This chapter explores the circumstances of Mahler’s childhood – the physical, social, and psychological conditions in which he was raised – taking at face value his claim that the character of an artist was determined by his experiences between the ages of four and eleven. The external factors of his upbringing, including the physical surroundings and economic circumstances of the family and their social position and religious engagement as part of the first generation of emancipated Jews in the Habsburg empire, created a set of emotional and psychological conditions that we now know to be characteristic of Mahler’s family: ill-matched parents and frequent conflict, the illness and death of half of his siblings, and the outsized presence of Mahler’s raw talent within these family dynamics. The survey of relevant details presented here clarifies the range of experiences in the young composer’s background as he turned in the mid-1870s to serious musical endeavors.

This chapter considers Mahler’s active romantic life, asking how this well-known side of his private personality can be reconciled with his compositions’ lack of erotic energy and his general predilection for what we might call an aesthetics of abstinence. From the beginning, Mahler had no less trouble building a healthy connection with a romantic partner than he did putting to rest the existential doubts that drove him to compose. The categorized nature of the symphonies, that is, the repetitions of attitude and approach – religiose grandeur in the Second and the Eighth, manic “joy” in the Fifth and the Seventh, otherworldly resignation in Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth – mirror a tendency in his choices of female companions, who likewise embody types: the tormentor, the masochistic pupil, the replacement mother. The chapter focuses on three early affairs, with Josephina Poisl, Johanna Richter, and Marion von Weber, before turning to Natalie Bauer-Lechner and Alma Mahler.