Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)
The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. As it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is normally presented with far fewer than a thousand performers and the composer disapproved of it.[1] The work was composed in a single inspired burst at his Maiernigg villa in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. The last of Mahler's works that was premiered in his lifetime, the symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted the Munich Philharmonic in its first performance, in Munich, on 12 September 1910.
Symphony No. 8
The fusion of song and symphony had been a characteristic of Mahler's early works. In his "middle" compositional period after 1901, a change of style led him to produce three purely instrumental symphonies. The Eighth, marking the end of the middle period, returns to a combination of orchestra and voice in a symphonic context. The structure of the work is unconventional: instead of the normal framework of several movements, the piece is in two parts ("1." and "2. Teil"[2]). Part I is based on the Latin text of Veni creator spiritus ("Come, Creator Spirit"), a ninth-century Christian hymn for Pentecost, and Part II is a setting of the words from the closing scene of Goethe's Faust. The two parts are unified by a common idea, that of redemption through the power of love, a unity conveyed through shared musical themes.
Mahler had been convinced from the start of the work's significance; in renouncing the pessimism that had marked much of his music, he offered the Eighth as an expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit. In the period following the composer's death, performances were comparatively rare. However, from the mid-20th century onwards the symphony has been heard regularly in concert halls all over the world, and has been recorded many times. While recognising its wide popularity, modern critics have divided opinions on the work; Theodor W. Adorno, Robert Simpson, and Jonathan Carr found its optimism unconvincing, and considered it artistically and musically inferior to Mahler's other symphonies. Conversely, it has been compared by Deryck Cooke to Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as a defining human statement for its century.
History[edit]
Background[edit]
By the summer of 1906, Mahler had been director of the Vienna Hofoper for nine years.[n 1] Throughout this time his practice was to leave Vienna at the close of the Hofoper season for a summer retreat, where he could devote himself to composition. Since 1899 this had been at Maiernigg, near the resort town of Maria Wörth in Carinthia, southern Austria, where Mahler built a villa overlooking the Wörthersee.[4] In these restful surroundings Mahler completed his Symphonies No. 4, No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7, his Rückert songs and his song cycle Kindertotenlieder ("Songs on the Death of Children").[5]
Until 1901, Mahler's compositions had been heavily influenced by the German folk-poem collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Youth's Magic Horn"), which he had first encountered around 1887.[6] The music of Mahler's many Wunderhorn settings is reflected in his Symphonies No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4, which all employ vocal as well as instrumental forces. From about 1901, however, Mahler's music underwent a change in character as he moved into the middle period of his compositional life.[7] Here, the more austere poems of Friedrich Rückert replace the Wunderhorn collection as the primary influence; the songs are less folk-related, and no longer infiltrate the symphonies as extensively as before.[8] During this period Symphonies No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7 were written, all as purely instrumental works, portrayed by Mahler scholar Deryck Cooke as "more stern and forthright ..., more tautly symphonic, with a new granite-like hardness of orchestration".[7]
Mahler arrived at Maiernigg in June 1906 with the draft manuscript of his Seventh Symphony; he intended to spend time revising the orchestration until an idea for a new work should strike.[9] The composer's wife Alma Mahler, in her memoirs, says that for a fortnight Mahler was "haunted by the spectre of failing inspiration";[10] Mahler's recollection, however, is that on the first day of the vacation he was seized by the creative spirit, and plunged immediately into composition of the work that would become his Eighth Symphony.[9][11]
Composition[edit]
Two notes in Mahler's handwriting dating from June 1906 show that early schemes for the work, which he may not at first have intended as a fully choral symphony, were based on a four-movement structure in which two "hymns" surround an instrumental core.[12] These outlines show that Mahler had fixed on the idea of opening with the Latin hymn, but had not yet settled on the precise form of the rest. The first note is as follows:
Analysis[edit]
Structure and form[edit]
The Eighth Symphony's two parts combine the sacred text of the 9th-century Latin hymn Veni creator spiritus with the secular text from the closing passages from Goethe's 19th-century dramatic poem Faust. Despite the evident disparities within this juxtaposition, the work as a whole expresses a single idea, that of redemption through the power of love.[52][53] The choice of these two texts was not arbitrary; Goethe, a poet whom Mahler revered, believed that Veni creator embodied aspects of his own philosophy, and had translated it into German in 1820.[32] Once inspired by the Veni creator idea, Mahler soon saw the Faust poem as an ideal counterpart to the Latin hymn.[54] The unity between the two parts of the symphony is established, musically, by the extent to which they share thematic material. In particular, the first notes of the Veni creator theme —
Publication[edit]
Only one autograph score of Symphony No. 8 is known to exist. Once the property of Alma Mahler, it is held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich.[52] In 1906 Mahler signed a contract with the Viennese publishing firm Universal Edition (UE), which thus became the main publisher of all his works.[62] The full orchestral score of the Symphony was published by UE in 1912.[63] A Russian version, published in Moscow by Izdatel'stvo Muzyka in 1976, was republished in the United States by Dover Publications in 1989, with an English text and notes.[64] The International Gustav Mahler Society, founded in 1955, has as its main objective the production of a complete critical edition of all of Mahler's works. As of 2016 its critical edition of the Eighth remains a project for the future.[65]