Mahler's Muse

Mahler’s choice of text for the second—and longest—portion of the Eighth Symphony is from a completely different sphere than the first half: the last scene from the second part of Goethe’s Faust. Many people know the Faust story primarily from Gounod’s very popular opera, which centers around a medieval scholar who sells his soul to Mephistopheles in exchange for knowledge and power but ultimately destroys the object of his greatest desire, the maiden Marguerite (or Gretchen, as she is called by Goethe), who ultimately wins salvation at the end.

But Goethe’s full Faust epic includes much that is of a very different character. To begin with, in Goethe’s version, God allows Mephistopheles to attempt to lead Faust astray, similar to the temptations of Job, knowing that ultimately He will prevail. After Gretchen’s death, Faust goes on to a career at the court of the emperor, who wishes Faust to conjure the spirit of Helen of Troy, with whom Faust himself falls in love, marries and has a child, a son who later dies while attempting to fly. Faust later concocts an ambitious plan to fill in portions of the ocean to create new land for a utopian society, but before his plans can be executed, Mephistopheles claims his soul and calls upon the denizens of Hell to carry Faust away.

But God again foils Mephistopheles’ plans for Faust, and sends angels to distract the devil while others lead Faust’s soul away to give him a chance to win back his salvation. In the final scene, which is the source of the second portion of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, various religious hermits, angels and spiritual beings discourse on heavenly redemption. The mood here is not joyful and ecstatic as it was at the start of the symphony; now we are in a shadowy and tentative world, one of uncertainty and doubt, which Mahler evokes quite effectively.

Three penitent women appeal to the Blessed Virgin, the Mater Gloriosa, to pardon the soul of one woman, referred to as Una Poenitentium, whose name in life was Gretchen. Gretchen was certainly in dire need of forgiveness; not only did she bear a child out of wedlock to Faust, but she was responsible, if only inadvertently, for her own mother’s death, and in a crazed state murdered her own child. There aren’t many sins more serious than that.

But Gretchen does win forgiveness, and it is she who leads Faust on to glory as well. Thus the story incorporates the great dichotomy of sin versus salvation, of the male or physical creative force versus the female spiritual creativity as exemplified by the Mater Gloriosa. As the Mystic Chorus sings at the end, “Here the indescribable is accomplished; the eternal feminine draws us heavenward.” This theme of redemption through the love of a woman, of course, is one of the prime features of Wagner’s music-dramas that meant so much to Mahler throughout his life. (The final scene of Faust also bears striking similarity to Mozart’s The Magic Flute, at the end of which Tamino is lead through the trials of fire and water by Pamina, the two of them being initiated into Sarastro’s solar realm and marking the start of a new golden age.)

The Gretchen to Mahler’s Faust, the Pamina to his Tamino, was Alma Schindler, whom he had met in 1901, when he was 41 and she was only 20. She was a remarkable woman, physically beautiful, intelligent and talented—she at one time aspired to being a composer herself—but her biggest interest seemed to be famous and talented men. Before meeting Mahler, she had a relationship with her music teacher, Alexander Zemlinsky, and had fascinated the artist Gustav Klimt (two of his paintings were based on her image). After Mahler’s death, she had a tempestuous three-year affair with the artist Oskar Kokoschka; after she terminated the relationship, he created a life-size doll of her, which he would take with him to the theater or restaurants. [That bizarre episode inspired a musical by Scott Frankel and Michael Korie called Doll, which was presented in a 2003 Ravinia workshop production by the participants in the music theater program of the Steans Institute for Young Artists.] Alma later married the famous architect Walter Gropius, a founder of the famous Bauhaus school of design, and subsequently divorced him to marry the writer Franz Werfel.

As for her relationship with Mahler, we know that it was seriously strained at times; she recorded that he insisted she give up her own interest in composition once they were married. In 1910, having learned of Alma’s affair with Walter Gropius, Mahler became consumed by anxiety that she was about to leave him and sought counseling from none other than Sigmund Freud. Having second—and even third and fourth—thoughts about the appointment, Mahler actually cancelled it three times before he met with the famous psychoanalyst in August at a spa in Leyden.

The two living legends are reported to have walked and talked for four hours. In a 1934 letter to Theodor Reik, Freud wrote, “I analyzed Mahler for an afternoon in the year 1910 in Leyden. If I may believe reports, I achieved much with him at that time. The visit appeared necessary for him, because his wife at that time rebelled against the fact that he withdrew his libido from her. In highly interesting expeditions with him through his life history, we discovered his personal conditions for love, especially in his Holy Mary complex [mother fixation—or should we say Mater Gloriosa fixation?]. I had plenty of opportunity to admire the capability of the psychological understanding of this man of genius. No light fell at this time on the symptomatic façade of his obsessional neurosis. It was as if you were to dig a single shaft through a mysterious building.”

Mahler apparently found the experience extremely helpful, giving him insight into his own creative processes and helping him to rediscover the depth of his love for Alma. The day after his breakthrough meeting with Freud, Mahler sent a telegram to Alma, declaring, “I’m filled with joy. Interesting conversation... ” Perhaps it is not merely some cosmic coincidence that less than three weeks later Mahler went to Munich to lead the triumphant premiere of his “Symphony of a Thousand,” that monumental celebration of the eternal feminine.

Read the next section

Introduction | Who's A-Freud of Alma Mahler | The Rediscovery of Mahler
Mahler and the Movies | Mortality and Immortality