ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the musical structures and narratives in Gustav Mahler's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies which can be heard to speak of conflicts between the binding, generative and destructive forces of Eros. The association of eroticism with conflicts between ideal love and sensual abandon, and between organic wholeness and subjective destruction in the death drive, means that the Mahlerian 'erotic voice' will speak with a varying accent, at differing moments drawing upon all of Monelle's categories. Within Mahler's 'ambiguous discourse', which Vera Micznik hears as poised between, or struggling with, the conflicting demands of Romantic idealism and psychological realism, the role of autobiography in the genesis or interpretation of art becomes, to say the least, controversial. The new musical direction is usually identified with Mahler's move away from overtly programmatic symphonies, which include vocal and choral movements, to the 'absolute' or 'purely' instrumental Fifth and Sixth Symphonies.
