Others have been wowed by the exchanges with the great and the good, the letters from Jackie Kennedy after the JFK memorial Mahler 2, or missives from and to figures such as Copland and Milhaud. Yet the letter that caught my attention was one from Felicia, Bernstein's wife, written in either 1951 or 1952, shortly after the couple had married:
First: we are not committed to a life sentence—nothing is really irrevocable, not even marriage (though I used to think so). Second: you are a homosexual and may never change—you don’t admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depend on a certain sexual pattern what can you do? Third: I am willing to accept you as you are, without being a martyr or sacrificing myself on the L.B. altar.
It's tragic really that so bright a woman should find herself in such a marriage – times have thankfully changed – yet it put me in mind of another bright woman. It's Alma Mahler, the former sacrificing herself on the G.M. altar. Her martyrdom was the focus of my talk at the National Gallery on Saturday, given as part of the Facing the Modern Study Day. And it's a topic I'm returning to next week at the same address, when pianist and Oxford Lieder artistic director Sholto Kynoch and I present Scenes from a Musical Marriage.
Further to obvious associations of the composer-conductor, it got me thinking about Mahler's sexual identity. He was, of course, outwardly heterosexual; there is plenty of evidence about his relationships with women. But his idealisation of womanhood – evinced by the Eighth Symphony, which he dedicated to Alma – often leaves me wandering how 'normal' his attraction was, indeed what kind of woman he imagined. Freud certainly felt that sought a virginal paragon, rather than a femme fatale and Mahler's initial letters to Alma in 1901 indicate little lust for female sexuality. Was that why, later, Alma commented that, 'this strange marriage with Gustav Mahler – this abstraction – had left me inwardly a virgin for the first ten years of my conscious life'?
Mahler’s continued avoidance of sexual contact and the suppressed eroticism that breathes through all his work – or finds voice in his most outspoken Eighth Symphony – speaks of someone who has a difficult, tortured relationship with his own sexual personality. I’m not saying that Mahler was gay, as I was keen to point out both on Saturday and in my Mahler and the Erotic talk to the Gustav Mahler Society UK, but one of the most powerful reasons that we retain an emotional attachment (and I mean emotional rather than a philosophical and intellectual attachment) to Mahler is because of his ability to express stymied longing rather than longing fulfilled.For an outrageous explosion of sex we would turn to Richard Strauss or, more intrepidly, Franz Schreker, whose music not only reminds us of the joy of human congress, but also tells us that once you’ve had it, the goal is to keep having it! Mahler, on the other hand, speaks to us of the pain of not having it, being unable to communicate our true desires or, the serious crippling hurt of seeing someone else enjoying that joy (like Alma with Gropius in 1910). Unlike Felicia, who is knowing, nay self-knowing too, Alma was nearly 'committed to a life sentence' because of Mahler's hindered sexuality, until she found someone who would love her as she was, rather than as he wanted to her to be. Just one of the thoughts triggered by this remarkable collection. Click here to order a copy.
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