During the summer months, Gustav Mahler took the opportunity to devote himself to composition in addition to his duties as a conductor and opera director. Being sensitive to noise, he sought as much peace and quiet as possible, which he often found in small, isolated workhouses. These were usually simple wooden or stone huts, just a few square metres in size, equipped with a piano. He first moved into such a house in 1894 in Steinbach am Attersee. Another was built in 1900 in a wooded area near Maiernigg on Lake Wörthersee, not far from the southern shore, where Mahler commissioned a villa in the same year. The death of his eldest daughter Maria Anna, called Putzi, in July 1907 forced the Mahler family to abandon Maiernigg and sell the villa the following year. Shortly thereafter, in June 1908, the Mahlers chose a large farm, the Trenkerhof in Altschluderbach (Toblach), as their new holiday home. Alma and Gustav Mahler lived there during the summer months of 1908 to 1910. Gustav Mahler only needed a few minutes' walk to reach his third and final composing house, located to the west. This also suited his newly imposed lifestyle, after discovering his heart defect in July 1907. In the summer of 1908, he expressed his regret in a letter to Bruno Walter: "For many years I had accustomed myself to constant and vigorous physical exercise. […] I only went to my writing desk as a farmer goes to the stable: to give shape to my sketches." Gustav Mahler's composing  hut was located in a small wooded area, from which one could enjoy a magnificent view over the Puster Valley to the Ratsberg, Aufkirchen and Niederdorf.. However, Gustav Mahler did not feel completely protected from the outside world there. A letter to Alma Mahler dated 5 July 1910 confirms this: "So all the cheerful country folk are gathered together. […] I have no doubt that they will soon follow me to my little forest cottage when I move there." Nevertheless, Gustav Mahler composed the symphony "Das Lied von der Erde" in the summer of 1908 and 1909. In early September he wrote to Bruno Walter: "I have been very busy […]. I have enjoyed it very much and I think it is probably the most personal thing I have done so far." Gustav Mahler also showed extraordinary diligence in composing the Ninth Symphony. In June 1909, Alma Mahler went with her daughter Anna, called Gucki, to the spa town of Levico for four weeks. This gave Gustav Mahler the peace he needed to complete Das Lied von der Erde. On April 1, 1910, she wrote from New York to Bruno Walter: "The beautiful score of my Ninth Symphony is finished." Gustav Mahler did not delay and in July began work on the Tenth Symphony. He entered his composing hut between July 6 and 17. Alma Mahler's letter to Walter Gropius of August 8 reveals that Gustav Mahler resumed work on the Tenth Symphony after Alma's secret love affair with Walter Gropius had been exposed and the latter had left Toblach on August 6: "Today is the first day – again – that Gustav has gone [again] to his little workhouse." Gustav Mahler's confidence, however, was shattered, as Alma Mahler recalled: "Every day I had to fetch him from his hospice to eat. I did this very carefully, because in the excess of his fear of losing me, he often lay down on the earthen floor of the hut and cried! Because in this way, he said, he was closer to the earth." Gustav's messages to his wife in those days confirm his impression: "Come, drive away the dark spirits, they embrace me, they throw me to the ground. Stay with me, my staff, come back soon today, so that I may rise again."

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