Review: 'The Eighth - Mahler and the World in 1910' by Stephen Johnson

Mark Austin

Is there any symphony that cries out for live performance more than Mahler’s 8th? Waves of sound emanating from hundreds of performers pin you to your seat; no recording can ever capture this. Stephen Johnson, in his new book The Eighth: Mahler and the World in 1910 describes the electric atmosphere at the first performance in Munich:


“The concert was billed to start at 7.30pm, but Mahler didn’t make his entrance onto the stage until exactly 7.45pm - a spontaneous decision, or a carefully planned one? Either way it had the desired effect, stoking up the tension to exactly the right level…The nervous, excited chatter built steadily during the quarter of an hour that followed the expected start time; and when the tiny figure of Gustav Mahler made his way effortfully through the close-compacted mass of performers, a thunderous cheer suddenly erupted throughout the hall.”


This was a genuinely historic moment, not dissimilar to the first Ring at Bayreuth in 1876.  The performance was attended by musicians (Reger, Richard Strauss, Webern, Zemlinsky, Dukas, Saint-Saëns, and Stokowski), writers (Thomas Mann, Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Stefan Zweig), royals, aristocracy and a vast intellectual and artistic elite. Many arrived in cars, creating unusual clouds of fumes. Modernity had arrived, yet this event was witnessed primarily by the old orders. Saint-Saëns, the musician whose life probably spans the most varied landscape in musical history (from just after Beethoven to a few years after the Rite of Spring) had also attended Wagner’s triumph in 1876.


Johnson’s impressive study of the personal, cultural, and political landscapes of Mahler’s greatest public triumph is eloquent and passionately argued. Filled with fascinating moments, it will speak to any singer, orchestral player, conductor, or listener who has come into contact with the titanic creative energy of the 8th Symphony. (All the more extraordinary to read that the composition may have been a desperate musical offering from Mahler to dissuade his wife Alma from leaving him for her young lover Walter Gropius). Even today, the pressures on a conductor mounting this piece are such that we all recognise composer Ethel Smyth’s experience of working with Mahler - “like handling a bomb cased in razor-edges”. 


Johnson is particularly convincing in his exploration of Mahler’s distinct identities: Austrian, Germanic, Jewish and perpetual outsider. This is Mahler as an icon familiar to our own age. It is useful to be reminded of the historical contexts behind his symphonies, which as he famously said to Sibelius, aimed to contain the world. Thomas Mann’s son (not brother, as wrongly stated), historian Golo Mann interpreted the profusion of ‘world’-compounds such as Weltpolitik in the German language as an expression of imperialism. In this context Mahler’s decision to compose a symphony with text from Goethe assumes new significance.


Alma is the hidden presence behind much of Mahler’s later music. Johnson avoids speculating about her affair with Gropius, but her powerful, self-obsessed personality is shown to stalk the composer throughout. It is well known that Alban Berg dedicated his haunting violin concerto to the memory of Alma’s daughter Manon, but perhaps not that the dying 18-year-old’s last words are recorded as: “You’ll get over it, Mummy, as you get over everything - I mean…as everyone gets over everything.”


Mahler chose a medieval hymn ‘Veni, creator spiritus’ for the first part of the symphony. Johnson’s exploration of this choice is rigorous and insightful. It is a greater challenge to elucidate the second part with its text by Goethe - the very final lines of Faust. To what extent does the rest of Goethe’s complex text, written over decades, have any bearing on the symphony? It would be impossible to take a definitive position on this. Very few performers read texts as the author intended and Johnson avoids delving into Faust in detail. Highlighting Mahler’s emphasis on “musical argument” rather than “adding nuances of meaning to Goethe’s words”, Johnson even remarks how at one point Mahler’s setting seems completely to ignore the mood of the verse.


Johnson’s narrative often takes the form of a series of open-ended questions, which may be frustrating for the reader seeking clear answers. But the tide of the argument flows in a convincing direction, and the refusal to force specific meaning on the music is true to Mahler’s own conception of his work. This speculative approach can nevertheless result in claims which may be outlandish, particularly when it comes to literary texts. Is Tadzio’s beckoning gesture at the end of Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice really a tribute to Mahler and his setting of Goethe’s “The Eternal Feminine/ Draws us on” or just a nod to Goethe’s text on its own terms?


Johnson’s book brings this music to life with rare vitality. Words about music are always inadequate, and yet, when we learn that Mahler himself confessed not to understand Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet (1908), it is clear that they have a vital, transformative role to play. With this work, Johnson inherits the mantle of the late Deryck Cooke and establishes himself as the foremost commentator on Mahler for the general reader.