Gustav Mahler
Symphony No. 8

Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony represents a summit not only of his own creative output, but of the symphonic genre as a whole. Indeed, it may be understood as the culmination of two musical genres, the symphony and the oratorio, for it unites their elements in a manner anticipated by Ludwig van Beethoven: in his Ninth Symphony, which for the first time incorporated the human voice, and in his Missa solemnis, which integrated a sacred text into a symphonic framework. On the one hand, Mahler’s Eighth reaches record-breaking heights in scale and in the sheer forces required for its performance – although the label “Symphony of a Thousand”, coined by the premiere’s impresario Emil Gutmann, was accepted by the composer only reluctantly, and merely as a temporary publicity device. On the other hand, the work probes the depths of Mahler’s world view and his religious and philosophical convictions.

Mahler initially envisaged a work in four movements, but subsequently dispensed with the customary inner two, expanding the first and last movements into two substantial “parts”. The first draws on a Pentecost hymn from the ninth century, the second on the final scene of Faust II. This seemingly paradoxical pairing may have been inspired by a remark by Goethe in his Maximen und Reflexionen (Maxims and Reflections), where he links the hymn text to the aesthetics of genius explored in Faust: “That glorious hymn, ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’, is really an appeal to genius. That is why it speaks so powerfully to men of intellect and power.”

In a “thematic analysis” prompted by Mahler himself, the musicologist Richard Specht outlined the “symphonic structure of the gigantic first movement”. It consists, he argued, of a clearly defined opening section, a development with a grand double fugue, a reprise and a coda (with the entry of the boys’ choir on “Gloria”). In the “perhaps outwardly slightly more rhapsodic second part”, Specht distinguished an Andante (“Waldung, sie schwankt heran” and the songs of the anchorites), a Scherzo (“Jene Rosen”) and a Finale, “crowned and rounded off by the otherworldly, mysterious Chorus mysticus as an epilogue”. The two parts are also linked musically: thematically, the second is shaped almost entirely by the first. Its motifs grow out of those heard earlier, only unfolding fully in the second part. In the orchestral postlude, the principal theme shines forth once more in splendour and radiance – as if to fulfil what the earlier invocation of the creator spiritus had implored: inspiration by the creative spirit that transcends the earthly realm.

Between the completion of the work in 1907 and its world premiere in September 1910, Mahler’s life underwent profound upheaval. After years of exhausting press campaigns, he resigned in 1907 from his post as director of the Vienna Court Opera; in the same year, he had to come to terms with the death of his elder daughter Maria Anna and the diagnosis of a serious heart condition of his own. Alongside new responsibilities in the United States and dozens of conducting appearances across Europe as well, he composed Das Lied von der Erde and the Ninth Symphony, and, after long hesitation, conducted the world premiere of the Seventh. Not least, in the summer of 1910, he learned of his wife’s affair with the young architect Walter Gropius. Deeply shaken, Mahler dedicated the Eighth Symphony to her and, in an effort to overcome the shock, sought counsel from none other than Sigmund Freud. The encounter appears to have restored his self-confidence to such an extent that Mahler took on the challenge of presenting the monumental work to the public as its conductor. The Munich world premiere of the Eighth Symphony was to become his greatest triumph during his lifetime.