Searching The Mind In The Fin De Siecle:a Study Of The Middle Symphonies Of Mahler

Gustav Mahler, an Austrian composer, is one of the greatest musicians of the late Romanticism. His works were not broadly acknowledged but disputed in the Europe during the late19th century to the early20th century. Since the "Mahler revival" in the1960s, his symphonies were drawing increasing attention, and there followed more studies about them. The three purely instrumental symphonies, the Fifth, the Sixth and the Seventh, were composed in the middle period of Mahler's career, and reflect the psychological conflict and struggle when composer in middle age, as well as the culture features of that time. This dissertation analyses and interprets the features of the three works on the base of the social and cultural states of Fin de Siecle, and rethinks the relationship between the works and Fin-de-Siecle intellectual current, thereby exploring the artistic value and philosophical meaning of the symphonies in this phase.There are five chapters in this dissertation. The first chapter that is a summary of the background discusses Mahler's difficult situation as a composer during the late19th century to the early20th century, the conception of Fin de Siecle and the development of all forms of art in Fin-de-Siecle social and cultural space-time, as well as the overview of the three middle symphonies. As the body of this dissertation, the second, third and fourth chapters take the contradictions and struggles which are expressed in these symphonies as the inherent clue, and interpret the artistic features of each work respectively. The second chapter analyzes and explains the quotation of songs, the realization of purpose, detailed materials and the fragmentation in the Fifth Symphony with a thread of "the fight of sorrow and joy". The third chapter whose substance is the emotion of tragedy in the Sixth Symphony expounds the "tragedy consciousness" which is highlighted in the structure of theme and the arrangement of motives, and the contradictions in music arose by the orchestration. The fourth chapter discusses the Seventh Symphony that presents the composer's pain and desire in the context of "Night", as well as his positive exploration about meaning of life. After the analyses about the features of each work in the chapters above, the fifth chapter, as a conclusion, focuses on the social-cultural context again. Above all, the fifth chapter illustrates that the Decadence is the most important spiritual product of Fin de Siecle, and regards the fragmentation as a significant expression of the spiritual product. Then it deals with how "decadence" and "fragmentation" present in these three symphonies, demonstrating the relationship between the three symphonies and Fin de Siecle. At the end of this chapter, there's a conclusion of the status, significance and artistic value of these three works in Mahler's whole creation of symphonies.