DER ABSCHIED - Ettore Napoli

ETTORE NAPOLI: DER ABSCHIED, L’ultimo anno di vita di Gustav Mahler

Mahler died in Vienna on 18 May 1911. On his tombstone is engraved only the name: «who knows me knows who I have been, the others do not need to know ». Despite the desire for a funeral without pomp, the presence of hundreds of people turns the ceremony into an event on the verge of worldliness. Among them many personalities close to him: Berg, Klimt, Walter, Webern, Zweig and others, nor are there any delegations of orchestras directed by him in Europe and the USA. Almost exactly a year before on his way back to Vienna from New York he was in Paris to conduct Symphony No. 2 and then in Rome on the podium of the Santa Cecilia Symphony Orchestra. Back in Vienna he had resumed the rhythm of always: the first of the Octave, continuous changes to scores never really finished, the beginning of a Tenth Symphony remained unfinished, discovery of the relationship between Alma and Gropius, conversation with Freud and sudden exacerbation of a heart infection and now incurable. These are the events of which he will realize in the volume, in a man-artist plot that would destabilize many but not Mahler, who never allowed the accidents of private life to affect his artistic activities, thus giving reason to Karl Jung for whom the true artist « is nothing more than his work and not a human being ».

320 pages

A5 format