The little composing house in the woods

 

 

 

The main aim of the last day of my holiday in Reifnitz, Austria, was to visit for the fourth time, Gustav Mahler’s little composing hut that is hidden high in the forest behind his lake front home. It was in a way, nice that I was the only visitor first thing this morning; I find it quite astonishing that so few people visit his tiny house in the woods where he wrote so many major works. Today there was plenty of time to talk with the young woman who is there both to take the 3 euro’s entry fee and to answer questions for visitors. She told me that Mahler got up every day at 6am, during the summer months when he stayed in his summer home in Maiernigg that is just outside of Klagenfurt. 

He would immediately ring for his cook to take his breakfast up to his composing house. The servant was to take a shorter route carrying a heavy tray with household china crockery and cutlery with his breakfast. He had a different jam for every day of the week. Mahler only wore old clothes there and did not want to see or speak to anybody during his serious daily work period. The reason for the isolated hut was that even the normal household noises of family and servants prevented him from writing peacefully. He was under a great deal of pressure because of his position as the Director of the Vienna Court Opera. 

As I said, this was visit number four for me and I have yet to go in and move around without tears welling up in my eyes as I listen to music written whilst he was there, and knowing that he took his family away from Maiennigg, after his daughter died aged four and a half from Scarlett Fever. He was later diagnosed with a serious heart defect. The little house is full of his spirit, I feel him so strongly, as is the area outside where he sat at a bench table and ate his breakfast. This morning I sat at that table and moved about inside the house that is only about the size of a modern household garage. There are letters to read and manuscript music to look at. Photos adorn the walls with his wife and children. In the afternoons, he swam in the lake, as I have done during my stay in a hotel just a couple of miles away. He rowed his boat and walked in the woods for hours. 

Looking at the photographs, I was struck by the perfect choice of Robert Powell to play the great man in a movie that I must have seen fifty years ago. He looked just like him. My husband has been here with me twice and was as overcome with emotion as I was, so you see why we get on so well together. This morning, Steve stayed in the lakeside café near the Mahler Haus, catching a few rays and sipping a coffee until I returned from my thoughtful amble up to the house and back on a track that is only shoulder width in many places, and I provided a fine meal for a mosquito of two on the journey. I realise that I am a bit of a softy but then I think many classical music lovers are; romance in the soul you know, that’s the problem.