Gustav Mahler said: "A symphony must be like the world — it must contain everything." His symphonies run to an hour and a half apiece. In them are folk music, march rhythms, children's songs, and the question of death.
He was born in Bohemia in 1860, into a Jewish family. From the age of thirty he was a conductor — Prague, Leipzig, Budapest, Hamburg. In 1897 came the Vienna Opera, the foremost musical post in Europe. He was baptized a Catholic: Jews were not admitted.
He conducted for ten years — brilliantly, harshly, exactingly. Composing he kept for the summers. Nine symphonies and The Song of the Earth — that was his world.
In 1907: his daughter died, his wife Alma was unfaithful, the doctors found a heart defect. He left for New York to conduct at the Metropolitan Opera. He died in 1911, the Tenth Symphony unfinished.