Exposed: The complete list of Gustav Mahler’s female lovers

Exposed: The complete list of Gustav Mahler’s female lovers

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norman lebrecht

July 03, 2014

A remarkable document has been retrieved and published by two Mahler scholars, Morten Solvik and Stephen E. Hefling. It consists of a letter to her literary executor by Natalie Bauer-Lechner, a viola player who attached herself to Mahler at college and became, for a decade, his personal chronicle during vacations that she took with his family. Her memoirs are vivid and, to all appearances, invaluably objective.

Natalie was in love with Mahler, of that there is no question. Mahler mostly tolerated her and was sometimes irritated enough to banish her. After his marriage to Alma in March 1902, she was expunged from his life. She died impoverished in 1921.

 

natalie bauer-lechner

It has been generally assumed until this discovery that Mahler was not physically attracted to Natalie – in fact, actively repelled by her. There is one incident in Berlin when she appeared to force herself upon him and was driven from his room.

In the sixty-page letter, however, Natalie claims to have enjoyed a full sexual relationship with Mahler through the 1890s, avoiding detection by his jealous sister, Justine. She was also, at the time, in an open relationship with Mahler’s married friend Siegfried Lipiner.

Natalie goes on to list in the letter several more of Mahler’s lovers, including the singers Marie Renard, Rita Michalek and Selma Kurz –  but not his protégée Anna von Mildenburg, with whom we know from passionate letters and other evidence that he had a relationship.

So what are we to make of this fascinating new document (which you can read here in German and English)?

If the letter is factual, every Mahler biography including my own will have to be rewritten. If not, it may cast doubt on the authenticity of other facts for which we rely upon Natalie as sole witness.

why mahler

 

Given certain internal inconsistencies in the letter, some of which are noted by Solvik and Hefling, the prospect of rewriting biographies  seems unlikely for the time being. Natalie , when she wrote this document,was a woman in her late 50s, looking back on two men, Lipiner and Mahler, neither of whom returned her feelings. She loathed Justi and Alma and may have revenge. She was also unwell, with spells of amnesia and mental illness.

These caveats aside, the letter cannot be ignored. The passage in which she describes her first lovemaking with Mahler deserves to be widely read – not least because Natalie maintains that it was his love for her that brought the third symphony and ten songs into being:

mahler orlik

 

 

 

‘Gustav drew me up to his room in the attic…. The way we found ourselves there’ locked in tight quarters and separated from the rest of the world, unfolding our entire lives to each other until the early dawn in the most moving, intimate Scheherezadian manner of telling; the way that the creative power in Mahler, drained away for ten years, returned anew, more powerful than ever because of my belief in his genius and my enthusiastic encouragement…. Would it not have been a wonder, even a sin, if such a transfiguration and consummation of life had not been followed by the highest expression of love?’

 

Comments

  • Hasbeen says:

    Given the abundance of information we have on Mahler I don’t see why this bit of trivia adds anything to the story. He was a man, he enjoyed sex. So….

  • Mark Stratford says:

    Sorry, but I found all this a bit trivial.

  • D. Kim Croft says:

    Mahler composed what is probably his greatest song, the setting of Ruckert’s “Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen” the summer before he met Alma. As I understand it, he presented the autograph copy to Natalie. In the song, he alters Rucker’s original text, “Ich leb’ in mir” to “Ich leb’ allein.” Aside from the fact that Mahlers substitution is more singable, I’ve often wondered if it wasn’t also a, perhaps, not so subtle hint to Natalie.

    • David Pickett says:

      Yet another unsubstantiated myth enters the Mahler legend… Gilbert Kaplan thinks that “Ich bin der Welt” was written for Alma, whom he hadnt yet met. As to the manuscripts: that for piano belonged to his sister and brother in law, Justine and Arnold Rosé, and the orchestral manuscript he gave, with a dedication, to his childhood friend, the musicologist Guido Adler.

  • John says:

    Curious headline. Is there some information alleging he had male lovers?

  • S. Werner says:

    Does this article refer to the fact that the letter – which made the news last year and was featured in the New York Times then – has finally been published?

  • S. Werner says:

    Unfortunately in my browser no link appears. Who is the publisher?

  • David Boxwell says:

    Of course, this all could just as easily be what we now call “fantasy fiction” from Natalie’s fevered imagination.

    • uh oh says:

      If NBL’s “fevered imagination” is not to be trusted, please let all Mahler scholars know so they can stop basing 95% of their hermeneuting approaches on everything she wrote… No – really – please tell them.

  • barry guerrero says:

    Since none of us were there, it’s not for any of us to say – one way or the other. Being skeptical is fine, but it can also be wrong.

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