The texts of Mahler’s 8th Symphony can be problematic. How do the two parts fit together? And can one take Part II at all seriously in an age when gender differences are played down?
A further potential problem with Mahler’s 8th, as with Haydn’s Creation, is relentless positivity. Where can there be a bit of darkness to introduce contrast? Mahler achieves this at various points: the jagged vocal lines at the prayer to dispel enemies in Part I, the scene-setting opening of Part II amid bleak rocky cliffs (I am writing this in sight of similar landscapes in SW France), and a later passage where angels describe the effort required to carry Faust ‘Uns bleibt ein Erdenrest’. This last uses a minor-key version of the opening theme (also heard in Part I), and took a lot of rehearsing, mainly in order to ensure correct balancing of the many different vocal parts; but I think the words are a clue to how the two parts fit together.
If I understand this passage rightly, it explains how hard it is to separate what is spiritual in Faust from what is earthly, something that can only be done by everlasting love. It’s couched in the scientific language Goethe sometimes turns to – there can’t be many works in the classical canon that mention asbestos. So one could see message of Part II as ‘free the spirit’, which leads us straight back to Part I’s Pentecost message.
I don’t claim to understand Goethe‘s Faust part 2, or (as I’ve said before) Mahler, but this seems to join the two parts together nicely, and the more I sing this work, the more musical links I find between the part too (it all seems ultimately to be built out of fourths).