By comparing the orchestral readings of conductors of the caliber of Bernstein, Sinopoli, Kubelik, Abbado, and Walter, the author investigates the multiple souls of Mahlerian music: the grotesque and the tragic, the trivial and the sublime, the circus fanfare and the inner song.

Thus, an unprecedented portrait of Mahler emerges, seen not only as an epigone of Romanticism but as a prophet of an Expressionism capable of giving voice to the "forgotten".

Through a method that intertwines phenomenology and psychoanalysis, the book explores the discontinuous time of the symphonies, their kinship with the Proustian search for involuntary memory, and their role as an ideal bridge between Beethoven and the Second Viennese School.

"In Mahler there is a discontinuity of states of the self, since the same themes, when they reappear, turn out to be unexpectedly modified. As if they were no longer themselves: a person with the same appearance and a completely different personality."

A work that addresses not only musicologists, but all those who seek in music a key to understanding the complexity of the human soul.

Roberto Barreca, born in Milan in 1971, graduated in Flute from the "G. Verdi" Conservatory in Milan and holds degrees in Philosophy and Psychology, with a specialization in Psychotherapy. His research moves at the crossroads of musical aesthetics, philosophy, and psychoanalysis.