Like Franz Schubert, Gustav Mahler achieved worldwide acknowledgement as a composer only after his death; unlike Schubert, however, Mahler was a celebrity in his lifetime - but as a conductor. Mahler was born as the son of a Jewish merchant, in Kalischt (Kaliste), Bohemia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and he was educated in the town of Iglau (Jihlava), in Prague and eventually in Vienna, where he attended both the Conservatory and the University. His first important work, Das klagende Lied, was finished in 1880 (later revised), by which time Mahler had begun to conduct opera companies - first in small towns and then, by the mid-1880s, in such major centres as Prague, Leipzig and Budapest. He was principal conductor in Hamburg from 1891 to 1897, but he made his greatest contribution to the art of musical performance as Kapellmeister at the Vienna Court Opera from 1897 until 1907. (To be considered for this position he had had to accept baptism as a Catholic.) There, he insisted not only on refining individual production elements (singing, orchestra, staging), but also on unifying them into convincing dramatic presentations. He conducted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York from 1908 to 1910 and was principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic from 1909 to 1911. Despite his hectic performing schedule, he produced nine symphonies: intensely expressive music, often conceived on a vast scale deploying an enormous orchestra, sometimes voices, and shot through with extramusical or programmatic allusions. He also wrote other major works for voice and orchestra - Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Songs of a Wayfarer), Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth's Magic Horn), Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children) and Das Lied von der Erde (The Song of the Earth), virtually a symphony of songs.

In his twenties, Mahler was unhappily in love with the singer Johanna Richter and then with the wife of his friend Carl von Weber, and in his mid-30s he probably had an affair with the singer Anna von Mildenburg. In 1902 he married Alma Schindler, a bright and highly attractive composition student 19 years his junior; their marriage was stormy. They had two daughters: the elder died at the age of five, leaving Mahler heartbroken; the younger - Anna - later became a sculptress. Mahler died in Vienna, of heart disease complicated by a blood infection. He was not yet 51.

Mahler was one of the great transitional figures in music history: his symphonies and songs belong to the Classical-Romantic tradition that stretched from Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert through Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms and Bruckner; but the innovations he made in orchestration and harmony, especially in his late works, had a powerful influence on the younger Viennese composers Schoenberg, Berg and Webern.

During his lifetime and for half a century after his death, most of his compositions were played only sporadically and were little understood. Although influential Mahler disciples, such as the great conductors Bruno Walter and Otto Klemperer, performed them as often as they could, the music's modern, existential ambiguity prevented it from achieving real popularity until well into the nuclear age. "My time will come," Mahler said, and indeed his works have become an indispensable part of the repertoire of every major symphony orchestra.Harvey Sachs Biographical notes (c) 1996, reprinted by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, HamburgA selection of major works: Orchestral: 9 Symphonies (No. 10 was left unfinished), Das Lied von der Erde (a symphony of songs). Chamber: Piano Quartet in A minor.

Vocal: Song Cycles (Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen, Des Knaben Wunderhorn, Kindertotenlieder)