She studied composition and counterpoint with Josef Labor, a blind organist who introduced her to a "great deal of literature".

Max Burckhard, a friend of Emil Schindler and director of Vienna's Burgtheater theater, became Alma's mentor.

[2]: 48–54 [5] In June 1910, after becoming severely depressed in the wake of Maria's death, Alma began an affair with the young architect Walter Gropius (later head of the Bauhaus), whom she met during a rest at a spa.

The 2010 film Mahler on the Couch suggests that Gustav's consultations with Freud might have focused on his curtailing of Alma's musical career as a major marital obstacle, but the actual content of these meetings is not known.

Gustav edited some of her songs (Die stille Stadt, In meines Vaters Garten, Laue Sommernacht, Bei dir ist es traut, Ich wandle unter Blumen).

[2]: 111 [7]: 85–89  Upon his urging and under his guidance, Alma prepared five of her songs for publication (they were issued in 1910, by Gustav's own publisher, Universal Edition).

Between 1912 and 1914 she had a tumultuous affair with the artist Oskar Kokoschka, who created works inspired by their relationship, including his painting The Bride of the Wind.

Alma subsequently distanced herself from Kokoschka and resumed contact with Walter Gropius, who was also serving in combat at that time.

Gropius at first believed that the child was his, but Alma's ongoing affair with Franz Werfel was common knowledge in Vienna by this time.

[4]: 127 While Gropius's military duties were still keeping him absent, Alma met and began an affair with Prague-born poet and writer Franz Werfel in the fall of 1917.

[4]: 150 In 1938, following the Anschluss, Alma and Werfel, who was Jewish, were forced to flee Austria for France; they maintained a household in Sanary-sur-Mer on the French Riviera from the summer of 1938 until the spring of 1940.

[7]: 148 As exit visas could not be obtained, Fry and Unitarian Waitstill Sharp arranged for the Werfels to journey on foot across the Pyrenees into Spain to evade the Vichy French border officials.

[9] Eventually they settled in Los Angeles, where Alma continued her role as a hostess, bringing together Arnold Schoenberg, Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Mann, and many other artists.

Werfel, who had enjoyed moderate renown in the US as an author, achieved popular success with his novel The Song of Bernadette, and the science fiction novel Star of the Unborn, published after his death.

Leonard Bernstein, who was a champion of Gustav Mahler's music, stated in his Charles Eliot Norton lectures of 1973 that Mahler-Werfel had attended some of his rehearsals.

[10] Benjamin Britten, considering her to be a "living" link to both Mahler and Alban Berg, dedicated his Nocturne for Tenor and Small Orchestra to her.

She was buried on 8 February 1965 in the Grinzing Cemetery of Vienna in the same grave as her daughter Manon Gropius and a few steps away from Gustav Mahler.

[12] The paintings were “A summer's night on the beach” (1902) by Edvard Munch and three landscapes by her great-grandfather Emil Jakob Schindler.

As an articulate, well-connected, and influential woman who outlived her first husband by more than 50 years, Mahler-Werfel was for decades treated as the main authority on the mature Gustav Mahler's values, character, and day-to-day behavior, and her various publications quickly became the central source material for Mahler scholars and music-lovers alike.

[17] Countering this stance is that of musicologist Nancy Newman,[5] whose study provides a "theoretical foundation" that "grounds extensive critique of both the conventions of fin-de-siècle Vienna and the chauvinism of late twentieth-century scholars."

Alma played the piano from childhood and in her memoir (Mein Leben), reports that she first attempted composing at age eight in the beginning of 1888 on the Greek island of Corfu.

She met Alexander von Zemlinsky in early 1900, began composition lessons with him that fall, and continued as his student until her engagement to Gustav Mahler in December 1901, after which she ceased composing.

Until this time, she had composed or sketched mostly Lieder, but around 20 piano pieces and a small number of chamber music works, and a scene from an opera.

[25] In 1996, Israeli writer Joshua Sobol and Austrian director Paulus Manker created the polydrama Alma.

It played in Vienna for six successive seasons and toured with over 400 performances to Venice, Lisbon, Los Angeles, Petronell, Berlin, Semmering, Jerusalem, and Prague—all places where Mahler-Werfel had lived.

[27] A treatment of Mahler-Werfel's life was presented in the 2001 Bruce Beresford film Bride of the Wind, in which Alma was played by Australian actress Sarah Wynter.

[31] Roz Chast, drew a comic serial entitled "The Inescapable Thingness"[32] in The New Yorker online magazine regarding the doll that Oskar Kokoschka had made of Alma after their affair had ended.