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One of Mahler's greatest challenges was overcoming the musical and philosophical legacy of Richard Wagner (1813 - 1883). Through his writings and music dramas, Wagner created both a cult of personality and of ideas. His virulent anti-Semitism expressed itself in several ways: personal opposition of Jewish composers like Meyerbeer and Mendelssohn; philosophical treatises; and character portrayals in his works. By the time of his death, Germanic music had become deeply divided. Though figures like Brahms rose up in opposition to Wagner, his was the prevailing music in Austria and Germany at the turn of the century. |
His legacy begins at Bayreuth--that enormous art-house in Southern Germany--but does not end there. Wagner inspired generations of musicians and music critics who took his theories on masculinity, race, and music to heart (Kaufman 2003, 647). These theories manifested themselves in the form of a "new mythology," one that embraced Nordic heroes and discarded the Greek and Roman. Into these new gods Wagner injected his own beliefs about gender and race. His music dramas were indeed Gesamtkunstwerk in that they espoused a holistic explanation of a certain type of human: Wagner's.