Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 12, 2010

The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest choral works in the classical concert repertory. Mahler himself conducted its first performance, in Munich on 12 September 1910. Apart from the unusual scale of the work, its architecture is unconventional; instead of the standard four-movement symphonic framework, the piece is in two long sections or parts. The first is based on the Latin text of a ninth-century Christian hymn for Pentecost, Veni creator spiritus ("Come, Creator Spirit"); Part II is a setting of the words from the closing scene of Goethe's Faust. The two parts are related by the shared idea, expressed musically, of redemption through the power of love. Renouncing the pessimism that had marked much of his earlier music, Mahler offered the Eighth as an expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit. After a period during which performances were rare, from the mid-20th century onwards the symphony has been heard regularly in concert halls all over the world, and has been recorded many times. Modern critics have expressed divided opinions on the work; some find its optimism unconvincing and consider it inferior to Mahler's other symphonies, while others compare it to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony as a defining human statement for its century. (more...)

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