Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen (I'm lost now for the world) I chose the figure of Gustav Mahler as my study and Mahler's extraordinary epigraph is amongst the best written. The highlight of the entire collection is the wonderful Ruckertlieder. This quotation summarise and reflects the personal anxieties of Gustav Mahler: I'm lost now for the world, where before I had wasted a lot of time; for a long time no one has heard of me, and maybe they even believe that I'm dead! But if the world thinks I'm dead I don't give a damn. Because you really are dead to the world. And finally resting in a silent place, where I live alone in my heaven, in my love, in my song. Gustav Mahler - Austrian composer and conductor born in Kaliste in Bohemia, in 1860, and died in Vienna in 1911. Sensitive interpreter of a world in crisis, Mahler brought the romantic language to a new phase of development, acting as a forerunner in the development of the dodecaphony by his protégés Berg and Schoenberg. Mainstay of the music at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. An artist with a very complex problem and personality (he was one of the first to experiment with psychoanalysis by Freud). As a conductor he reached remarkable fame, modern and extremely innovative for his interpretive style. His reputation as a composer developed fully only in the 60s of the last century. Mahler composed ten symphonies as well as numerous Lieder. He was the husband of the fiery and lively Alma Schindler, twenty years his junior. A troubled and intense union that strongly affect the life and creativity of this master.