Monologue-ing Chris

On 19 December 1901, Mahler wrote a 20-page letter to Alma, in which he set out to his wife his plan for a future life and requested that she abandon her composition work: "How do you imagine both wife and husband as composers? Do you have any idea how ridiculous and subsequently how much such an idiosyncratic rivalry must end up dragging us both down? How will it be if you happen to be just "in the mood" but have to look after the house for me, or get me something I happen to need, if you are to look after the trivialities of life for me? - Does this mean for you breaking off your own life, and do you think you will have to do without a high point of being which you cannot live without, if you entirely give up your music in order to possess - and also to be - my own?"

Alma was confused and wrote in her diary, "He thinks nothing at all of my art - and thinks a great deal of his own - and I think nothing of his art and a great deal of my own. That's how it is! Now he constantly talks of preserving his art. I can't do that. It would have worked with Zemlinsky, because I empathize with his art - he is a brilliant chap."