Like everything else in nature, music is a becoming, and it becomes its full self, when its sounds and laws are used by intelligent man for the production of harmony, and so made the vehicle of emotion and thought.
You are the music while the music lasts.
The Ninth Symphony is the last work, that Mahler has finished.
Like „Das Lied von der Erde”, Mahler’s Ninth Symphony endeavors to obtain a new independence of the several voices, which is reflected in the instrumentation and causes an broken, ascetic orchestral sound.
The first movement starts with a basic motif from „Das Lied von der Erde”. A multitude of passages of previous works is worked up in the symphony (for instance themes from the fourth movement of the Third Symphony, the second movement of the Fifth, the first lied of „Kindertotenlieder”) numerous quotations or reminiscences of motifs by Beethoven and Bruckner do also appear.
In the sketch of the partition, there are informative autographic entries, which show clearly that Mahler associates memories and farewell thoughts with this work. In the first movement, he noted the exclamations: „O youth! Vanished! O love! Scattered!” and „Farewell! Farewell!”
The Eight Symphony , also called „Die Symphonie der Tausend”, reckons with four-part double choir, boys’ choir eight solo voices and full orchestra.
After having finished the composition, he wrote: „… It is the greatest thing that I have ever made. And so peculiar in content and form, that I can’t write about it. Imagine, that the universe begins to sound. No more human voices, but planets and suns are revolving.”
The first part is based on the hymn „Veni creator spiritus” by archbishop Hrabanus Maurus of Mainz (around 780-856). In the second part he set the final scene from Goethe’s Faust II to music.
The considered the Eight as his principal work, his message to mankind.
