 For half a century, therefore, she was the principal authority on the mature Mahler's values, character and day-to-day behaviour, and her two books quickly became the central source material for Mahler scholars and music-lovers alike.Unfortunately, as scholarship has investigated the picture she sought to paint of Mahler and her relationship with him, her accounts have increasingly been revealed as unreliable, false, and misleading, and 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'.