classical music - andante

Introduction | Chronology | Filmography

SYMPHONY NO. 8

First performance

Monday 12 September 1910, 7.30 p.m. Built entirely of glass and steel, the vast new concert hall of the International Exhibition Centre in Munich was full to overflowing with an audience of 3,400. Facing them was a chorus of 850 (500 adults and 350 children) dressed entirely in black and white and spread across the back of a huge rostrum specially built for the occasion, as well as one of the largest orchestras ever to have been assembled since the first performance of Berlioz's celebrated Requiem: 146 players, along with eight vocal soloists and eleven brass players (eight trumpeters and three trombonists) positioned elsewhere in the hall.

They were assembled for the long-awaited first performance of Mahler's Eighth Symphony. The audience included many celebrities. In addition to the entire Bavarian royal family, many of the leading figures of contemporary culture were also present: the composers Richard Strauss, Max Reger, Camille Saint-Saëns and Alfredo Casella; the writers Gerhart Hauptmann, Thomas Mann, Stefan Zweig, Emil Ludwig, Hermann Bahr and Arthur Schnitzler; the conductors Bruno Walter, Oskar Fried and Franz Schalk; the most famous theatre director of his day, Max Reinhardt; and many many more. In the audience, the professionals were feverishly leafing through their scores, while others waited impatiently, consumed by curiosity, and still others felt certain they were about to witness another display of 'creative impotence'.

At exactly a quarter to eight Mahler stepped onto the platform. Thin and pale, he made his way quickly through the crowd of performers and, to quote William Ritter, a faithful witness of Mahler's premières at this time, he 'leapt onto the podium and immediately inspired a sense of confidence: great calm and absolute simplicity, the man sure of himself and devoid of all charlatanism'.

It was as if he had already forgotten the agitation of the last few days, with the sensationalist publicity drummed up by the impresario Emil Gutmann on behalf of the 'Symphony of a Thousand' (an over-the-top campaign that Mahler deemed worthy only of Barnum & Bailey), photographs of the composer on sale in all the shops, huge posters proclaiming his name in outsize letters and even the weeks of rehearsals with choirs in Leipzig and Vienna. What mattered now was the debut of his solemn mass for the present age that is the Eighth Symphony.

Mahler did not acknowledge the applause that greeted his appearance. 'Engrossed in his task, he did not even nod', Emil Ludwig recalled. 'For two seconds the lights could be seen reflected in his glasses and we thought we could see the head of a religious mathematician. The lights in the hall went down straightaway. And the massed choirs and orchestra shone in the full glare of the spotlights'. The work that he was about to conduct was, in Mahler's own words, 'the grandest thing I have done', a work 'so peculiar in content and form that it is really impossible to write anything about it' and in which 'there are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving'. It was a work that 'dispensed joy', so that all the 'tragic and subjective' works that he had written hitherto now struck him as no more than 'preludes'.

Composition

As he unleashed the vast choral and orchestral forces assembled before him, Mahler may well have recalled the day in July 1906 when he retired to his studio in the depths of the Carinthian forest. It was here that he had been overwhelmed by blinding inspiration, here that the blazing words of the Whitsun Hymn had struck him with all their irresistible force, here that the three incantatory words 'Veni, creator spiritus' had come to him as though by a miracle to dispel the sense of anxiety that he felt each year when, after eleven hyperactive months at the Vienna Court Opera, he came to pick up the threads of his creative life. That day, the whole work took on physical form in a few blinding flashes. Feverishly, he jotted down an outline of his plan:

1. Hymn: Veni, creator spiritus
2. Scherzo
3. Adagio
4. Hymn: The Birth of Eros.

It was no doubt also on that same day that he sketched out, on three staves, the theme of 'The Birth of Eros', now titled 'Creation by Eros'.

As always, it was only gradually that the initial outline assumed a clearer shape. The theme he had noted for the final movement still lacked text, but Mahler noticed that it was perfect for the words of Veni, creator spiritus, which he wanted to use for the opening movement. Similar coincidences had occurred on several previous occasions in his life, and each time he saw in them a mysterious sign from 'out there', a kind of mystical annunciation whose very strangeness was ultimately bound up with the act of artistic creation. Another incident of the same order finally persuaded him that on this occasion, too, he was the mouthpiece of forces greater than himself. He had only an incomplete recollection of the Latin hymn by Hrabanus Maurus, the ninth-century archbishop of Mainz, but soon the creative urge that he later described as having 'uplifted and hounded me for eight weeks' became so overwhelming that he began to write the music even without the missing words. He cabled to Vienna for the complete text. While waiting for it to arrive, he continued to write the music and had almost finished the movement when the telegram arrived with its surprising message. To his pride and satisfaction, Mahler discovered that the missing lines fitted the metre and character of the music like a glove. Once again, it seemed as if he were nothing more nor less than 'an instrument played by the whole universe'.

But where could he find an apt response to the burning genius of Veni, creator spiritus? How could he ensure that the second part of the symphony was a worthy counterpart and natural culmination of the first, which draws its strength from Hrabanus Maurus's grandiose hymn? Would he have to spend weeks on end rereading countless texts, as he had done in the case of the Second Symphony, only to end up writing his own words? On this occasion, fortunately, Mahler did not hesitate long. After all, Goethe—the poet whom he revered and cherished more than any other—had translated the Latin hymn into German towards the end of his life. It was in Goethe's works, therefore, that Mahler sought and found the words for his vast final movement, thereby providing a unique exception to his golden rule never to set to music poems that were already perfect and, therefore, self-sufficient. This time, however, Goethe had shown him the way by writing the final scene of Faust Part Two in the form of a cantata without music, an oratorio of the mind for soloists and chorus, the expression of a poetic vision so vast, so all-embracing and so universal that music alone could do it justice. Schumann had already set the entire scene while Liszt had set the final 'Chorus mysticus', but Mahler planned to treat it as an integral part of a vast symphonic organism, incorporating all the motifs from Veni, creator spiritus and turning Goethe's final scene into a sublimated affirmation of his own most deep-seated beliefs.

Form and character

Although perfectly coherent as a whole, the Eighth Symphony comprises two halves as dissimilar as possible, a dissimilarity already clear from their words, which are drawn from two different languages, two different cultures and two historical periods remote from one another. Far from attempting to blur this distinction, Mahler did all he could to underline it, treating Veni, creator spiritus as a strictly contrapuntal Latin hymn in an almost ecclesiastical style, albeit cast in traditional first-movement sonata form. Yet this style owes nothing to Bach (whose great choral works Mahler read and reread at this time) but derives instead from Renaissance models in the form of the ricercare.

The second part, by contrast, is a sort of free fantasia, more homophonic than polyphonic, breathing the spirit of German Romanticism and sometimes having even impressionistic style. Yet who would think of denying the complete sense of unity exuded by the whole? Such unity does not stem solely from the fact that both halves share the same thematic material but derives, rather, from the fact that the entire work expresses a single idea, moving forcefully and uninterruptedly towards its resplendent conclusion. The final 'Chorus mysticus' (each key word of which was commented on in one of Mahler's letters to his wife) is one of the most powerful passages in his entire oeuvre, if not in the whole history of music.

At first the Eighth Symphony might give the impression of being a vast cantata, whereas it is in fact a symphony in every sense of the term: it is a symphony for (rather than with) soloists, chorus and orchestra; a symphony, moreover, in which the human voices, treated in an entirely instrumental way, expound and develop the whole of the thematic material. It is also an 'objective' piece as opposed to a 'subjective' one, whereas the three works that were to follow are all imbued with a sense of farewell inspired by the death of Mahler's daughter (not, as has been claimed far too often, by the prospect of his own impending death). It is the first of his works not to contain any quotations or distant and stylised echoes of any fanfare, march or ländler. Above all, the Eighth Symphony is an act of faith and love, a reply to all the questions and uncertainties of the human condition. It glorifies earthly activity as much as any transcendent concerns. Faust's final redemption is a justification of ceaseless human striving because, at the end of a quest that has led him so far from asceticism and from all that is traditionally considered to lead to paradise, he is welcomed into heaven by the Mater gloriosa herself.

A few technical points

Even the most casual listener will find in this score signs of an evolution and undeniable deepening of Mahler's style—not in terms of contrapuntal technique, in spite of the fact that the polyphonic mastery of Veni, creator spiritus is unparalleled since the time of Bach and the great Renaissance polyphonists, nor even in terms of its harmonic writing, which, in comparison to that of the preceding symphony, reveals a certain regression. Mahler clearly wanted to build his church on granite, with the result that the work as a whole is of almost immutable tonal stability: 'How often does this movement come to E-flat, for instance on a four-six chord', Schoenberg wrote of the opening movement. 'I would cut that out in any student's work, and advise him to seek out another tonality. And, incredibly, here it is right! Here it fits! Here it could not even be otherwise. What do the rules say about it? Then the rules must be changed'.

Mahler's true achievement in writing the Eighth Symphony lies strictly in the compositional field. Most important in this respect is his systematic use of 'deviation' (Abweichung) or 'variant', which Adorno quite rightly contrasted with classical variation. From the Eighth Symphony onwards, Mahler's music is characterised by a constant evolution of the thematic material, which becomes immensely supple and mobile, always recognisable, yet always different. Yet, as Adorno goes on to note, Mahler's use of thematic transformation never compromises the theme's expressive charge as often happens with classical variation.

The thematic material

One has the impression that Mahler wanted to counterbalance the dissimilarities between the two texts by means of a thematic unity found in none of his other earlier or later works. The first theme of the second movement (heard on the cellos and basses) involves a falling interval reminiscent of the first two notes of the work's initial motif (on the syllables 'Ve-ni') and is followed by an ascending phrase borrowed from the 'Accende lumen' theme. In much the same way, the 'love theme' that marks the entry of the Mater gloriosa hearkens back to the melody that enters on the winds in the fourth bar of the second part. Time and again Mahler uses thematic recall to underline the kinship between the words and ideas of Goethe's Faust and those of Veni, creator spiritus. Both 'Amorem cordibus' and 'Hände, verschlinget euch', for example, are entrusted to the children's chorus, while similar parallels link 'Infirma nostri corporis' with 'Uns bleibt ein Erdenrest', 'Imple superna gratia' with 'Er ahnet kaum das frische Leben' and 'Zieht uns hinan' with 'Accende lumen'. The whole work is dominated by the opening phrase of Veni, creator spiritus, the resolution, eloquence and epigrammatical concision of which give little inkling of its extreme rhythmic complexity, with three changes of time-signature within the space of only four bars. The opening notes (E-flat, B-flat and A-flat) have the same unifying role to play in the Eighth Symphony as the notes A, G and E in Das Lied von der Erde. It is these notes, moreover, that dominate in the final apotheosis of each of the work's two movements.

Orchestration

Mahler's orchestra for the Eighth Symphony is less extensive than that used by Schoenberg in his Gurre-Lieder, the instrumentation of which was completed in 1911. It comprises 4 flutes, 2 piccolos, 4 oboes, 1 cor anglais, 6 clarinets (including 2 in E-flat), 4 bassoons and 1 contrabassoon, 8 horns, 4 trumpets, 4 trombones and 1 tuba, a large percussion section, piano, celesta, harmonium, organ, glockenspiel, at least 2 harps and 1 mandolin, in addition to off-stage brass and the usual strings. As always, Mahler sought clarity and transparency above all, even in the densest tuttis and most intricate contrapuntal passages. If the acoustics are not too reverberant, if the work is faithfully and carefully performed and if the resources are adequate, each detail of the score should remain clearly audible. And again typical of Mahler, numerous passages are instrumented with an exemplary economy of means.

Analysis

1. Erster Teil [Part One]. Hymn: 'Veni, creator spiritus'. Allegro impetuoso, 4/4, E-flat major. The essential features of this movement's formal structure have already been indicated above. It is cast in first-movement sonata form, the three sections of which are in more or less normal proportions: a 168-bar exposition, with first subject ('Veni, creator spiritus'), second subject ('Imple superna gratia' [Etwas gemäßigter] in D-flat) and concluding theme ('Infirma nostri corporis' in E-flat); a 243-bar development section comprising three sections preceded by an orchestral introduction (Etwas hastig), the first section introducing a new element ('Infirma nostri corporis' [Noch einmal so langsam als vorher] in C-sharp minor), the second beginning with an invocation to the light ('Accende lumen' [Mit plötzlichem Aufschwung] in E major), which constitutes the climax of the entire movement, and the third ('Praevio te ductore' in E-flat) set as an immense double fugue, 101 bars in length. This final section leads into a foreshortened reprise (80 bars) followed by a vast 86-bar coda ('Gloria patri' [Breiter]).

2. Zweiter Teil: Schlußszene aus 'Faust' [Part Two: Closing Scene from 'Faust']. Poco adagio, Etwas bewegter, etc., 4/4, 6/4, 4/4, 2/2 etc., E-flat minor, E-flat major, etc. The second part of the symphony is merely a series of episodes, the strongly contrasting nature of which is established by the text. A number of writers have attempted to see in it three sections corresponding to the last three movements of a Classical symphony, but such an interpretation fails to convince. The orchestral introduction anticipates four later episodes, summarising them in the manner of an operatic overture: the initial chorus, the two solos for the Pater Ecstaticus and Pater Profundus and the chorus of angels ('Ich spüre soeben').

Apotheosis

The first performance of the Eighth Symphony in Munich in 1910 proved to be one of the greatest triumphs in the history of music. Mahler's incomparable genius in balancing his massed forces, the evident wealth of melodic invention based on a very limited number of cells and the splendour of the two codas could not fail to fascinate the audience. Mahler had just turned fifty. His whole career hitherto as a composer had been an almost uninterrupted sequence of setbacks and dubious successes, with the result that he was both astounded and moved to tears to see the entire audience screaming, stamping their feet and applauding wildly in a collective frenzy lasting some twenty minutes. The children's choir in particular, on whom he had lavished endless care and attention during the rehearsals, kept on applauding and waving their handkerchiefs and scores. They rushed down from their seats and leaned over the balustrade to give him flowers and shake his hand, shouting 'Long live Mahler! Our Mahler!' at the tops of their voices and presenting him with the only laurel wreath of the evening, a gesture that moved him profoundly. For Mahler, these children represented the future that he felt was slipping inexorably away from him. When he left to return to his hotel, he found a group of applauding admirers waiting for him outside the hall and had to force his way to his car.

All who were present that evening noted how pale and drawn he looked (his appearence was memorably described by Thomas Mann under the name of Gustav von Aschenbach in Der Tod in Venedig). Nothing, except perhaps his waxen skin, could suggest that his end was so close. Yet an anonymous witness, who had never spoken to him, was able to read the future in these curious features. The man in question was a young artist who, during the tumultuous applause, turned to the Viennese critic, Richard Specht: 'That man will soon die! Look at those eyes! That's not the expression of a triumphant general marching towards new victories. It's the expression of a man who already feels the weight of death on his shoulders!'

Even before he had reached his fiftieth year, Mahler had watched as, one by one, the most solid links binding him to life had been severed. He had lost his much-loved daughter when she was only four. He had had to leave the Vienna Hofoper to which he had devoted so much time and energy. He had discovered that his health, which he had formerly taken for granted, was undermined. And, most recently of all, he had been told by his wife, whose wit and beauty both fascinated and frightened him, that she no longer loved him and had found happiness in the arms of a lover. Admittedly, she had gone on to say that she would never abandon him, but he was nonetheless deeply wounded. Nevertheless, the heroic courage that he had always shown in the face of adversity would enable him to pursue his activities unabated, to complete the last movements of his Tenth Symphony in short score and to conduct three-quarters of the most strenuous season of concerts in New York that he had ever conducted in his life. But an implacable bacterial infection would still carry him off barely eight months later.

In short, the great ascent towards the light of the 'Chorus mysticus' contained no earthly message for Mahler. When he regretfully took his leave of Munich, he declined their invitation to return the following year to conduct his Ninth Symphony but promised to come back for the first performance of Das Lied von der Erde. In the end, his favourite disciple, Bruno Walter, conducted it in his stead. Mahler had been right to fear the fatal number: on the day when Das Lied von der Erde (his veritable Ninth Symphony) was launched upon its successful career, he had already been dead for several months, no doubt enjoying the heavenly bliss promised by the Eighth.