Myth, Metaphysics and Cosmic Drama: The Legacy of Faust in Lipiner's Hippolytos and Mahler's Eighth Symphony

Abstract

����� ��� Many myths surround the composition of Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. The composer established a number of these legends himself, as his wife Alma, the conductor Bruno Walter, and the music journalist Richard Specht all recall Mahler telling of his sudden inspiration in the summer of 1906 to set the medieval hymn Veni Creator Spiritus to music. 2 Shortly afterward he began composing a setting of the final scene of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s Faust II, and what emerged eight weeks later was a two-part vocalsymphonic masterpiece pairing the two musical settings, which he called “das Gro ¨ste, was ich bis jetzt gemacht” (GMB 335). Since its highly successful premiere on 12 September 1910 in Munich, this work, the story of its genesis, and the ideas behind it have inspired a cult-like fascination, sparking questions about why the composer would choose to pair Goethe’s secular drama with a Christian hymn. As is often the case when attempting to interpret the extramusical ideas in Mahler’s works, his own words on the subject via correspondence and anecdotes to friends are captivating sources, yet they also tend to be misleading. He frequently revised his ideas, gave contradictory explanations, or, as in the case of the famous letters to Alma from 1909, he tells a version of the story years later that may or may not correspond with what he was actually thinking while composing the work. Yet at the same time, these sources are difficult to ignore because they paint an intriguing picture of this artist, his relationship to his work, and the intricate web of philosophical and literary influences that shaped the world in which he lived. Thus, to understand Mahler’s interpretation of Faust and to draw conclusions about the meaning of Goethe’s work in the composer’s time, one must look to another story behind the Eighth Symphony, one that begins long before that fateful burst of creative energy in the summer of 1906. Indeed, one must turn to Mahler’s friend and mentor, the poet Siegfried Lipiner. Lipiner has been all but forgotten in German literary history today, yet he was acknowledged as a gifted poet and scholar in his time, and is consid