Author: Johnson, Stephen
Individual composers & musicians, specific bands & groups
Published on 4 February 2021 by Faber & Faber in the United Kingdom.
Paperback | 320 pages
129 x 198 x 29 | 250g
'Thrilling.' John Banville, GuardianThe Eighth Symphony was going to be different from anything Mahler had ever done before: it would speak in different tones, and of a different kind of experience. The world premiere in Munich in the summer of 1910 was the artistic breakthrough for which the composer had yearned all his adult life. Stephen Johnson recounts the symphony's far-reaching effect on composers, conductors and writers of the time. Placing Mahler within his world, The Eighth reassesses Mahler's work in the context of the prevailing thought of his age, but also against the backdrop of that tumultuous summer, when Mahler worked desperately on his Tenth Symphony, was betrayed by his wife, and consulted Sigmund Freud. It is a story like no other.