Gustav Mahler

We’ll talk about Tár at some point I’m sure, but for now I want to let it digest a bit. I feel like I’ve just finished a Thanksgiving feast and need to put my feet up on my parents’ couch and sleep. In the meantime, it brought up something I felt strange about both during and after, which is that I know essentially nothing about Gustav Mahler and I’m not confident I’ve ever listened to one of his symphonies. His 5th symphony is stitched throughout the film and he plays a role as both a major influence on the ranks of aging non-influencers in the film, and as a biographical centerpiece around which a great deal of the narrative food is set.

Part of the process of this newsletter for me is figuring out what I actually love, and pulling on the thread of his collective work after the credits started rolling has already led to an incredible couple of hours of basking in his late 18th century maximalist orchestral glow. As it turns out, he wrote 10 symphonies amongst other things, and I’ve made it easy on all of us by putting them in a playlist in numerical order. You can find the link below and if you decide to dig in, please hit me back and let me know what you think.