ON THIS DAY | Composer & Conductor Gustav Mahler Was Born in 1860

Mahler is remembered as one of the most frequently performed and recorded composers of all time, known especially for songs and symphonies

Bohemian-born Austrian composer and conductor Gustav Mahler was born on this day in 1860.

He wrote 10 symphonies that draw together many threads of late Romanticism, morphing from the programmatic, or extramusical, themes in his early symphonies to larger ideas — death, despair, and discovering the meaning in life — that pervaded his late work.

As a conductor, he was artistic director of the Vienna Court Opera and frequently conducted the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Malher died in 1911, leaving behind a body of work that would foreshadow the dissolution of tonality of his successors' compositions in the 20th century.

MAHLER | SYMPHONY NO. 5 | LEONARD BERNSTEIN & VIENNA PHILHARMONIC | 2014