Since July, I have been concentrating solely on female composers. You can read about that in my post from July 19. If I can’t find one born on the calendar day, I won’t post. On with today’s composer.
Alma Maria Mahler Gropius Werfel (born Alma Maria Schindler 1879 – 1964) was born to a famous Austrian painter, and therefore grew up at the time when Vienna was the capital of the Austro-Hungarian empire and was awash in all the arts during a time of great upheavals in Western culture, not the least of was the revolution in classical music. She had relationships with Gustav Klimt and other artists or the time, and eventually married Gustav Mahler. Alma herself was classically trained in piano and began composing at an early age. Gustav, however, insisted she stop composing and devote herself to him, his music, and raising the family. This led to her falling into a state of depression (and had an affair with Walter Gropius of Bahaus–no not the musical group–fame) which Sigmund Freud said could be cured by Gustav allowing her to compose again. Which he did, even getting her songs into print by his publisher. After Mahler died, she had an affair with Oscar Kokoschka and then married Gropius, who eventually was sent to fight in WWI. She in 1917 then took up with a writer named Franz Werfel whom she married after divorcing Gropius in 1920. When Hitler took over Austria in 1938, the couple, being Jewish, fled to Southern France. When Hitler invaded France, they fled on foot over the Pyrenees, and eventually able to book passage on a ship to the US. They ended up in LA where Werfel had a successful career. After Werfel died in 1946, she moved to NYC and became a cultural icon (is there a school for that) and was worshiped by Leonard Bernstein, champion of Mahler’s works.
Complete Songs
Kurt Nemes' Classical Music Almanac 