controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and popular approval. Exceptions included Second Symphony, in 1895; and his Eighth Symphony, in 1910. I suppose I could joke that he's the reverse of Ludwig van Beethoven: His better symphonies are the even-numbered ones.
Indeed, even the Fourth Symphony was controversial: Its premiere in Munich got mixed reviews. Its Berlin premiere, a few days later, and its Vienna premiere, early in 1902, was even more harshly treated. But its premieres in America in 1904 and Britain in 1905 were very well received, and helped to restore his reputation.
Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. While in his lifetime, his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era.
After 1945, his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners. He then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st Century. The musicologist Donald Mitchell believed the Fourth and its accessibility were largely responsible for the postwar rise in Mahler's popularity.
The Kaim-Saal no longer stands: It was destroyed in the Allied bombing of Munich in 1944.
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November 25, 1901 was a Monday. There were no scores on this historic day: Baseball was out of season, football was in midweek, basketball barely existed, and hockey season was a few days away.
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