Donald Satz wrote:

>That Mahler renounced Judaism for Roman Catholicism without any viable
>justification is not just a fact to mention and then move on.  It is an act
>to think about and try to get a handle on what compels some humans to lower
>themselves to these levels.  Discussion and thought about these matters do
>not reduce the significance of musical genius; they simply recognize that
>music is not everything, and that emotional "blinders" need not be applied
>in order to prop up one's favorite composer.

I really know nothing about Mahler's religious beliefs.  It is quite
possible that, though ethnically Jewish, he had none.  In those days,
before the horrors of the holocaust, ostensible adoption of Christianity,
to be believed in and practiced as much as, and no more than, his abandoned
Judaism, in order to be able to conduct one of the world's leading
orchestras, might not necessarily be considered "lowering" one's self.

Walter Meyer