Gustav Mahler

Stephen Downes is Professor of Music at Royal Holloway, University of London. His books include Music and Sentimentalism in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (2021).

Wide-ranging, richly detailed and deeply thoughtful, this is also a very readable and enjoyable book. Downes doesn’t just relate the familiar stories, he questions them and asks what we should make today of the idea that Mahler’s music tells the story of his life. - Julian Johnson, author of Mahler’s Voices”Full of energy and subtle understanding”, this is a Mahler biography for the twenty-first century. Stephen Downes weaves an intricate tapestry of the composer's life, loves, ideas and music that is as accessibly readable as it is intellectually and culturally stimulating. - Jeremy Barham, Professor of Music, University of Surrey, and author of Rethinking Mahler

• 1.              Prologue: Mahler’sDeaths/Mahler’s Lives2.              Mahler’sChildhood3.              Mahler the Reader4.              Mahler theMaestro5.              Mahler Composing inthe Country6.              Gustav and Alma7.              The Late GustavMahler  ReferencesFurther ReadingAcknowledgementsPhoto Acknowledgements