Mahler: Symphony No. 10: Adagio - Part 2 of 3 (via Tokkemon)

The Mahler family came from eastern Bohemia, and were of humble circumstances—the composer’s grandmother had been a street pedlar.^[1] Bohemia was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire; the Mahler family belonged to a German-speaking minority among Bohemians, and was also Jewish. From this background the future composer developed early on a permanent sense of exile, “always an intruder, never welcomed”.^[2] The pedlar’s son Bernhard Mahler, the composer’s father, elevated himself to the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie by becoming a coachman and later an innkeeper.^[3] He bought a modest house in the village of Kaliště (German: Kalischt), and in 1857 married Marie Frank, the 19-year-old daughter of a local soap manufacturer. In the following year Marie gave birth to the first of the couple’s 14 children, a son Isidor, who died in infancy. Two years later, on 7 July 1860, their second son, Gustav, was born.^[4]