I want to share an intriguing article by Francesca Draughon and Raymond Knapp, found in ECHO: a music-centered journal, Volume 3 Issue 2 (Fall 2001). They write about Mahler's crisis of identity, a crisis that was felt by each of the figures included in my project (and myself), in different forms. If you have been keeping up with my posted extracts from Alma Mahler's writings, you will already have a strong background in Mahler's history and this article's starting point.
"Mahler famously articulated his own position in the world as “thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, as a Jew throughout the world—always an intruder, never welcomed” (Alma Mahler, Memories and Letters 109). We might suppose this statement to be somewhat exaggerated, since it functions both as a complaint and as a claim of authenticity for someone aspiring to be a Romantic Artist, but when we consider the reality of Mahler’s historical situation, it seems almost mild. "