Alma Problem

rdf:langString Alma Problem

rdf:langString The Alma Problem is an issue of concern to certain musicologists, historians and biographers who deal with the lives and works of Gustav Mahler and his wife Alma. Alma Mahler (ultimately Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel), an articulate, well-connected and influential woman and a composer herself, outlived him by more than 50 years, during which time she was the principal authority on the mature Mahler's values, character and day-to-day behaviour. Her two books quickly became the central source material for Mahler scholars and music-lovers alike. Unfortunately, as scholarship has investigated the picture she sought to paint of Mahler and her relationship with him, some writers painted her accounts as unreliable, false, and misleading, and found evidence of deliberate manipulation and falsification. The fact that these deeply flawed accounts have nevertheless had a massive influence — leaving their mark upon several generations of scholars, interpreters and music-lovers, and becoming a foundation of the critical and popular literature on Mahler — constitutes the 'Alma Problem'. Other scholars see the 'Alma Problem' as based on outmoded perspectives on gender relations and artistic aspirations.