MUSIC: Why Mahler? How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed the WorldBy Norman Lebrecht Faber & Faber, 362pp. £ 17.99

MAHLER’S 150TH birthday (July 7th) came and went while I was reading this book, but I missed it, largely because I was reading this book. I should emphasise that this is normal. I miss birthdays, anniversaries, and other dates because I get too involved in what I’m doing. In this case, I was too busy wondering how I was going to write this review for this puzzling book to notice the date passing.

I am puzzled by this book, not because it’s not enjoyable, or annoying, or provocative, or any of those things that books are supposed to be, but because it is what it is, and yet remains enjoyable, and also annoying and provocative.

So what is it? Well, it's not really about Gustav Mahler. It's more about Norman Lebrecht about Gustav Mahler; Lebrecht seen through the veil of Mahler-being-seen-through-the-eyes-of-Lebrecht; I want to write that in fact it has about the same relationship to a biography of Mahler as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegashas to a review of the Mint 400, but that suggests some degree of heinous chemical usage which would be unfair (the strongest drug mentioned is caffeine) and in any case it would probably be actionable.

But comparisons to Gonzo journalism, such as Fear and Loathing . . ., or The Kentucky Derby is Decadent and Depravedare not necessarily a bad thing; Lebrecht could be trying to start a new genre here, something like a timealogue, or a time-travelogue, or a trabiologue. Someone will think of a name for the genre, if it ever takes off. Gonzo-like, it is written, annoyingly, in the present tense. By way of justification for this, Lebrecht writes in the introduction: "What struck me in these accounts of Mahler's life was my familiarity with his experience . . . Mahler was a self-made man, driven by ambition . . . 'My time will come!' he vowed . . . I took this to mean he was living outside his time frame, fast forwarding to a future date. It struck me that the best way to approach Mahler was to treat him in the present continuous, as a man of my own time".

The result of this is a heady immediacy typified by the following: “On his first day as director, he abolishes the claque – a group of cheerleaders who receive free seats and small fees from singers in exchange for exaggerated applause . . . Ushers are instructed to lock the doors the moment a performance begins, keeping latecomers in the lobby until the end of the first act . . . He shakes out the time-servers, replacing a third of the orchestra . . . New singers are recruited wholesale and dismissed if unfit”. It’s all very breathless and present-momentish. There is the disturbing image in the following description of games played by Mahler’s siblings in response to the frequent infant-deaths of other siblings: “Between one cot-death and the next, a healthy sister, Leopoldine (Poldi) is born in 1863, followed by Louis (Alois, 1867) and Justine (Justi, 1868). Justi places candles around her bed, pretending to be dead . . . ”. It’s as though Lebrecht is trying to convince us we are living through the events, except, that is, when he’s actually writing about events which he himself has actually lived through, in which case he uses the past tense: “Leaving the Opera, I paced out Mahler’s homeward walk. His apartment . . . was occupied by a Norwegian pianist who assured me that the bathtub was from Mahler’s time. I resisted the invitation to take a dip . . .”.

Thank God for that, or I’d find myself suppressing another disturbing image.

There is something which others may find illuminating, but which I found irritating: like a travel book in which Mahler’s life is the journey, his death the destination, and his music the means of transport, the book is full of interesting little facts and pithy little observations picked up along the way. These often have a tremendous perspicacity behind them, but, because often they are also so opinionated, they make for entertaining, but not necessarily enlightening reading. For instance, writing about Mahler’s birthplace in the Czech Republic, Lebrecht says: “Jihlava, too, was refurbishing the Mahler home at what was now Znojemska ulice 265/4. The archives were gone and a Hotel Gustav Mahler, thirty-seven en-suite rooms with satellite television, dominated the square. At the far side grinned Ronald McDonald, serving identi-meals in 119 countries, to 47 million customers daily”. So there are even McDonald’s in Mahler’s birthplace; but is it really necessary to point that out?

What is on Lebrecht’s side is that he worships Mahler: aesthetically, musically, morally, ideologically, and to the point of fundamentalist fervour. He tells us he’s got six shelves of Mahler CDs, that books and scores and manuscripts surround his desk. He puts his learning to use in the penultimate chapter of the book, which is a summary of all recordings of Mahler’s works, with his critical notes on those he considers to be the most important. In the final chapter, he offers those who haven’t yet discovered Mahler (there are such people?) various means of gaining entry. His advice is worth heeding.

Fergus Johnston is a composer and a member of Aosdána