Aestheticism and the city: Gustav Mahler and musical politics in fin-de-siecle Vienna

The physiognomy of the city of Vienna at the end of the nineteenth century appropriately reflected the political and cultural changes of the Hapsburg Empire after the 1848 revolutions. The sumptuous buildings erected along the Ringstrasse, an assemblage of many different architectural styles, came to represent the extreme diversity and contradictions of fin-de-siecle Vienna and its inhabitants, and to affirm the power and glory of an - otherwise - aging empire. Brilliant artistic life and cultural and financial prosperity, however, provided the Viennese with a layer of surface euphoria and escapism. By extension, Gustav Mahler's life and work ideally epitomizes all the paradoxes of the world he chose to inhabit. As Director of the Hofoper, Mahler monopolized Viennese musical life for a decade, while his compositions were perceived with skepticism. The harsh criticism he endured during the first five years of his tenure represents only a summation of the personal, psychological, artistic, and professional battles of his entire creative life.