Gustav Mahler was born on July 7, 1860 in a Bohemian village called Kalischt, now Kaliste in the Czech Republic. His mother and father were Bernhard and Marie Mahler. Gustav was the second eldest of his twelve brothers and sisters, six of whom died in infancy. Mahler grew up in a town called Iglau (now Jihlava). As a child, Mahler studied music with local teachers in his village. Although Mahler loved composing music, his school reports depicted him as unreliable and absent-minded. At the age of four, Gustav discovered his grandparents' piano and immediately fell in love with it. A few years later, at the age of ten, he gave his first public performance in Iglau. Bernhard Mahler, his father, was very supportive of his son's dreams and ambitions. Bernhard Mahler fought for his children's musical careers and agreed to audition for a place at the Vienna Conservatory. Mahler suffered the unpleasant personal loss of his younger brother Ernst in 1874 after a long illness. He wanted to express his feelings by playing music. With the help of Josef Steiner, a close friend, he began to write a work entitled Ernst von Schwaben in homage to his lost brother. In 1875 he went to Vienna to study at the conservatory, where he remained for some years. After completing his studies, he undertook a series of productive steps throughout Central and Eastern Europe, including many cities such as: Budapest, Hamburg and Leipzig. He later moved to Vienna, where he conducted the State Opera orchestra. Mahler succeeded in transforming the staging and performance standards of the opera house. It was nothing short of extraordinary, but it came at a high personal cost. Continuous work forced him to narrow down his co...... middle of paper ......choir, two harps, an organ and a large percussion section, along with a gigantic orchestra. He also departed from tradition in his use of tonality. His greatest works often ended on a different tone than when they began. This weakened the structural role of tonality at the same time that Schoenburg and his contemporaries were pursuing a purely atonal style. The last factor that we can notice in Mahler's music is his wit, often touched by irony and parody. This can happen through the comparison of incongruous elements to create a jarring and banal mix. Mahler died in Vienna on 18 May 1911 at the age of fifty from a blood infection. The Gustav Mahler International Institute, founded in 1955, was built to honor his life and work. Works Cited http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_Mahler http://www.classical.net/music/comp.lst/mahler. php