Natalie Bauer-Lechner (1858–1921)

Natalie Bauer-Lechner was the eldest of five children born in Vienna, Austria to bookshop owner and publisher Rudolf Lechner and his wife Julie von Winiwarter. It was a musical family, and Natalie began taking piano lessons at age 5. She was educated privately and then studied along with her sister Ellen at the Vienna Conservatory, where she met Gustav Mahler. The two sisters graduated in 1872 when Natalie was only 14 years old. Three years later, at age 17, Natalie inexplicably married Prof. Alexander Bauer, a widower with three children who was 22 years her senior. The marriage was dissolved 10 years later. In 1895, Natalie became the violist of the newly-formed all-female Soldat-Roeger String Quartet. The Quartet gave three concerts a year in Vienna and toured Austria-Hungary, Germany, France, England, and other European countries until it broke up in 1913. Between 1909 and 1912, Natalie arranged four solo concerts in Vienna and appeared from time to time as viola soloist in various German cities. From about 1893, she became a close friend and confidant of Mahler. Their bond continued until his engagement to Alma at the end of 1901. During this time, she spent almost every summer with the Mahler family at their vacation home, as Mahler always composed in the summer months. She witnessed the completion of his Symphony No. 2, the creation of Symphonies No. 3 and 4, and the beginning of Symphony No. 5. She also witnessed the revision of Symphony No. 1 and the composition of Des Knaben Wunderhorn and Rückert-Lieder. She was present at dozens of performances of operas and symphonies under Mahler's leadership and witnessed the first performances of many of Mahler's own works. She recorded details of their conversations in her daily diary, and noted many of his statements and opinions about music, literature, philosophy, life, and other composers, apparently verbatim. In her later years, Natalie became an outspoken feminist and pacifist; in 1918, she was arrested and imprisoned for treason for supposedly publishing an article on World War I and women's suffrage. Her health collapsed afterwards, and she died in poverty at age 63 in 1921. Her Recollections of Mahler (Erinnerungen an Gustav Mahler: Mahleriana), is derived from some 30 volumes of her diaries that have not survived. During Natalie's lifetime, brief extracts were published anonymously in two Viennese journals. An edited selection in German was first published by the husband of her niece in 1923, and the English volume Recollections of Gustav Mahler first appeared in 1980. The books is considered the most informative and significant source on Mahler's professional, creative, and private life over the 10 years.