Karen Painter

Mahler’s Paris Friends: Political Myths and Biographical Fictions

Music history is often written around the narratives of creative genius; in the dominant paradigm, it is linear, as composers supposedly absorb influences from predecessors and transmit new possibilities to successors in a great chain of musical progress. But, of course, it is also the story of milieus, in which music emerges from explicit and implicit dialogues with friends, critics, adversaries, intimates and colleagues. Each story, though, has its perils: in the linear narrative, composers’ influence is inferred and ascribed, often far too unambiguously. And milieus that also reflect influence — horizontal, we might say rather than vertical — are often reconstructed on the basis of imperfect memory and the desire to claim proximity.