One of my most popular posts, written in 2014, was about composers’ huts – creative spaces that sit apart from a principal house so that an artist can work in solitude, free from distraction.

Because of his busy schedule as a conductor, Gustav Mahler composed mostly in the summers. Here’s an amusing but also disheartening video, made in 2011, about Mahler’s composing hut in Altschluderbach, near Toblach, in South Tyrol, Italy. Here, during the summers of 1908 through 1910, he created the song-symphony “Das Lied von der Erde” (“Songs of the Earth”), the Symphony No. 9, and what he was able to complete of the Symphony No. 10. Allegedly, he kept three pianos in this hut, but I don’t see how that would be possible. Maybe they were uprights!

A music festival is held in his honor every summer in Toblach, yet somehow this hut wound up in a wildpark (!), where it has been allowed to fall into ruin. So we have the chicken house… the pig house… and the house of Gustav Mahler. See if you can tell them apart. The videographer makes some pointed allusions to “world cultural heritage.”

Mahler loved nature, but come on!

Happily, there are two other composing huts, which have been treated with a little more respect. Mahler spent the summers of 1893 through 1896 in Steinbach, at Lake Attersee, in Upper Austria. Here he worked at his song settings “Des Knaben Wunderhorn” (“The Youth’s Magic Horn”), as well as on the Symphonies Nos. 2 and 3.

Even so, restoration and preservation were not considered until 1985. In the meantime, it had been used variously as a washing house, a sanitary facility, and a slaughterhouse!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composing_hut_of_Gustav_Mahler_(Attersee)

From 1900 through 1907, Mahler’s summers were spent in Maiernigg, near Maria Wörth, in Carinthia, Austria. Here too his hut is much better tended. Mahler composed his Symphonies Nos. 4 through 7 on the premises, as well as portions of the Symphony No. 8.

Again, the composing hut was declared a cultural heritage only in 1981. It was renovated in 1985 and opened to the public in 1986.

1901-1907 House Gustav Mahler Maiernigg – Villa Mahler No. 31 (Composing cottage)

The world continues to do its damnedest to promote mediocrity, as too often reminders of our greatest achievements are allowed to collapse. But for now, anyway, provided orchestras have enough money in their budgets, Gustav Mahler’s symphonies endure.

Happy birthday, Gustav Mahler.

PHOTOS: Mahler regards his composer cottages in (top to bottom) Altschluderbach, near Toblach (1908-10), Maiernigg, near Maria Wörth (1900-07), and Steinbach, at Lake Attersee (1893-96)