Steven Martin ([log in to unmask]) wrote:

>[log in to unmask] writes:
>
>>Steven Martin ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
>>
>>>Need I say more and that is just off the top of my head.  I don't think
>>>it would too much of a stretch to say that Death is a reoccuring theme in
>>>his work.
>>
>>"A recurring theme" is far from the same thing as an obsession or
>>thinking about something constantly.
>
>Did I say obsession?

You didn't use that word, buyt you did say he seemed to think about death
constantly.  This is very far from the case.

>>>Oh yeah, his daughter died right after he wrote Kindertotenlieder.  Oh
>>>yeah, he knew he was going to die when he wrote Das Lied and the Ninth
>>>Symphony.
>>
>>And I know *I'm* going to die as I write this.
>
>Has your Doctor told you exactly how long you've got? That has got to be a
>tough one.

No, nor did Mahler's doctor tell him that.  There is a myth that he
withdrew into a sort of monastic life after the bad news, but little could
be further from the case.  He continued to work extrememly hard (read the
accounts of his US visits for instance).

>Do you deny that his last three works were written after he got the bad
>news? Or are we supposed to believe that knowing that you have only months
>to live will have no effect on the music that a composer writes.

But he *didn't* have only months to live, nor was he told that.  He did in
fact live almost 4 years after the diagnosis of the defective heart valve
and it was an infection which carried him off, not a failure of the valve.

Deryk Barker
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