Symphony No.8 in E flat major (“Symphony of a Thousand”) — Gustav Mahler

Part I Hymnus: Veni, creator spiritus (duration 23’ approx)

Part II Final scene from Faust (duration 60’ approx)

Mahler was not only a great opera conductor but also a great opera director. In his ten years at the Vienna Opera he collaborated with Alfred Roller in revolutionising the art of stage design, harmonising lighting effects with the music and - like Wieland Wagner at Bayreuth many years later - clearing the stage of conventional clutter. He might have been a great opera composer too. But in his annual three-months of summer leave in the country he devoted himself unsparingly to his great series of symphonies, partly because they were a private refuge from opera-house intrigue but mainly because his creative ambitions extended far beyond mere opera. The letter he wrote to Willem Mengelberg about his Eighth Symphony, shortly after he had completed it in the summer of 1906, gives some idea of his cosmic musical vision: “Imagine the universe beginning to ring and resound. It is no longer human voices, it is planets and suns revolving.”

Even so, although the Eighth is undeniably a symphony, it is strongly operatic, if with prominent motet and oratorio characteristics too. If Mahler had written an opera in his Vienna period it would have had to be something on the impossible scale of Goethe’s Faust - not just Faust Part I, to which Gounod and his librettists wisely restricted themselves, but also the visionary Faust Part II. To make a drastic oversimplification of a work which occupied Goethe for over thirty years, Part II presents Faust’s achievement of maturity, wisdom and ultimately his salvation although, according to the small print of his contract with Mephistopheles, his soul should have gone to the devil. The last scene of Faust Part II represents the transfiguration of Faust, redeemed by love and by his own efforts.

Inspired, visually, by the iconography of medieval allegorical paintings and, symbolically, by the imagery of the early Christian mystics, this last scene represents the greatest challenge a composer could undertake.

This was the challenge that Mahler accepted. Strangely enough, however, as he began work on the Eighth Symphony in his hut at Maiernigg in June 1906, it was not his original intention. If it had been he would surely have prefaced it, like Schumann in his Scenes from Faust oratorio and Liszt in his Faust Symphony, with some account of Faust’s pact with Mephistopheles and his seduction and abandonment of Gretchen. In fact he began with a choral setting of the 9th-century Pentecostal hymn Veni, creator spiritus. The extraordinary and structurally dangerous idea of linking that with a setting of a text written a thousand years later and in a different language seems to have alarmed even the composer himself. Certainly, no other Mahler symphony insists so firmly and so repeatedly on its tonic key (E flat major in this case) and on such an elaborate system of thematic cross-references between the movements. Obviously in a sustained thrill of inspiration, however, the whole work was completed in only eight weeks - which, including interruptions to conduct a Mozart festival in Salzburg, is scarcely credible with a score of such size and such complexity in every structural and textural dimension.

The symphony that Mahler regarded as his greatest ever - “my earlier symphonies are only preludes to this one” - remained unheard for four years. The first performance took place, after many misgivings on the composer’s part, on 12 October 1910 in the specially constructed Musikfesthalle at the Munich Exhibition. It had already been publicised as the “Symphony of a Thousand” by Emil Gutman, who was responsible for the whole enterprise and who had in fact assembled 858 singers and 171 instrumentalists. There were two mixed choruses, a boy’s choir, eight vocal soloists, and an enormous orchestra including organ, harmonium, piano, five harps and a separate brass ensemble. Mahler, true to his super-operatic vision, called on Roller, his Vienna stage-designer, to group his performing forces in satisfying architectural shapes. The appropriate (semi-dimmed) level of lighting was carefully calculated. The performance - conducted by the composer himself, of course - was the greatest success in Mahler’s career.

Part I

Those members of the first audience who knew Mahler’s earlier symphonies must have been immediately aware of the immensity of the expressive ambition behind the Eighth. He had never before called upon the human voice in the first movement of a symphony. In this one, after no more than an E flat major chord on the organ, the two choruses proclaim together the first words of the Latin hymn. Again, those who knew the other symphonies would have understood why Mahler makes such a thorough point of impressing on the consciousness the thematic features of this unforgettable choral entry - the rising seventh between the two cries of Veni, the dotted rhythm between Veni and creator and on the word spiritus, all of them echoed by four trombones and trumpets. They are clearly destined for a long-term structural function.

While it might sound as if inspired by a great baroque motet or oratorio, this is the beginning of the first movement of a symphony. It has a first subject, consisting above all of the material of the opening bars but also of several of other thematic idea - including a second Veni theme for the chorus, a melody introduced by a solo soprano at Imple superna gratia and another for the soloists at Paraclitus diceris. The movement also has a second group of themes, beginning at the point where the bass opens the soloists’ prayer Infirma nostri corporis. The most arresting second-subject theme is introduced in E major - a key representing aspiration rather than fulfilment - in a massive fortissimo unison of all the soloists, the boys’ choir, and the two choruses on the words Accende lumen sensibus. The downward interval, the one-beat rest, the stepwise climb upwards and the dotted rhythm on sensibus are of great importance later.

The development section consists mainly of a vast double fugue on the two Veni themes from the first subject. The fugue begins with the pervasive dotted rhythm at Praevio in the tenors and basses of the second chorus and eventually leads into a climactic passage in which the choral voices firmly establish the relationship between the two main themes - the Accende and the first Veni. Then at last the opening lines Veni creator spiritus make their reappearance in E flat major. Before the Gloria coda, the other main themes are also recalled in the tonic - with the deliberate and significant exception of the great Accende theme, which is denied its consummation at this still early stage.

Part II

The second part is, both poetically and musically, the fulfilment of the first. The love and light so fervently prayed for in Part I are granted here to Faust on behalf of all humanity. The vision represented by the Accende theme in E major is to be firmly secured in E flat major. But there is far more to it than that. Just as Part I was a hymn and at the same time the first movement of a symphony, Part II is a semi-operatic setting of the last scene from Goethe’s Faust and at the same time the slow-movement, scherzo and finale of the same symphony. Although this view of the construction of Part II has been discredited as at best “misleading” and at worst “foolish,” it is actually more helpful in the context of a programme note than any more complex analysis. It is also more likely to have been in the mind of a composer who from the start had intended to follow his setting of Veni, creator spiritus with a slow movement, a scherzo and a finale, though separately rather than merged seamlesssly into what was to be his longest unbroken construction.

(“slow movement”)

In the long E flat minor orchestral prelude with its sustained E flats on first violins, the two themes - the one plucked by the strings and the other sung by woodwind - are basically the same. They are both variants of the Accende theme, except that the woodwind version incorporates the dotted rhythms of the first Veni theme. Once the chorus of Anchorites has set the scene, the second chorus acting as an echo to the first, this slow-movement section introduces the first of Goethe’s allegorical figures. Pater Ecstaticus hovers in the air, elevated by the intense experience of love, of which he sings to a heightened version of the Accende theme in E flat major. Pater Profundus, in his lower earthbound position, also feels the power of divine love - outlining a new motif on the words allmächtige Liebe - and passionately yearns to meet it, in E flat major again and very much in the same spirit as that of the Veni creator spiritus.

(“scherzo and trio”)

The transition to the scherzo section occurs with the entry of the choir of angels (female voices from both choruses) bearing the immortal remains of Faust wrested from the clutches of Mephistopheles. Throughout the scherzo section and its long trio equivalent little is heard of men’s voices. The Holy boys are represented by the treble choir, the Younger Angels by female voices in the fist chorus, the More Perfect Angels by female voices and tenors too in the second chorus - this last group singing of the love which alone can purify the soul and quoting directly from the Infirma nostri corporis music of Part I. The major male-voice contribution to the scherzo section is that of Doctor Marianus, the mystic worshipper of the Virgin Mary. His and the female chorus’s prayers invoke the Virgin, the Mater Gloriosa, whose presence is suggested by a lovely E major melody of lasting importance on first violins with simple arpeggio accompaniment on the harp.

This lyrical and extended trio section of the scherzo is also the central episode of Part II. Love, symbolised by the intervention on Faust’s behalf by a host of penitent women, purifies Faust’s soul. There is a chorus of penitents, including the Gretchen whom Faust had seduced and abandoned, and there are solos from the three biblical figures Magna Peccatrix (Mary Magdelen), the Samaritan woman and the Egyptian Mary. At the point where the three solo voices join in a prayer to the Virgin, Mahler has already re-introduced the scherzo material and begun his transition to the finale. As the solo from Gretchen and the observations of the Holy Boys indicate, and the climactic utterance of Mater Gloriosa confirms, Faust is received into “higher spheres.”

(“finale”)

During Gretchen’s aria there was a direct reference back to the music associated with Imple superna gratia in Part I. The Veni and Accende themes were also recalled during the transition. Now, as Doctor Marianus and the choral voices call upon us to look upwards, the key briefly changes from E flat to the visionary E major and changes back to E flat to secure the vision a reality. The Accende theme echoes through the orchestra and the music of higher spheres is expressed in the mingled colours of harmonium, celesta, piano and harps. Very quietly the Mystic Chorus gives voice to Goethe’s ideal of eternity. As they once more proclaim the power of love, “the eternal feminine,” both the tempo and the dynamic level rise. There is one last massive declaration of faith from all voices in a final E flat major glorification of the Accende theme. The orchestra’s triumphant variation on the first Veni theme affirms that the prayer of Part I has been fulfilled.