Gustav Mahler: Influences Of Twentieth Century Composers

In this essay, I will be discussing the influences of twentieth century composers on other fellow composers. This will include Mahler, Schoenberg, and Britten. Even though they have similar characteristics in their compositions, they are still extremely independent in their composing. Born in 1860 and dealing with the flip of the century, Gustav Mahler’s career began within the closing days of nineteenth century romanticism and finished with the increase of atonal music. There's no intrinsic historical or inventive significance to be found within the arbitrary shift from one century to another. However Mahler's career crossed, and will be seen to represent, a watershed moment within the history of music. Mahler can be seen as a link between 2 completely different styles of music that replicate the distinction between the nineteenth and twentieth century. …show more content…
Wagner was such an influence on Mahler that, “he was deeply in Wagner’s debt as a composer and conductor.” Wagner's ring cycle was the foremost utterly participating and immersive sort of diversion accessible. These operas described the synthesis of music, novelistic and visual types of diversion. Mahler absorbed this and allowed it to infuse everything that followed in his career. Ross defines Mahler's entire musical mission as "to do for the symphony what Wagner had done for the opera". Mahler began to push the boundaries of what music represented, what it served as, and how it was notated. From his Fourth Symphony forward, Mahler rejected the romantic conventions of music that had ruled nineteenth century culture. Wagner helped shape what Mahler became, who ended up being a huge icon in twentieth century