Gustav Mahler’s Eighth Symphony and Max Reinhardt’s Concept of Massenregie

Two weeks after the premiere of Mahler’s Eighth Symphony, Max Reinhardt produced Hofmannsthal’s adaption of Sophocles’ King Ödipus (in some respects an aesthetic counterpart to Mahler’s Symphony) in the very same ‘Musikfesthalle’. The byname Symphony of a Thousand seems to have been influenced by Reinhardt’s idea of ‘a new people’s theatre, a theatre of the Five Thousand; as he called it, a theatre for the masses’. Mahler’s vision of an integral work of art as well as Roller’s innovative ideas about a comprehensive stage design converges remarkably with Reinhardt’s theatre work. Mahler’s Eighth is a ‘prototype of the Symphonic Drama’, one of the most prominent and influential examples within the entire tradition of the symphony. In this regard Mahler was as much a visionary for a new understanding of the symphony as Reinhardt was for a new concept of theatre.