Sometimes, the true meaning of a work of art comes into sharper focus with the passage of time. In retrospect, Gustav Mahler’s grandiose Symphony No. 8 can be viewed as a desperate cry for personal redemption.  The Eighth is a mammoth work, calling for an enlarged orchestra, multiple choruses and vocal soloists. He had written it in a flash in 1906, and for the debut in 1910 it quickly earned the label “Symphony of a Thousand.” Despite his objections, the name fit, since it called for 858 singers and 171 instrumentalists,...  Sometimes, the true meaning of a work of art comes into sharper focus with the passage of time. In retrospect, Gustav Mahler ’s grandiose Symphony No. 8 can be viewed as a desperate cry for personal redemption.  The Eighth is a mammoth work, calling for an enlarged orchestra, multiple choruses and vocal soloists. He had written it in a flash in 1906, and for the debut in 1910 it quickly earned the label “Symphony of a Thousand.” Despite his objections, the name fit, since it called for 858 singers and 171 instrumentalists, three choirs and eight vocal soloists. On Feb. 24 and 25 there will be a rare opportunity to experience the work, when it will be performed in New York at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, under the direction of the brilliant Kent Tritle.  The symphony’s premiere was intended to be Mahler’s last conducting appearance in Europe, and he had hopes of a great triumph. “I have never written anything like it,” he told music historian Richard Specht. It was, he said, “something in comparison with which all the rest of my works are no more than introductions.”  Beethoven ’s innovation in his Ninth Symphony of incorporating singers with instrumental performers was now to take a giant leap forward with an entire symphonic work in that mode. The performing forces would be breaking new ground in sheer volume. And the underlying textual material would boldly merge seemingly disparate elements, thrusting a stirring ninth-century Christian hymn (“Veni creator spiritus”—“Come, Holy Ghost, Creator, Come!”), bedecked in masterly compositional splendor, onto the end of Göethe’s “ Faust ”—philosophically linking an early Christian belief in the power of the holy spirit to Göethe’s vision of salvation through eternal womanhood. In many ways it was Mahler’s deeply personal cry from the heart, a double plea—to both the woman in his life and the Christian world at large.  Preparations for the performance did not go well. The piece required Munich’s chorus (which included 350 children) to add large groups from Vienna and Leipzig. Eight vocal soloists were rounded up from Munich, Vienna, Frankfurt, Hamburg, Berlin and Wiesbaden. Mahler was concerned that the singers would not be able to learn their parts in time. He wrote to Bruno Walter, his friend and assistant at the Vienna Hofoper that he was prepared to “ruthlessly cancel the whole thing.”  Mahler’s reputation was already formidable—even his most severe critics must have recognized that he was the best conductor of the day. But he had been under both professional and personal assault on a number of fronts. And he was searching for relief.  That meant first, resolving deep divisions with his very unhappy wife, Alma, who had checked into a sanitarium and promptly started an affair with a young architect named Walter Gropius. Mahler famously sought help from Sigmund Freud.  The composer’s other source of anguish was the anti-Semitism that constantly gnawed at his doorstep. Even though Mahler converted to Christianity, he was often subject to critical attacks like the one in 1909 by musicologist Rudolf Louis that called Mahler’s music repulsive “because it acts Jewish” and reduces itself to a “frank gratification of common seamstress-like sentimentality.”  Might his new symphony help him overcome these personal and professional alienations? Though he lived under Wagner ’s shadow and could indeed write intensely sentimental music forged into disjointed mash-ups, Mahler was a brilliant harmonist whose slithering, sensuous lines explored the nether regions of the musical universe, producing meltingly aching phrases that spoke of yearning as almost no one else could. And the Eighth Symphony, an epic musical journey, is filled with enormous treasures.  From the opening, the music stirs: A forceful statement of the hymn is bolstered by the presence of a majestic organ, with its huge resonance creating a staggering sound. It’s a theme that returns again and again to mark transitional points in the drama. Choruses enter, punctuated by cascading strings and brass, all in complex counterpoint. Expressions of heavenly bliss alternate with small instrumental combinations producing playful contrasts of timbre. Happy children’s voices and songs of praise give way to dramatic arias. There are transitions that draw you closer, and fanfares that blast you in your seat—joyful outbursts and dark laments.  As the Göethe section begins, the piece becomes mournful, blossoming into a gorgeous love theme before giving rise to long episodes of passionate drama, in a rich tapestry for instruments and voices. The music is ever changing—celebratory, breathless, or solemn as the story unfolds. The work draws to a close touching on the materials and spirit that had come before, ending with moments of hushed beauty and soaring melody.  And the “Symphony of a Thousand” did become the immediate success for which Mahler had hoped. But within a year of its performance he was dead at age 50.  —Mr. Isacoff’s most recent book is “A Natural History of the Piano” (Knopf/Vintage).
Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 8 came to be known as the ‘Symphony of a Thousand’ because of the vast numbers required to perform it.