Mahler and the Game of History

For obvious reasons, the understanding and writing of music history have favoured a linear model founded in causality and chronology. Like many disciplines, however, historiographical studies have been subjected to critiques of various theoretical and imaginative types, particularly, but not exclusively, in recent times. These critiques are outlined here, and three historiographical models critically applied to the understanding of Mahler’s music: historicism, historical materialism (after Walter Benjamin), and a more radical rhizomatic model (after Deleuze). Posited, put into operation and questioned, these models cast multi-perspectival and multi-temporal light on how Mahler’s music continues to participate in contexts of contemporary mass-media and public consciousness.