Gustav Mahler is one of the most frequently performed composers in international concert life today. Against the background of a performance and reception history of more than a hundred years, this situation gives rise to a comprehensive review of different approaches to Mahler’s work, above all in dialogue with current innovative research approaches, such as investigations of the performance analysis of his works. For Mahler, composing and conducting were inextricably linked and, above all in his symphonies, led to numerous modifications and clarifications in the musical text, which represent the current state of his tonal ideas. Analyzing and evaluating these is one of the main tasks of the New Critical Complete Edition (NKG), which plays a central role in the tasks of the International Gustav Mahler Society.
The International Gustav Mahler Society (IGMS) conducts and promotes scholarly research into the life and work of Gustav Mahler, the history of its reception, the music historical and cultural historical background of Gustav Mahler’s era, and the dissemination of his work.
The New Critical Complete Edition of Gustav Mahler’s works is presented by the International Gustav Mahler Society in cooperation with various music publishers, whereby those publishers who held the copyright to the work in question before the end of the protection period are usually involved. The aim of this New Critical Complete Edition is to provide academic, philologically elaborated editions both for musical practice and for historical and analytical research. The sources are sorted, compared, and evaluated in order to determine the main source(s) as the basis for the edition of the respective work and to define the corrective or supplementary role of the other sources.