After a few successful terms studying harmony and counterpoint with Anton Bruckner and piano with Ernst Ludwig, his marks declined, and the annual report for his first year shows that for some reason he took no final examination in composition.

From that point on his academic performance was increasingly poor, and in April 1892, Otto Mahler left the Conservatory without a diploma.

It was in Vienna on 6 February 1895, that Otto shot himself with a revolver while in the house of his and Mahler's friend Nina Hoffmann-Matscheko; a lock of his mother's hair was found in his pocket.

According to Gustav's widow Alma, Otto's suicide-note stated that life no longer pleased him, so he 'handed back his ticket'.

The bulky Bruckner manuscript was one of the very few possessions carried in her backpack during her daring 1940 escape over the Pyrenees with her third husband, writer Franz Werfel, avoiding Vichy France border patrols.