This thesis attempts to illuminate some aspects of the most obscure period of Mahler's life by setting the known biographical facts into a broader social and musical framework. It concentrates not on Mahler himself, but on the environment in which he lived and worked as a child and youth. The opening chapter is a brief study of Mahler's background and childhood: the position of Jews in Austria during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the unusual ethnomusicological features of Mahler's early environment and musical life in Iglau during the 187Os. The remaining five chapters are concerned with Mahler's three years of study at the Vienna Conservatoire and the works he composed before and during his years as a student there. Previously neither the courses he attended at the Conservatoire nor the musicians he encountered have been the subject of serious scholarly attention and much new information about the nature of the composer's early studies and the music his contemporaries were writing has been assembled. In particular, the influence of one student, Hans Rott, on Mahler's mature compositions is examined in detail. This wide-ranging approach provides the basis for a fruitful re-examination of Mahler's early output, both lost and extant works. It leads to the identification of what may be a previously unrecognised orchestral work by Mahler, and to a re-assessment of the currently accepted dating of some of his early compositions. The appendices include lists of works by Franz Krenn, Mathilde von Kralik and Richard von Kralik, and a catalogue of works by Hans Rott, together with biographical notes on the non-musicians among Mahler's Viennese friends, and transcriptions and reproductions of unpublished compositions by Franz Krenn, Rudolf Krzyzanowski and Anton Krisper.

Thesis (MMus) -- Stellenbosch University, 1997. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING:Hierdie tesif ondersoek die estetiese begrip nai"witeit met spesifieke verwysing na die Wunderllc:-n-t...;•r.••:ngs van Gustav Mahler. Die term nai'witr .L kom dikwels in die vroee literatwJr : '1r Mahler voor, trouens, Mahler het die term ook self gebruik. Vir die hedendaagse waarnemer is dit nie meer onmiddellik duidelik wat met hierdie term bedoel word nie. Die bekende aanwending daarvan op die terrein van die beeldende kuns is in die verband van beperkte waarde. Daarom word daar in hierdie tesis gepoog om die term in sy historiese konteks tot so ver terug as die sewentiende en agtiende eeu te verstaan. Dit blyk dat Schiller die belangrikste bydrae tot die onderwerp gelewer het, trouens, hy het die term tot 'n belangrike estetiese begrip ontwikkel in sy Ober naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. Verder word Des Knaben Wunderhorn, die belangrikste versameling van Duitse volkspoesie, in die konteks van die intellektuele klimaat van die vroee Duitse Romantiek geplaas. Mahler se "ontdekking" van die versameling en sy groot belangstelling in volksmusiek word ook ondr die loep geneem. Die hoofdeel van die tesis ondersoek die vraag in watter mate die begrip, soos deur Schiller ontwikkel, op die musiek en dan spesifiek op Mahler se toonsettings van Wunderhorn-tekste toegepas kan word. Dit word aangetoon dat die begrip in 'n algemene sin aangewend kan word op voorbeelde van natuurklanke, kindermusiek en volksmusiek. Hierdie voorbeelde het alma! 'n sterk invloed op Mahler en word in sy Wunderhorn-styl ge'integreer saam met 'n baie persoonlike benadering tot realisme, insluitende sulke middele soos die nabootsing van nie-musikale klanke, ruimtelike beweging, spraakintonasie en emosies of "innerlike natuur". Mahler se idee van musiek as 'n atbeeld van die natuur of van die struktuur van die wereld as geheel word ook bespreek. Vervolgens word hierdie kenmerke op uitgebreide wyse aan die hand van voorbeelde uit die toonsettings self gei'llustreer. Laastens word al die bevindings tot 'n omvangryke reeks gevolgtrekkings saamgevoeg. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT:This thesis sets out to investigate the aesthetic concept of naivety with specific reference to the Wunderhom Songs of Gustav Mahler. The term naivety is found frequently in the early literature on Mahler, in fact Mahler even used it himself. To the present-day observer, however, it is not immediately obvious what the full meaning of the term is as used by these authors. The well known use of the term in the field of visual art proves to be of only limited help. Therefore the thesb. ...ttempts to trace the historical context of the term as far back as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Schiller is shown to be the most important author on the subject, he in fact develops the term to an aesthetic concept of great significance in his Uber naive und sentimentalische Dichtung. Besides, the thesis examines the context in which Des Knaben Wunderhorn, the most important anthology of German folk poetry, should be seen, placing it in the intellectual climate of early German Romanticism. Mahler's "discovery" of the anthology and his passionate interest in folk music are also investigated. The main body of the thesis concerns itself with the question of the applicability of the concept, as developed by Schiller, to music and specifically to Mahler's composition of Wunderhorn texts, which occupied the composer for the best part of his early career. It is shown that, in a general sense, the concept can be applied to instances of natural sound, children's music and folk music. These instances all have a strong influence on Mahler and are intergrated into his Wunderhorn style together with a very personal kind of realism, including such devices as the imitation of non-musical sounds, spatial movement, speech intonations and emotions or "inner nature". Mahler's idea of music as an image of nature or the structure of the world as a whole is also discussed. Subsequently, these characteristics are illustrated extensively by examples from the songs themselves. Finally, all the findings are drawn together in a lengthy concluding section.

Timbre and orchestration are neglected parameters in analytical writing, partly because analysis traditionally privileges pitch organisation as the primary structural parameter in music, but also because timbre appears more resistant than pitch to theoretical abstraction and systematisation. Yet, in the music of early twentieth-century Viennese composers such as Schreker, Zemlinsky and Schoenberg, timbre often assumes a pre-eminent place in musical design and formal architecture. In such works, timbre often moves from what Robert Hopkins (1990) describes as a 'secondary parameter' to the forefront of a listener's consciousness. Conventional analytical approaches - including Schenkerian, Neo-Riemannian or pitch-class set theories - arguably have little to offer at such moments. This thesis begins by examining the 'crisis of response' to timbre in fin-de-siècle Austro-Germanic circles and, in particular, to the increasingly complex timbral constructions of many Viennese composers, such as Franz Schreker and Arnold Schoenberg. The crisis of response appeared to stem from an inherited nineteenth-century view of orchestration as ornamental in function, as well as the lack of an appropriate analytical framework and meta-language with which to critique the growing importance of timbre as a musical parameter. This thesis contributes to the discussion as to the how the area of timbral analysis might develop: firstly, by treating timbre as an 'emergent' property rather than an absolute analytical category (i.e., that timbre often results from a complex interaction of multiple musical parameters); secondly, by considering the effect of timbre's spatial properties within the auditory scene on subject-position through examination of contemporary and more recent theories on the convergence of the visual and auditory arts; and thirdly, through timbre's ability to function as an agent of immanent musical critique through disjunctive juxtapositions, or by historically-contextualized responses to codified orchestral tropes as found in Alexander Zemlinsky's 'Der Zwerg'. Timbre certainly was not always the secondary parameter some fin-de-siècle critics suggested it was, or wanted it to be. The joint purpose of this thesis is to offer historically-engaged analytical readings of neglected works from twentieth-century Vienna (alongside a few better-known works whose timbral construction had been left unanalyzed), and to reflect on the benefits of applying recent research to contemporary theories of timbre. These two aims are set in productive counterpoint rather than a straightforward synthesis, with the adoption of recent cognitive research and theories of subject-position feeding into analyses of historical work in order to try to mediate the gap between theory, text, and musical practice.

Franz Schreker (1878-1934) was a Jewish-Austrian composer of great success during the first decades of the twentieth century. Schreker’s reputation diminished after 1933 when Hitler came to power and, in 1938, his compositions were labeled Entartete Musik (“degenerate music”) by the Nazis in a public display in Düsseldorf. The Third Reich and post-war Germany saw Schreker as a decadent outcast, misunderstanding his unique style that combined elements of romanticism, expressionism, impressionism, symbolism, and atonality. This study of Schreker’s Lieder will pursue two goals. First, it will analyze the Mutterlieder (before 1898), the Fünf Gesänge (1909), and the first piece from Vom ewigen Leben (1923) stylistically. Schreker composed nearly four dozen Lieder, incorporating a wide range of styles and ideas. By studying and performing these songs written at various points in his career (including early songs, songs written after he met Schoenberg, and his last songs during the height of his fame), I hope to develop a clearer understanding of how Schreker synthesized the many cultural forces and artistic movements that seem to have influenced his compositional style. Second, this study will consider the sociopolitical circumstances that fueled the disintegration of his reputation. This disintegration occurred not just during the Third Reich, but also afterwards, notably in an often discussed essay by Theodor Adorno. Only in the last thirty years have scholarly voices critical of such rejections of Schreker emerged. My ultimate goal, then, is to join this reevaluation, studying and contextualizing this repertory to develop a new understanding of an oft-neglected chapter in the history of the German Lied.