Symphony No. 8 (Mahler) Symphony No. 8 (Mahler) The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. Because it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is normally presented with far fewer than a thousand performers and the composer did not sanction that name. The work was composed in a single inspired burst, at Maiernigg in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. The last of Mahler's works that was premiered in his lifetime, the symphony was a critical and
A Pastoral Symphony of peace. Like many of the composer's works, the "Pastoral Symphony" is not programmatic, but its spirit is very evocative. None of the movements are particularly fast or upbeat (the composer himself described it as "four movements, all of them slow"), but there are isolated extroverted sections. It was first performed in London on 16 January 1922, with Adrian Boult conducting. The symphony was dismissed by Constant Lambert, who wrote that its "creation of a particular type of grey, reflective, English-landscape mood has outweighed the exigencies of symphonic form". Peter Warlock's often-quoted comment that "it is all just a little