Alma Mahler
Escrito por Manuel Blesa - outubro/2016
Alma Mahler (1879-1964)
Biografia
A compositora austríaca Alma Maria Schindler, como assinava antes do casamento com Gustav Mahler, nasceu em Viena, a 31 de agosto de 1879. Filha de Anna von Bergen e do pintor Emil Jacob Schindler, foi no estúdio do pai que ouviu as primeiras canções, cantadas pelo progenitor. Este fato provavelmente marcou o imaginário de Alma, que já aos nove anos compôs as primeiras peças para canto e seguiu enfocando as vozes médio-graves em quase toda a sua produção. Infelizmente, a pequena artista perdeu o pai ao completar doze, tendo grande dificuldade em aceitar o segundo casamento da mãe com o também pintor Carl Moll, ex-aluno de seu pai.
O estudo de música passou a fazer parte da rotina de Alma aos quatorze anos, através do famoso pianista e compositor Joseph Labor. Entre seus alunos figuravam nomes que mudariam os rumos da história musical, como Gustav Mahler e Arnold Schoenberg, entre outros. Em meio ao ambiente fervilhante de fim de século em Viena, em que ecoavam as teorias de Freud sobre sexualidade e de Nietzsche sobre a nova mulher, Alma iniciou-se na composição orientada por Alexander von Zemlinsky, com quem quase veio a se casar. Este e outros casos amorosos da compositora ofuscaram sua personalidade artística, atribuindo-lhe, antes, o estereótipo de mulher fatal.
Alma conheceu Gustav Mahler, dezenove anos mais velho e então Diretor do Teatro de Ópera de Viena, em 1901. Casaram-se no ano seguinte, e Mahler deixou claro que não via sentido em o casal competir na área profissional, proibindo Alma de compor. No mesmo ano nasceu Maria, a primeira filha, seguida por Anna Justina em 1904. Em meio aos cuidados da casa e da família, Alma trabalhou como copista de Mahler, além de assumir o papel de ouvinte crítica de suas criações. Porém, a falta da vida social e intelectual que tinha quando solteira, na casa dos pais, deixou-a profundamente aborrecida.
Em 1907, a morte de Maria por difteria deflagra uma crise conjugal que culminaria com uma viagem de Alma, em 1910, para um balneário a fim de se recuperar. Lá a compositora conhece o arquiteto e futuro fundador da Bauhaus Walter Gropius, com quem tem um romance. De volta ao lar, Alma recebe cartas insistentes de Gropius para que se divorcie e case-se com ele. O arquiteto chega a enviar uma carta a Mahler, aparentemente por engano, em que confessa o amor por Alma e o caso secreto de ambos.
A traição de Alma termina por motivar Mahler a publicar algumas canções da esposa e incentivar sua composição, o que deu novo alento à relação conjugal. Esta, porém, foi uma fase curta, interrompida pela morte do compositor por problemas cardíacos em maio de 1911. No mesmo ano ela se envolve com o pintor Oskar Kokoschka, que a representa no quadro A noiva do vento. Em 1915 reencontraria Gropius, desta vez assumindo-o oficialmente como marido.
Alma e Gropius concebem Manon em 1916. Entretanto, a Primeira Guerra Mundial causaria um novo distanciamento dos dois, pela convocação de Gropius ao front. Alma encontra o poeta Franz Werfel em 1917, cujo poema Der Erkennende já havia musicado anteriormente, e os dois se apaixonam. Ainda casada com Gropius ela engravida de Werfel, dando à luz Martin, que morre de hidrocefalia aos dez meses.
Em 1920 a compositora se divorcia de Gropius, vindo a se casar com Werfel em 1929. Em 1935 perde a filha Manon, vítima de poliomielite. Soma-se a esta perda a mudança forçada para a França, em 1938, fugindo do nazismo, e dali para os EUA, devido à origem judaica do esposo. Apenas em 1947, dois anos após o falecimento de Werfel, a compositora retornaria a Viena para rever sua casa e as antigas partituras.
Constatando que tudo havia sido queimado Alma retorna a Nova Iorque, onde viveria até os 85 anos. Anna, única filha sobrevivente, torna-se escultora. Além de compor, Alma publica And the bridge is love, em 1959 e Mein Leben, em 1960, nos quais relata sua vida em meio às grandes figuras do século XX.
Composições
As primeiras composições de Alma Mahler surgiram na infância, em forma de canções acompanhadas por piano. Peças instrumentais foram compostas na adolescência, quando a menina estudava com Zemlinsky, mas foram deixadas para trás quando Alma emigrou para a França fugindo do nazismo na Áustria. Não há registro destas partituras.
Datam de 1910 suas primeiras obras impressas, os Fünf Lieder (Cinco Canções), graças à tentativa de Gustav Mahler de agradar a esposa. Do ciclo, composto em 1901, a terceira canção Laue Sommernacht foi estreada por Frances Alda em Nova Iorque, em 1911.
A maior parte das demais canções existentes são também de 1901, publicadas uma ou mais décadas depois. Dos Vier Lieder (Quatro Canções), as duas primeiras peças foram compostas em 1901 e as duas últimas em 1911. Estes foram publicados em 1915, ano em que foi composta a canção Der Erkennende, com versos de Franz Werfel. Der Erkennende foi publicada em 1924, como parte dos Funf Gesänge (Cinco Cantos), sendo as outras quatro de 1900-1901. Outras duas canções sobreviveram em manuscrito, baseadas na obra Mütter, de Rainer Maria Rilke.
Seu estilo composicional mescla elementos característicos do Romantismo e Pós-Romantismo - como profusão de cromatismos, acordes com décimas e arroubos de intensidade com mudanças bruscas de humor – com aportes da música atonal expressionista que caracterizaram a Segunda Escola de Viena de Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern e Alban Berg (este último dedicou seu Concerto para Violino à primeira filha de Alma, quando de sua morte). Os textos escolhidos para suas canções são de poetas de seu próprio tempo, como Richard Dehmel, Franz Werfel e Gustav Falke, e falam de amor, sexualidade e misticismo.
Alma relata em seus diários ter sido mais influenciada por Zemlinsky do que por Mahler, cuja obra não lhe causava tanto impacto. Talvez por isso muitos vejam semelhança entre suas canções e as composições de Schoenberg, ambos alunos de Zemlinsky. Não obstante, seus Fünf Lieder evocam o ambiente do viajante solitário explorado por Mahler em alguns ciclos de canções, nos quais inseria os ritmos de landler e as melodias ciganas derivadas do folclore.
Já em Vier Lieder, a repetição de motivos cromáticos, a métrica flutuante e o canto silábico demonstram uma maior preocupação da autora em colocar a melodia e harmonia em função do texto. Alma utiliza intervalos considerados dissonantes, como trítonos, segundas menores e sétimas maiores, dificultando a performance para o(a) cantor(a). Nota-se também a preferência pelas melodias suspensas sem resolução na parte vocal, deixando ao piano a tarefa de concluir o pensamento da autora.
A ambiguidade é um traço marcante na personalidade e na composição de Alma. Isto pode ser observado nos textos por ela escolhidos e também no uso de notas e tonalidades enarmônicas (mesma nota com nomes diferentes, ex.: Do# e Réb). A rítmica empregada é alterada por fermatas, indicações de rubato e mudanças de métrica. A compositora contrapõe também as partes destinadas ao piano e ao canto, criando melodias com um semitom de distância.
Para conhecer sua obra
The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, de Julie Anne Sadie & Rhian Samuel (Ed). New York, London: The Macmillan Press Limited, 1995. pp. 305-306.
Historical Anthology of Music by Women, de James Briscoe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. pp. 245-247.
Redeeming Alma: the songs of Alma Mahler, de Diane W. Follet. College Music Symposium, 2004. Disponível em: https://symposium.music.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2210:redeeming-alma-the-songs-of-alma-mahler
Mujeres en la Historia: la novia del viento Alma Mahler (1879-1964), de Sandra Ferrer. Disponível em: https://www.mujeresenlahistoria.com/2013/08/la-novia-del-viento-alma-mahler-1879.html
Alma Mahler (1879-1964) Complete Songs. Charlotte Margiono (soprano) e membros da Brabant Orchestra. Regência e arranjo orquestral de Julian Reynolds. Disponível em: https://youtu.be/b0uh-MPPiDg
Alma Mahler: 5 Lieder (Completo). HiroandAkiko. Disponível em: https://youtu.be/M9CYlOU_SJU
Alma Mahler Ich Wandle unter Blumen. Clarissa Cabral (mezzo-soprano) e Eliana Monteiro da Silva (piano). Disponível em: https://youtu.be/GRGN2h9K7i0
Alma Mahler Bei dir ist es traut. Clarissa Cabral (mezzo-soprano) e Eliana Monteiro da Silva (piano). Disponível em: https://youtu.be/C-ExaRX3bf4
Alma Mahler (1879-1964)
Biography
The Austrian composer Alma Maria Schindler, as she used to sign before her marriage with Gustav Mahler, was born in Vienna in August 31st, 1879. She was the daughter of Anna von Bergen and Emil Jacob Schindler, painter. It was in Jacob’s studio that little Alma had the opportunity to primarily listen to songs sung by her father. This fact probably marked Alma’s imagination once at the age of nine she composed her first pieces for voice and remained focusing mid-deep voices (mezzo-soprano) for almost her entire production. Unfortunately, the little artist lost her father when she was twelve and had a great difficulty to accept her mother’s second marriage with Carl Moll, also painter and former pupil of her father.
Music studies became part of Alma’s routine at the age of fourteen when she was under the teaching guidance of the famous pianist and composer Joseph Labor. Labor had among his students some names that would ultimately change the directions of music history such as Gustav Mahler and Arnold Schoenberg, among others. In the bustling environment of Vienna in the fin de siècle, when the theories of Freud - about sexuality - and Nietzsche - about the new woman - were echoing, Alma began her composition studies under the lead of composer Alexander von Zemlinsky, with whom she almost got married. This relationship, added to other love affairs Alma had, overshadowed her artistic personality and even granted her the femme fatale stereotype.
In 1901 Alma was introduced to Gustav Mahler, the Vienna Opera Theater director and nineteen years older than she. They got married the following year and Mahler made very clear to her that he did not see any sense in the couple to compete in the professional field, so he forbade her to compose from that moment on. In the same year their first child, Maria, was born followed by the second one, Anna Justina, in 1904. Involved in her family’s domestic activities Alma worked also as copyist for Mahler and assumed the role of critical listener to his works. However, the lack of social and intellectual life she used to enjoy when she was a single woman and still living with her parents, made her deeply bored and upset.
In 1907, Maria’s death from diphtheria triggered a marital crisis that led Alma to travel to a resort in 1910 for health recovery. There the composer met the architect and future founder of Bauhaus, Walter Gropius, with whom she started a romance. Back home, Alma received relentless letters from Gropius asking her to divorce Mahler and to marry him. The architect even sent a letter to Mahler, apparently by mistake, in which he confessed his love for Alma and disclosed their secret love affair.
The knowledge of Alma’s betrayal ended up motivating Mahler to publish some of her songs and to encourage her composition, facts that gave new motivation to their marital relationship. Nevertheless, this was a short phase that was brought to a conclusion by Mahler’s death from heart problems in May 1911. In that same year she also got involved with painter Oskar Kokoschka, who represented her in the painting “Bride of the Wind”. In 1915 Alma reconnected to Gropius assuming him as her husband.
Alma and Gropius conceived a child, Manon, in 1916. However, the First World War imposed a new period of distance between them resulting from the conscription of Gropius to the war front. In 1917 Alma reencountered the poet Franz Werfel, whose poem Der Erkennende she had previously set to music. They fell in love while she was still married to Gropius. Alma ultimately became pregnant and gave birth to Martin, Werfel’s child, who died of hydrocephalus as a ten month-old baby.
In 1920 the composer divorced Gropius and in 1929 she married Werfel. In 1935 Alma lost her other child, Manon, victim of poliomyelitis. After the burden of this another loss she and Werfel were forced to move to France in 1938, escaping Nazism due to her husband’s Jewish roots. From there they fled to the U.S. Only in 1947, two years after the death of Werfel, Alma could return to Vienna and to go see her house and old musical scores.
After realizing that everything was burned and lost Alma returned to New York where she lived until the age of eighty-five. Anna, her only surviving child, became a sculptor. Before her death Alma composed musical works and published the books And the bridge is love, in 1959, and Mein Leben, in 1960, through which she retold her life among the greatest figures of the 20th century.
Compositions
The first compositions by Alma Mahler happened in her childhood in the form of Lied, songs for voice and piano. Instrumental pieces were composed during her adolescence, when she was studying with Zemlinsky, but were left behind when Alma was forced to depart to France fleeing from the Nazi in Austria. There is no remaining record of these scores.
Her first published works are from 1910, the Fünf Lieder (Five Songs), thanks to Gustav Mahler’s final attempts to please his wife. From this cycle, composed in 1901, the third song Laue Sommernacht was premiered by Frances Alda in New York, in 1911.
Most of the other existing songs are also from 1901 and were published one or more decades later. From her Vier Lieder (Four Songs), the two first pieces were composed in 1901 and the last two in 1911. These were published in 1915, the year when Der Erkennende was composed with the verses by Franz Werfel. Der Erkennende was published in 1924 as part of the Funf Gesänge (Five Chants), being the other four from 1900-1901. Other two songs survived in manuscript, based in the work Mütter, by Rainer Maria Rilke.
Her compositional style mixed elements that are characteristic features of the Romanticism and Post-Romanticism periods - as an abundance of chromaticism, chords with tenths and intensity surges with sudden changes of mood - with additions from the atonal expressionist music that characterized the Second School of Vienna of Arnold Schoenberg, Anton Webern and Alban Berg (the later dedicated his Violin Concerto to Alma’s first daughter in the occasion of her death). The texts chosen for her songs were from poets from her own time, such as Richard Dehmel, Franz Werfel and Gustav Falke, and they speak of love, sexuality and mysticism.
Alma reported in her memories being more influenced by Zemlinsky than by Mahler, whose music did not impact her so much. This is probably why many see resemblance between her songs and the compositions of Schoenberg, once both had been students of Zemlinsky. Nevertheless, her Fünf Lieder suggests the atmosphere of ‘lone traveler’ explored by Mahler in some cycles of songs, in which rhythms of landler were inserted and the gipsy melodies derived from the folklore.
Differently, in Vier Lieder the repetition of chromatic motives, the floating metric and the syllabic chant show a bigger concern by the author in putting the melody according to the text. Alma used dissonant intervals, such as tritones, minor seconds and major sevenths, in a process that complicates the singer’s performance. Also noted the preference by suspended melodies without resolution in the vocal part, leaving the piano with the task of concluding the author’s idea.
The ambiguity is a notable trace in Alma’s personality and composition. It can be observed in the texts she selected and also in the application of enharmonic notes and tonalities (same notes with different names, i.e.: C# and Db). The rhythmic applied is altered by fermatas, indications of rubato and metric changes. The composer also opposed the parts dedicated to the piano and the voice, creating melodies with a semitone gap.
More information
The Norton/Grove Dictionary of Women Composers, by Julie Anne Sadie & Rhian Samuel (Ed). New York, London: The Macmillan Press Limited, 1995. pp. 305-306.
Historical Anthology of Music by Women, by James Briscoe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. pp. 245-247.
Redeeming Alma: the songs of Alma Mahler, by Diane W. Follet. College Music Symposium, 2004. Available in: https://symposium.music.org/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=2210:redeeming-alma-the-songs-of-alma-mahler
Mujeres en la Historia: la novia del viento Alma Mahler (1879-1964), by Sandra Ferrer. Available in: https://www.mujeresenlahistoria.com/2013/08/la-novia-del-viento-alma-mahler-1879.html
Alma Mahler (1879-1964) Complete Songs. Charlotte Margiono (soprano) and Brabant Orchestra members. Conduction and orchestral arrangement by Julian Reynolds. Available in: https://youtu.be/b0uh-MPPiDg
Alma Mahler: 5 Lieder (Complete). HiroandAkiko. Available in: https://youtu.be/M9CYlOU_SJU
Alma Mahler Ich Wandle unter Blumen. Clarissa Cabral (mezzo-soprano) and Eliana Monteiro da Silva (piano). Available in: https://youtu.be/GRGN2h9K7i0
Alma Mahler Bei dir ist es traut. Clarissa Cabral (mezzo-soprano) e Eliana Monteiro da Silva (piano) Available in: https://youtu.be/C-ExaRX3bf4
