Mahler had been convinced from the start of the work's significance; in renouncing the pessimism that had marked much of his music, he offered the Eighth as an expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit.

While recognising its wide popularity, modern critics have divided opinions on the work; Theodor W. Adorno, Robert Simpson, and Jonathan Carr found its optimism unconvincing, and considered it artistically and musically inferior to Mahler's other symphonies.

7 were written, all as purely instrumental works, portrayed by Mahler scholar Deryck Cooke as "more stern and forthright ..., more tautly symphonic, with a new granite-like hardness of orchestration".

[5] Mahler arrived at Maiernigg in June 1906 with the draft manuscript of his Seventh Symphony; he intended to spend time revising the orchestration until an idea for a new work should strike.

[7][9] Two notes in Mahler's handwriting dating from June 1906 show that early schemes for the work, which he may not at first have intended as a fully choral symphony, were based on a four-movement structure in which two "hymns" surround an instrumental core.

He soon replaced the last three movements with a single section, essentially a dramatic cantata, based on the closing scenes of Goethe's Faust, the depiction of an ideal of redemption through eternal womanhood (das Ewige-Weibliche).

'"[21] For the premiere, fixed for 12 September, Gutmann had hired the newly built Neue Musik-Festhalle, in the Munich International Exhibition grounds near Theresienhöhe (now a branch of the Deutsches Museum).

[20][n 4] Among the many distinguished figures present at the sold-out premiere were the composers Richard Strauss, Camille Saint-Saëns and Anton Webern; the writers Thomas Mann and Arthur Schnitzler; and the leading theatre director of the day, Max Reinhardt.

[22] However, the Munich premiere of the Eighth Symphony was an unqualified triumph;[25] as the final chords died away there was a short pause before a huge outbreak of applause which lasted for twenty minutes.

[22] Back at his hotel Mahler received a letter from Thomas Mann, which referred to the composer as "the man who, as I believe, expresses the art of our time in its profoundest and most sacred form".

[35][36] The occasion was a great success; the symphony was played several more times in Philadelphia before the orchestra and choruses travelled to New York, for a series of equally well-received performances at the Metropolitan Opera House.

[38] The music critic Samuel Langford, who attended the occasion, commented that "we do not leave Amsterdam greatly envying the diet of Mahler first and every other composer afterward, to which Mengelberg is training the music-lovers of that city.

"[39] The Austrian music historian Oscar Bie, while impressed with the festival as a whole, wrote subsequently that the Eighth was "stronger in effect than in significance, and purer in its voices than in emotion".

In particular, the first notes of the Veni creator theme — — dominate the climaxes to each part;[51] at the symphony's culmination, Goethe's glorification of "Eternal Womanhood" is set in the form of a religious chorale.

[54] The musicologist Ortrun Landmann has suggested that the formal scheme for Part II, after the orchestral introduction, is a sonata plan without the recapitulation, consisting of exposition, development and conclusion.

[45][56] After their first declamatory statement the two choirs engage in a sung dialogue, which ends with a short transition to an extended lyrical passage, the plea "Imple superna gratia" ("Fill with divine grace").

[56] In the next section, "Infirma nostri corporis / virtute firmans perpeti" ("Our weak frames fortify with thine eternal strength"), the tonic key of E♭ major returns with a variation of the opening theme.

[45] At the end of this episode another transition precedes the "unforgettable surge in E major",[56] in which the entire body of choral forces declaims "Accende lumen sensibus" ("Illuminate our senses").

A quieter passage of recapitulation leads to an orchestral coda before the children's chorus announces the doxology Gloria sit Patri Domino ("Glory be to God the Father").

Thereafter the music moves swiftly and powerfully to its climax, in which an offstage brass ensemble bursts forth with the "Accende" theme while the main orchestra and choruses end on a triumphant rising scale.

Landmann's proposed sonata structure for the movement is based on a division, after an orchestral prelude, into five sections which he identifies musically as an exposition, three development episodes, and a finale.

The exposition begins in near-silence; the scene depicted is that of a rocky, wooded mountainside, the dwelling place of anchorites whose utterances are heard in an atmospheric chorus complete with whispers and echoes.

[30][45] A solemn baritone solo, the voice of Pater Ecstaticus, ends warmly as the key changes to the major when the trumpets sound the "Accende" theme from Part I.

[58] The mood lightens with the entry of the angels and blessed boys (women's and children's choruses) bearing the soul of Faust; the music here is perhaps a relic of the "Christmas Games" scherzo envisioned in the abortive four-movement draft plan.

[58] The first phase of development begins as a women's chorus of the younger angels invoke a "happy company of blessed children"[n 7] who must bear Faust's soul heavenwards.

The blessed boys receive the soul gladly; their voices are joined by Doctor Marianus (tenor), who accompanies their chorus before breaking into a rapturous E major paean to the Mater Gloriosa, "Queen and ruler of the world!".

As the aria ends, the male voices in the chorus echo the soloist's words to an orchestral background of viola tremolos, in a passage described by La Grange as "emotionally irresistible".

[58] In the second part of the development, the entry of the Mater Gloriosa is signalled in E major by a sustained harmonium chord, with harp arpeggios played over a pianissimo violin melody which La Grange labels the "love" theme.

[58] Thereafter the key changes frequently as a chorus of penitent women petition the Mater for a hearing; this is followed by the solo entreaties of Magna Peccatrix, Mulier Samaritana and Maria Aegyptiaca.

A short orchestral passage follows, scored for an eccentric chamber group consisting of piccolo, flute, clarinet, harmonium, celesta, piano, harps and a string quartet.