Gustav Mahler was born in Kaliště, Bohemia, on July 7, 1860, and died in Vienna, Austria, on May 18, 1911. The first performance of the Fifth Symphony took place in Cologne, Germany, on October 18, 1904, with the composer conducting the Gürzenich Orchestra.

On the afternoon of February 24, 1901, Gustav Mahler conducted the Vienna Philharmonic in a demanding program that featured the monumental Symphony No. 5 of Anton Bruckner. That evening, Mahler was back on the podium at the Court Opera to conduct yet another lengthy work — Mozart’s The Magic Flute. In the audience for both performances was a young Viennese woman by the name of Alma Schindler (1879 to 1964). She later recalled that at the concerts, Mahler “looked like Lucifer: a face as white as chalk, eyes like burning coals. I felt sorry for him and said to the people I was with: ‘It’s more than he can stand.’”

That night, Mahler suffered a massive hemorrhage. Quick action by Mahler’s sister Justine in summoning a physician saved his life. The next day, Mahler confided to his friend, Natalie Bauer-Lechner:

“You know, last night I nearly passed away. When I saw the faces of the two doctors, I thought my last hour had come...While I was hovering on the border between life and death, I wondered whether it would not be better to have done with it all at once, since everyone must come to that in the end. Besides, the prospect of dying did not frighten me in the least, provided my affairs are in order, and to return to life seemed almost a nuisance.’

Mahler told his brother-in-law, Arnold Rosé: “I lost a third of my blood that night. I shall certainly recover, but the illness will still have cost ten years of my life.”

Mahler did indeed recover, and in June of 1901, the composer journeyed to his newly constructed vacation home in Maiernigg on Lake Wörth in southern Austria. During his three-month stay in Maiernigg, Mahler began his Fifth Symphony, completing the first two movements. In November of 1901, at the home of a mutual friend, Mahler and Alma Schindler met for the first time. Mahler immediately fell in love with the beautiful young woman, and the two were engaged after a brief courtship. Gustav and Alma Mahler wed in March 1902 — he was forty-one, and she, twenty-two. Mahler finished the short score of the Fifth during the summer of 1902, while he and Alma were in Maiernigg. Mahler completed the orchestration of his Fifth Symphony in 1903. He conducted the work’s premiere in Cologne at an October 18, 1904 concert.

The Fifth marks a turning point in Mahler’s symphonic output. The initial four symphonies are all closely related to the composer’s musical settings of texts from a collection of folk-poems known as Des Knaben Wunderhorn (The Youth’s Magic Horn). In fact, symphony numbers two, three and four contain movements for vocalists based upon Wunderhorn texts. By contrast, symphonies five, six and seven are all purely orchestral.

As with many of Mahler’s works, the Fifth was slow to gain acceptance. One critic scoffed: “Mahler had not much to say in his Fifth Symphony and occupied a wondrous time saying it.” A year after the premiere, Mahler lamented, “The Fifth is an accursed work. No one understands it.” That was, of course, not entirely true. The Fifth Symphony did have its early advocates, including Ida Dehmel, wife of poet Richard Dehmel. She offered the following eloquent appreciation of the Mahler Fifth, reprinted in Alma’s Memoirs:

“This Fifth Symphony of his carried me through every world of feeling. I heard in it the relation of an adult man to everything that lives, heard him cry to mankind out of his loneliness, cry to man, to home, to God, saw him lying prostrate, heard him laugh his defiance and felt his calm triumph. For the first time in my life a work of art made me weep, a strange sense of contrition came over me which almost brought me to my knees.”

Today, the Mahler Fifth rightfully enjoys its status as one of the towering achievements of a unique genius.