"Saturated with lachrymose melodies, dirgelike rhythms and the ghastly, fatal oompahs of sad waltzes," writes the music professor David Schiff, in The Nation, "the songs and symphonies of Gustav Mahler prophetically mourn the victims of twentieth-century catastrophes the composer died too soon to witness, or perhaps even imagine." How can Schiff make such a bold, seemingly anachronistic claim? Because Mahler's influence can be heard in many composers who did, in one way or another, chronicle the horrors of the century that followed 1900: Alban Berg, Dmitri Shostakovich, Benjamin Britten, Leonard Bernstein, and others ...