Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer Gustav Mahler is a well-known name amongst classical musicians, but far fewer are aware that his wife, Alma Mahler (1879-1964), was also a talented composer. During her career, Alma wrote approximately 50 works for voice and piano, but only 17 survive today. Unfortunately, Alma’s reputation in society had little to do with her talent, but rather her romantic liaisons with many men, three of whom she married. As singer and satirist Tom Lehrer (b.1928) said in 1965, before singing a song about the lady, “Last December 13th, there appeared in the newspapers the juiciest, spiciest, raciest obituary it has ever been my pleasure to read. It was that of a lady named Alma Mahler Gropius Werfel, who had, in her lifetime, managed to acquire as lovers practically all of the top creative men in central Europe.”

The song lyrics began "The loveliest girl in Vienna / Was Alma, the smartest as well, / Once you picked her up on your antenna, / You’d never be free of her spell."

Reports of Alma's promiscuity are largely exaggerated. Up until her marriage to Gustav Mahler in 1902, Alma produced several songs, twenty piano pieces and a scene for an opera. Her husband put an end to her aspirations, and Alma did not compose again until Mahler attempted to save their relationship in 1910. After 1915, Alma stopped composing altogether. As well as Mahler, she married Walter Gropius and Franz Werfel.

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