This study of “the self in the other” is the result of a search for far eastern influences in the work of Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), and reveals a complex web of references to self and other in compositional, biographical and cultural-historical contexts. Mahler’s "Lied von der Erde" forms the starting point for an analytical journey through the whole of his creative work, enriched by excursions into the Phonogrammarchiv in Vienna and to the Paris Exhibition of 1900.

In the course of the anal...