my familiarity with its subject derives from the fact that I was born in
the Austria of Bruckner and Mahler, and that I grew up in Vienna
when the posthumous rediscovery of their music was about to reach
its apex. As a child I met Mahler in person, and I vividly recall the
friendship existing between him, my father and his brother. In the
years of my adolescence I was privileged also to meet Mahler's widow,
his surviving daughter, his sister Justine Rosé and other members of
his family. The unique experience of Mahler's musical personality,
coming to life in the shattered world of the defeated Austria of 1918,
was finally embodied in my literary apprentice work: a booklet on
Mahler I published in December 1919, at the age of sixteen.

My active interest in Bruckner dates from the time of the First
World War, when I had opportunities to hear his symphonies in
authoritative performances, conducted by his disciples Franz Schalk
and Ferdinand Löwe. In the middle 1930 I acted for a time as one
of the officers of the Badische Bruckner Bund; it was then that I
repeatedly met most of the leading Bruckner apostles.

Apart from the early pamphlet of 1919 I published numerous
articles and papers on both composers in English and German. The
Bibliography of this book mentions some of these publications, but
makes no attempt to list them all. Only two English articles pub-
lished in recent years and the results of my research undertaken for my
article on Bruckner in Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ( 5th
edition, 1954) have been utilized for this book.

I am much indebted to Mr Donald Mitchell for unreservedly
placing at my disposal new data relating to Mahler's life which were
in the first place intended for a future book of his own, Gustav Mahler
and the Twentieth Century, as also for permitting me to reproduce a
page in facsimile from his photostat of the earliest draft of Mahler
Das klagende Lied; to Dr Ernest Jones, Sigmund Freud's English
biographer, for permission to quote from Freud's psycho-analysis of
Mahler and to utilize information on that matter originally imparted
to Donald Mitchell only; to Mr Frank Walker for valuable informa-
tion--partly from unpublished letters--on the personal relations
between Hugo Wolf and Mahler, and Wolf and Bruckner; to Mrs
Gertrud Staub-Schlaepfer ( Zürich) for drawing my attention to new

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