THE SOURCE OF RELEASING LOVE

Beethoven was the first composer who – in the Finale of his Symphony No. 9 – dared to introduce the human voice into what had been up until then the purely instrumental “absolute music” of the symphonic genre, thus radically doing away with existing theories. For this heralded the appearance of the breakthrough from the instrumental to the vocal, from the “despairing state of mind” (Beethoven) to the utopia of the reconciliation of mankind. Other composers imitated him, in the process making use of the expanded forms in the direction of the symphonic cantata: Mendelssohn with his Songs of Praise and Liszt with his Faust Symphony, to mention just two important works. Gustav Mahler also put his money on the human voice in his Symphony No. 2 (Resurrection Symphony); and in his Symphonies Nos. 3 and 4, it also played a major role, supplying as it did additional significance to the moment. After his purely instrumental Symphonies Nos.
5 – 7, Mahler yet again made a powerful return in his Symphony No. 8 to the vocally conceived symphony.

Mahler himself described his Symphony No. 8 in E flat as his crowning work, an assessment about which the numerous critics, both of that time and of the present day, were and are not particularly happy. Thus moaned the philosopher Adorno a few decades ago: “Everything is balanced on the edge of the knife, the undiminished utopia and the relapse into the magnificently decorative”; and the music historian Michael Querbach criticized the “… hackneyed late-Romantic means of expression, which could then be pulled out like registers. The suggestive surface of the music has become flimsy in places, despite the bulk of the sound; you can hear Mahler’s efforts of will, instead of ‘other-worldly’ objectivity one often hears just persuasive skills”. And truly, the affirmative colossus of the Symphony No. 8 represents an erratic ‘block’ in Mahler’s symphonic oeuvre, which otherwise is distinguished by the inner ‘brokenness’, the fragmentary and the multi-layering of the purely instrumental compositions. Is it anyway possible to term the Symphony No.8 a “modern” work at the beginning of the 20th century, what with its not just proverbial weight and monstrous size? As so often, such provoking questions can best be answered by concentrating on the object of discussion, i.e. on the text and music. Mahler, who was considered to be decidedly scrupulous both as conductor and composer, had good reason to compose the Eighth just as it appears to us in its present form. In a letter to Willem Mengelberg dating from August 1906, he wrote the following: “Today I completed my Eighth – it is the biggest composition that I have written so far. And so strange both in content and form, that it is really not possible to write about it. Just imagine that the universe should start to resound and to make its own music. These are no longer human voices, but planets and suns which are revolving …”. The main idea of its content – and this does not signify any programme lurking within the music! – is manifested through the choice and composition of the highly varying texts. He based the first movement of the two-movement work on the Latin Whitsun hymn dating from the early middle ages “Veni, creator spiritus” (Come, creator spirit) by Hrabanus Maurus; i.e. based on an invocation of the Holy Spirit, to which he opposes the mysterious final scene from Goethe’s Faust (Part Two) in the second movement. Mahler saw releasing love as spiritual source in both building stones of the text, a “message of love in loveless times”. (Whether this is a sustaining interpretation in the philosophical sense of the word, remains to be seen; however, this is unimportant as far as the total conception of the work is concerned.)

At first glance, the form of the work might remind one more of a cantata than a symphony. However, if one takes a closer look, it becomes clear that both movements have been constructed in complete accordance with symphonic criteria. And thus the rather more concise first movement can be interpreted as a sonata movement, whereas the second movement with its numerous loans and resumptions of themes can be as interpreted as an Adagio, Scherzo and Finale, which would indicate a four-movement entity. The work is introduced by the striking “Veni creator” theme, which both choirs toss around between them. The lyrical second theme “Imple superna gratia” is interpreted by the soloists. In the instrumental introduction of the development, the themes are confronted with one another, after which the movement culminates in an enormous double fugue. Again, the “Veni, creator spiritus” introduces the recapitulation; in the Coda the boys’ choir celebrates the Trinity in song. The second movement is also based on the sonata form, which to be sure is not easy to comprehend in the extensively taut structure. Many thematic links to the first movement can be discerned – up until the glorified resumption of the “Veni, creator spiritus”, which not only closes the circle as far as the music is concerned, but also helps the work to achieve the magnificent hymnal effects of the Finale.

The première of the Symphony No.8 turned out to be a major triumph for Mahler. It took place in Munich on September 12, 1910, and was announced without Mahler’s knowledge by the concert promoter as the “Symphony of a Thousand”, due to the large number of artists collaborating in the performance. Thomas Mann, who had been present at the event, afterwards stated that Mahler was the composer, “who embodies the most genuine and holy artistic will of our times, as far as I can make out.”