Created in March 2013

PBS article Origins
PBS article Legacy
Wikipedia article Gustav Mahler
Film Review Mahler on the Couch "Taken in the right spirit, “Mahler on the Couch” is overripe, sometimes enjoyably ridiculous Famous Lives nonsense, with walk-throughs by Gropius (Friedrich Mücke), Klimt (Manuel Witting), Bruno Walter (Michael Dangl), and other lights of the Vienna scene. But the questions it doesn’t quite ask linger when the lights come up. What’s a creative woman to do in a society where only men get to be the artists? What happens when she turns her own life into art?"
Wikipedia article Mahler
Gustav Mahler’s Jewish Temperament by A. J. Goldmann
Mahler and Religion
Is Gustav Mahler’s Music Inherently Jewish?
Theme of Catholicism in Part Two of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony

Frère Jacques in Popular Culture
“A version of the Frère Jacques tune appears in the third movement of the Symphony No. 1 by Gustav Mahler. Mahler presents the melody in a minor key instead of a major key, thus giving the piece the character of a funeral march or dirge; however, the mode change to minor might not have been an invention by Mahler, as is often believed, but rather the way this round was sung in the 19th century and early 20th century in Austria. Francesca Draughon and Raymond Knapp argue that Mahler had changed the key to make Frère Jacques sound more “Jewish” (Mahler converted to Catholicism from Judaism). Draughon and Knapp claim that the tune was originally sung to mock non-Catholics, such as Protestants or Jews. Mahler himself called the tune “Bruder Martin”, and made some allusions to the piece being related to a parody in the programs he wrote for the performances. Interpretations similar to this are quite prevalent in academia and in musical circles."