The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. The work was composed in a single inspired burst at his Maiernigg villa in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. Part I is based on the Latin text of a 9th-century Christian hymn for Pentecost, Veni creator spiritus, and Part II is a setting of the words from the closing scene of Goethe’s Faust. The symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted the Munich Philharmonic in its first performance, in Munich, on 12 September 1910.
About Symphony No. 8 (Mahler) in brief
The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. The work was composed in a single inspired burst at his Maiernigg villa in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. The structure of the work is unconventional; instead of the normal framework of several movements, the piece is in two parts. Part I is based on the Latin text of a 9th-century Christian hymn for Pentecost, Veni creator spiritus, and Part II is a setting of the words from the closing scene of Goethe’s Faust. The symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted the Munich Philharmonic in its first performance, in Munich, on 12 September 1910. 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. It has also been compared—by Deryck Cooke—to Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony no. 9 as a defining human statement for its century. The Eighth, marking the end of the middle period, returns to a combination of orchestra and voice in a symphonic context. 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. 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. Until 1901, Mahler’s compositions had been heavily influenced by the German folk-poem collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn, which he had first encountered around 1887. During this period Mahler produced three purely instrumental symphony. The composer’s handwriting from June 1906 may not show that the work that would become his Eighth Symphony would be written for the first day of June 1906. Mahler was haunted by the spectre of failing inspiration, however, and on that day he wrote the Eighth Symphony for the very first time. He intended to spend time revising the draft manuscript of his Seventh Symphony in June 1906 with the idea for an idea for a new orchestration until an new idea for the Eighth came to him. The Symphony was the last work that was premiered in his lifetime, the last of the works that Mahler wrote before his death in 1929. The last of Mahlers works that was premiered in his life was the Symphony in D major, which was premiered by the Vienna Philharmonia in September 1929.
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