Symphony No. 8
Gustav Mahler was born in Kalischt (Kalište), near Humpolec, Bohemia (in what is now the Czech Republic) on July 7, 1860, and died in Vienna on May 18, 1911. He sketched the Symphony No. 8 between June 21 and August 18, 1906, and completed the score the following summer. He dedicated the score to “meiner lieben Frau, Alma Maria” (“my beloved wife, Alma Maria”) Mahler conducted the first performance on September 12, 1910, in Munich, with an especially assembled orchestra, the Riedel Gesangverein (chorus) of Leipzig, the Vienna Singverein, the Munich Central School Children’s Chorus, and soloists Gertrud Förstel, Marta Winternitz-Dorda, Irma Koboth, Ottilie Meyzger, Tilly Koenen, Felix Senius, Nicola Geisse-Winkel, and Richard Mayr.
The score calls for an orchestra of 5 flutes (5th doubling piccolo), 4 oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet (doubled where possible), 3 B-flat clarinets, bass clarinet, 4 bassoons, contrabassoon, 8 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones, bass tuba, timpani, percussion (glockenspiel, tubular bells, triangle, tam-tam, bass drum), celesta, piano, harmonium, organ, 2 harps, mandolin, strings (first and second violins, violas, cellos, and double basses), an offstage brass ensemble of 4 trumpets and 3 trombones, 3 solo sopranos (Magna Peccatrix, Una poenitentium, Mater gloriosa), 2 solo altos (Mulier Samaritana, Maria Aegyptiaca), solo tenor (Doctor Marianus), solo baritone (Pater ecstaticus), solo bass (Pater profundus), 2 mixed (SATB) choruses, and children’s chorus.
More than any other of his nine completed symphonies, Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony looms large in his biography. As a spectacular gathering of musicians and singers, the Eighth has been a major community event starting with the Munich premiere in September 1910, when it was dubbed the “Symphony of a Thousand.”
It was the last work of his own that Mahler conducted before his death in May 1911. Friends and acquaintances who traveled to the premiere would not see Mahler again, since he sailed immediately afterward for America for his second season as conductor of the New York Philharmonic. He next returned to Europe on his deathbed eight months later. Thinking back to the premiere in her 1913 memoirs, the great soprano Lilli Lehmann noticed how much Mahler, 50 at the time, had aged. Nearly weeping in the latter part of the performance, Lehmann was transfixed by the music as a fatal premonition.
For Mahler and Alma, the premiere of the Eighth Symphony was the pinnacle of his career. The summer of 1910 had been tumultuous. Recuperating at a spa, Alma fell in love with the young architect Walter Gropius, whom she would later marry. Mahler learned about the relationship; his desperate attempts to repair their marriage included a trip to Leiden to meet with the great Viennese psychologist Siegmund Freud, who agreed to interrupt his vacation for a consultation. Grasping at every possible fix, Mahler, who had demanded when they married that Alma suppress her own artistic ambitions, decided to support Alma in publishing her own compositions. He also made her the dedicatee of the Eighth Symphony. His letters to her recounted rehearsals in detail, providing photographs to testify to the work’s grandeur. In her memoirs (1940), Alma recounted the thrilling experience of the powerful part I leading into the luminous part II:
The whole of Munich as well as all who had come there for the occasion were wrought up to the highest pitch of suspense. The final rehearsal provoked rapturous enthusiasm, but it was nothing compared with the performance itself. The whole audience rose to their feet as soon as Mahler took his place on the podium; and the breathless silence that followed was the most impressive homage an artist could be paid. I sat…almost insensible from excitement.
And then Mahler, god or demon, turned those tremendous volumes of sound into fountains of light. The experience was indescribable. Indescribable, too, the demonstration that followed. The whole audience surged towards the platform.
Mahler would never hear Das Lied von der Erde (his exquisite setting of German translations of classical Chinese poetry for two voices and orchestra) or his final two symphonies, both instrumental (no. 10 incomplete). The Eighth, only nominally a symphony and encompassing unstaged opera in part II, was a fitting culmination to his European career: Mahler composed almost exclusively symphonies (and symphonic songs), yet was employed throughout his career as an opera director (Royal Hungarian Opera in Budapest, Hamburg Court Opera, Vienna Court Opera [1897-1907], and Metropolitan Opera in New York City [1908-1909]). Mahler insisted that the Eighth stood apart from his other symphonies. Speaking with his biographer, Mahler explained that unlike his other works, which possess a “subjective, tragic” character, the Eighth Symphony is a great font of optimism. “All my earlier symphonies are merely preludes to this one.”
Biographical context
To offset the pressures of the opera season, Mahler spent summers in his lakeside villa outside Maiernigg, Austria, a town nestled in the Carinthian mountains. His routine was well known, with intensive daily work in the nearby “composition hut.” The summer of 1906 was no different, only the stakes rose after Mahler conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony.
All three of his middle instrumental symphonies (nos. 5-7) reflect a new engagement with inherited forms. Facing the polemics around tradition versus modernism that coincided with the new century, Mahler favored a more conventional approach to “outer form,” comparing the decision to a mature adult who no longer needs to use clothing to attract attention.
Nothing could prepare Mahler for the negative reception of the Sixth Symphony on May 27, 1906. Its outer form is traditional—four movements, three in A minor—but the finale’s huge sound and complexity were unprecedented. Its expanded percussion section made Mahler the butt of jokes in the press. Two weeks after the premiere in Essen, Germany, Mahler packed up the draft of his Seventh Symphony and left for Maiernigg.
Driven by the need for artistic and public success, Mahler responded to the perceived failure of the Sixth Symphony—an ingenious composition that later found an enthusiastic reception—by creating a very different work. Inspiration came that summer with such force that Mahler set aside work on his Seventh Symphony. Attacked for employing a conventional symphonic form in the Sixth Symphony, when the music leaned into subjectivity and modern exploration, Mahler took the opposite approach in his Eighth Symphony.
Compositionally, the Eighth would not offend conservative critics (even if they were flummoxed by its size and design). In its harmony, orchestration and contrapuntal alignment of voices, the Eighth Symphony is arguably a retrenchment from Mahler’s immediately prior works. Power, beauty, and simplicity are favored over innovation.
The composer did not, however, repudiate his interest in the Baroque craftsmanship he embraced after 1900, reaching back to the great Baroque master, “constantly learning more and more from Bach”; he exclaimed, “If only I had time to immerse myself completely in this highest school!’’ Yet the Bachian layering of voices in the Fifth and Sixth symphonies infuriated reviewers. With a vengeance, the composer affirmed his right to draw influence from the German master: part I of the Eighth Symphony reminds some listeners of a Bach motet, re-envisioned for modernity.
Finishing his draft of the Eighth, Mahler wrote to Willem Mengelberg, conductor of the fabled Amsterdam Concertgebouw: “It is the greatest work I have composed up to this point. …Imagine hearing the universe resound and ring. These are not human voices but the planets and suns in orbit.”
Reaching for the cosmos was tantamount to transcending the religious and cultural divide in Vienna, whose mayor (1897–1910) was openly anti-Semitic. Writing to Jewish musicians, Mahler privately identified as Jewish, despite converting to Catholicism in 1897 in anticipation of his appointment to the Vienna Court Opera. Although the Eighth Symphony employs a Christian hymn (part I) and a Christian-inspired scene (part II), Mahler wanted its meaning to extend beyond religion and humanity into the cosmos.
Design and scoring
The Eighth Symphony has two “parts,” not the usual four or five movements. An early book on Mahler’s symphonies coined the term “finale-symphonies,” since the last movement, from its faster tempo and intensity, sounds like the goal of the entire work—as in Symphonies 1, 2, 5, and 7. His other works, by contrast, lead to transcendence in gentle hues, without haste. Even there, Mahler remained fascinated by the question of how to end a symphony. The lion’s share of the Eighth (roughly the last hour) is the final scene of the most famous drama in German literature—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust. The symphony’s part I (perhaps more like a finale) glows in the massive strength of a full, expanded orchestra and multiple choruses, while part II traverses the redemption and ascent of Faust’s soul, culminating in a magically subdued chorus. Only at the very end does part II build to a strong close.
Mahler came later to the idea of composing a symphony with only two parts. In early sketches, he listed titles for four independent movements; the sketches differ substantially, but both had the symphony begin with a setting of the medieval hymn Veni creator spiritus (“Come, creator spirit”)—celebrating the act of creation. Other composers, including Bach, had set Veni creator spiritus (in Latin or translated), but never within a larger work.
The loosening grip of tonality, apparent in the work of Mahler’s contemporaries including Richard Strauss and Arnold Schoenberg, is nowhere apparent in the Eighth Symphony. As in the past, the choice of a work’s key mattered. The symphony is in E-flat major—the strong key of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony and also the warm and lush harmony Wagner used to create the world at the opening of his Ring cycle. E-flat major is also the key of redemption in the finale of Mahler’s Second Symphony.
Among the most taxing works in the repertoire, the Eighth Symphony is best known for its astonishing performance requirements. Now, as then, it is a logistical feat to rehearse with the double chorus (two groups each of sopranos, altos, tenors, and basses), children’s chorus, and eight vocal soloists. Mahler’s typically large orchestra is expanded further to include mandolin, seven off-stage trumpets and trombones, and organ. Part II also includes two harps, a harmonium, piano, and the heavenly celesta. Mahler recommended doubling the first-chair woodwinds when the choruses and string sections are large.
Part I
In his choice of Veni creator spiritus, Mahler was influenced by Goethe, who found the hymn “magnificent,” but not because of its sanctity, or its common liturgical use when the Holy Spirit is invoked. Deeply spiritual but eschewing traditional religion, Goethe insisted that Veni creator spiritus was “an appeal to genius” and makes a powerful impact on artists and intellectuals. Mahler’s response was to shun the abstruse subtlety and subjectivity of his immediately preceding symphonies. Composing music about inspiration called for bold melodies that penetrate, with stark contrasts in vocal and instrumental color. The streaming brass and organ are among the most striking sonorities.
Exuding optimism throughout, part I is an obvious rejection of his Sixth Symphony, with its sometime subtitle of “Tragic.” At the premiere of the Eighth Symphony, listeners were overwhelmed by the climax of part I. The heroic key of E-flat major and march-like rhythm with the choruses singing together fire one’s senses. Then, as love pours into one’s heart, the choruses break into a spectacle of intricate exchanges (a double fugue):
Accende lumen sensibus [Our senses with thy light inflame]
Infunde amorem cordibus [our hearts to heavenly love reclaim]
(trans. Robert Bridges)
Part II
Goethe was engaged with Faust most of his life, and the final scene inspired any number of artists and composers. Mahler was fascinated by gender archetypes—the famous “eternal feminine” that redeems the hard work and “striving” of Faust. In a now-famous letter to Alma, written with rehearsals underway, Mahler mused philosophically about Goethe’s play and his own setting. The “eternal feminine” and highest level of being is the Mater Gloriosa (the Virgin Mary), the “resting point” after a life of “longing and striving” toward one’s goals, which Mahler calls “the eternal masculine.”
Part II extends from the secluded wilderness of the earth, inhabited by religious hermits, to the upper reaches of heaven. Mahler’s score provides vivid scenery descriptions, courtesy of Goethe, but without any intention of part II being staged. (Goethe’s own intentions for the staging of Faust remained ambiguous.) An orchestral introduction evokes sacred wilderness (“mountain gorge, forest, cliff, desert”), until the religious hermits enter in a novel scoring of a chorus and its “echo.”
The operatic singing of the baritone, Pater ecstaticus, is accompanied by harmonically vivid swelling in the strings. As in an opera aria, the baritone’s two stanzas are joined by a rich instrumental interlude, and so too in the ensuing bass aria. Pater profundus (bass) has the most substantial solo role in part II, musically akin to Faust’s “longing and striving.” His proclamations about the power of love over the natural world are bolstered with a more audacious harmonic palette.
Elsewhere, too, Mahler is careful to lighten the orchestration and craftsmanship (the mark of human intervention) based on the spiritual rank of the singers or chorus. The “Chorus of Angels” and the ensuing “Younger Angels” have a robust scoring with some dissonance, whereas “The More Perfect Angels” sing against solo instruments, illustrating the spiritual uplift.
Unlike opera, which contrasts male and female soloists within a duet or series of arias, Part II unfolds gradually with pairings or a sequence of similarly hued timbres of soloists and choruses. Three penitent women—Magna Peccatrix, Mulier Samaritana, Maria Aegyptica—and Gretchen, whom Faust had seduced and who won salvation through her repentance (thus renamed Una poenitentium)—minister to his soul.
The ultimate redemption brings a shimmering timelessness to the music: the famous concluding Chorus Mysticus is tender and sweet, with mostly stepwise motion to instill the utter calm of redemption.
Historical Context
As an opera conductor, Mahler was accustomed to an audience of cognoscenti. Already during his lifetime, his symphonies appealed beyond the bourgeoisie, and sometimes also to young adults. As her memoirs recount, Mahler’s friend Lotte Lehmann once questioned him as to whether the potently simple melodies in his symphonies required such a large orchestra. Mahler bristled at the suggestion, predicting that “In 100 years, my symphonies will be performed in gigantic concert halls, holding 20,000 to 30,000 people, and will become great folk festivals.”
The Eighth Symphony was premiered in an exhibition space from the Munich Trade Fair, built in 1908. With a capacity of 3,000 (somewhat larger than Boston’s Symphony Hall), this “New Music Festival Hall” had nearly double the capacity of Vienna’s Musikverein, where Mahler conducted the Vienna Philharmonic (1898-1901). Mahler hoped for 1,500 performers, but publicity announced “The Symphony of a Thousand.”
The sheer logistics of mounting a performance encouraged a broader community both on stage and in the audience. The first Viennese performance, in 1918, was not the Vienna Philharmonic but the Concert Society orchestra—the ensemble that hosted the Workers Symphony Concerts, founded in 1905. Joining the orchestra were the choruses of the Austrian railroad employees and a Catholic Boy’s society, along with the Philharmonic chorus. Maher never conducted in Vienna’s Workers Symphony Concert series, but his contemporaries heard the Eighth Symphony as embodying the idea of “the masses,” a novel concept that helped inspire and explain social and political activism from the 1890s through the 1930s. Austrian Socialists were enthralled by the idea that the 1905 Russian Revolution resulted in a constitution and bicameral parliament (April 1906)—its absolutist government suddenly more advanced than the Habsburg Empire. Across Europe, political movements called for mobilization of the great collective for the larger good of society. Elsa Bienenfeld, a Viennese critic who reviewed Mahler’s Eighth, was struck by the “huge shared enthusiasm, pulled along a course of gripping and shared emotions” and likened the experience to soldiers in battle, or “an effect anywhere that the masses grasp the same idea and instinctively fire themselves up at the same time.” The gifted composer Anton Webern later conducted Mahler’s Eighth in a Workers’ Symphony Concert.
Mahler’s Eighth ambition whetted the public’s appetite for large events well before the mass concerts in the heyday of post-war socialism. In Leipzig, Germany, a few days after the work was programmed twice (1912), the same choruses and orchestra performed Handel’s Messiah, drawing nearly 10,000 listeners in total for the rehearsals and performances.
Although Mahler avoided politics, he knew the potential of music to unify social classes, envisioning the Eighth Symphony as “a gift to the nation.” Designed to move from overwhelming strength to the struggles and redemption of one individual, the symphony expresses and ultimately channels the energy of the collective into a highly individual spiritual encounter.
Karen Painter
Karen Painter, Professor of Music at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, was previously on the faculty of Harvard University (1997-2007) and Dartmouth College (1995-1997). She is the author of Symphonic Aspirations: German Music and Politics, 1900-1945 and editor of Mahler and His World.
The first American performance of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony took place March 2, 1916, led by Leopold Stokowski with the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra Chorus, the Philadelphia Choral Society, the Mendelssohn Club of Philadelphia, the Fortnightly Club, a chorus of 150 children, and soloists Mabel Garrison, Inez Barbour, Adelaide Fischer, Margaret Keyes, Susanna Dercum, Lambert Murphy, Reinald Werrenrath, and Clarence Whitehill.
Seiji Ozawa led the first BSO performance of the Eighth Symphony at Tanglewood on August 20, 1972, with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus [TFC] and Tanglewood Choir, John Oliver, conductor; the St. Pauls School Boy Choir, Theodore Marier, director; soloists Deborah O’Brien, Linda Phillips, Jane Bryden, Susan Clickner, Eunice Alberts, John Alexander, William Dooley, and Ara Berberian, and organist Berj Zamkochian. Ozawa led the first Symphony Hall performance during the orchestra’s 100th Anniversary Season (1980-81) in October 1980 (at which time it was recorded for Philips), repeating it at Carnegie Hall in New York (with the TFC, the Boston Boy Choir, the Brooklyn Boys Chorus [Boston only], soloists Faye Robinson, Judith Blegen, Deborah Sasson, Florence Quivar, Lorna Myers, Kenneth Riegel, Benjamin Luxon, and Gwynne Howell, and organist James David Christie); and at Tanglewood on August 23, 1981, (TFC and Tanglewood Choir, Boston Boy Choir, Youth pro Musica, Roberta Humez, director; St. Pius V Church Choir of Lynn, Lexington Boys Choir, the same soloists as the previous October, and James David Christie, organ).
