Great Masters

More than many other composers, Gustav Mahler's works are highly personal expressions of his inner world, a world of overwhelming alienation and loneliness - "thrice homeless," in his own words, "as a Bohemian in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, as a Jew throughout the world - everywhere an intruder, never welcomed." Incredibly, Mahler was able to draw upon the diversity of this world that offered him no true home, as well as his often tortured inner world, to create rich and original music. It's a music whose power you will be able to appreciate fully after experiencing this eight-lecture exploration of the life and work of this titan of post-Romantic musical history, a complex, anxiety-bound visionary whose continual search for perfection and the answers to life's mysteries is profoundly reflected in his symphonies and songs. You'll learn, through both lectures and musical excerpts, how his symphonies are vast repositories of his intellectual, emotional, and spiritual expression that made him the first exponent of Expressionism, the early 20th-century art movement that celebrates inner reality as the only reality - but explored by Mahler using the musical language of the century just ended. And you'll learn how Mahler's music is, ultimately, about himself: the lonely, isolated individual.