Mahler´s Eighth Symphony

Inspiration struck Gustav Mahler with incredible force in the summer of 1906 when he wrote the whole piece in a matter of months. His wife, Alma, later told how the Veni Creator Spiritus music of the first movement was composed before Mahler received the text, and yet fit like a glove. Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 brought together the Latin 9th century hymn and Goethe’s 1,000 years younger play Faust. It’s a pioneering and optimistic piece that, in the words of the composer, sounds ‘as if the whole universe began to sing’!