Pablo Massa wrote:

>Tony quotes directly from Ken Russell's own hand:
>
>>Mahler also betrayed himself when he changed his religion ostensibly for
>>social and financial reasons.
>
>This is still a matter of discussion.  There are many ingenuous people
>(among I count myself) who thinks that Mahler didn't change his religion
>only -- or"ostensibly" at least-- due to social and financial reasons.

I can do no better that quote Mahler's own words in a meeting with Ludwig
Karpath:

   "What particularly offends and angers me is the circumstance that I
   had to have myself baptized to get an engagement, that's what I cannot
   get over....  I do not deny that it cost me a great deal of effort
   to take an action for what one may justifiably call self-preservation
   and which one was inwardly not at all disinclined to take."

In another conversation, with Pfohl, he referred to his conversion as
"changing a cloak."

He was not a devout Jew before his conversion and was certainly not a
devout Roman Catholic Christian after it.

>The error of Russell (though he is not the only) lies precisely on the
>absolute underestimation of the weight of Catholic culture and heritage
>in Mahler's own simbolic mind-frame.

I am tempted to ask for evidence of this.

Though Mahler set Klpstock's Ressurrection Ode in the Second Symphony he
excised any reference to Christ from it.  Strange.

Tony Duggan, England.
Mahler CD recordings survey is at: http://www.musicweb.uk.net/Mahler/