Spiritual conflict in Gustav Mahler's first and second symphonies

This study explores the presence of ‘spiritual conflict’ in Gustav Mahler’s First and Second Symphonies, and attempts to show that relevant issues of spiritual struggle are apparent throughout Mahler’s oeuvre. To do so, issues concerning Mahler’s spirituality, as they are apparent from both primary and secondary sources, are examined, with particular emphasis on reports by Bruno Walter concerning Mahler’s interest in mystical writings, and especially those by the seventeenth-century writer of epigrams, Angelus Silesius (b. 1624— d. 1677), whom Walter identifies as being Mahler’s favourite mystic In the second part of the study, the representation of ‘spiritual conflict’ through the secondary parameters of texture, dynamics and orchestration, in Mahler’s First and Second Symphonies, is examined, with the assistance of an originally devised method of visually representing, and viewing these secondary parameters on both a synchronic and diachronic level.