Unfortunately, as scholarship further investigated the picture she painted of Mahler and their marriage, some writers found her accounts unreliable, false, and misleading, and discovered evidence of deliberate manipulation and falsification.
The fact that these deeply flawed accounts have nevertheless had a massive influence — leaving their mark upon several generations of scholars, interpreters and music-lovers, and becoming a foundation of the critical and popular literature on Mahler — constitutes the 'Alma Problem'.
On this subject, Jonathan Carr has noted: "If the text [of a letter] offended Alma's self-esteem or predilections then it had to be 'corrected' with some judicious deletion or insertion before the world could be allowed to see it".
In some cases her deletions have actually proved impossible to correct: her distinctive violet ink has obliterated the original word, line or passage.
It is now known that Alma, deeply infatuated with the famous and distant figure, had previously sought (and eventually obtained) Mahler's autograph on a postcard, and that on their actual first meeting she was embarrassed that he appeared to have "perceived the connection" between her and the card he had signed.
(This story is instructive in that it not only casts light on Alma's motivations in expunging an important fact from the record, but also reveals the value of her original diaries in correcting her later accounts.
For most of his adult life, in fact, Mahler actively enjoyed putting his strength and endurance to the test: he loved to swim long distances, climb mountains, take endless walks, and go on strenuous bicycle tours.
[2] Even in the winter of 1910–11, when the shock of Alma's infidelity had threatened to overwhelm him, he was still planning for his old age, and making decisions about the construction and decoration of a new house in the Semmering mountains[3] — while in 1911, in what was probably his last interview, he made the following statement: "I have worked really hard for decades, and have born [sic] the exertion wonderfully well".
Deciding that the hero was Mahler himself, and that the symphony was 'prophetic', she then identified these three blows with three later events in her husband's life: his 'forced resignation' from the Vienna State Opera; the death of his eldest daughter; and the diagnosis of a fatal heart condition.
In addition, she claims that Mahler eventually deleted the third hammer-blow from the score out of sheer superstition, in an (unsuccessful) attempt to stave off a third disaster in his own life.
Mahler originally notated no fewer than five large percussive impacts in the score of his finale (b.9, b.336, b.479, b.530, b.783); these five were later reduced to a 'classically' dramatic three and specifically allotted to a 'Hammer' — though with one of these blows (the last) occurring in a structural and gestural context that makes it very different from the other two (and equivalent to the two that were removed).
An important aspect of the 'Alma Problem' for which Alma herself might not have been responsible concerns the 'standard' English translations of her books, which frequently differ significantly from the German originals.
'Memories and Letters' (Basil Creighton's 1946 version of 'Erinnerungen und Briefe') incorporates material that was apparently added at that time and is not found in the German edition, and also shows a tendency to abridge and revise (especially where the original was frank about sexual matters).
Faced with this and other problematic translations, Peter Franklin has been moved to ask whether there might not be 'a special, English readers' Mahler, idiosyncratically marked and defined by textual tradition'.