Like the common cold, a bout of stupidity is something we all have to endure from time to time.
BOOM (in one of his more lucid moments)
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And when the symptoms of stupidity have been displayed in public (say, in the form of a blog post), a diagnostic postscript seems entirely appropriate. Which brings me to my earlier, flippant and decidedly unkind remarks about the symphonies of Anton Bruckner.
For a very long time I thought of Bruckner as a composer who was still active when Richard Strauss' early tone poems had already made a big splash, when Debussy was already at work on Pelleas et Melisande, and when Schoenberg's Verklärte Nacht was only three years away. Heard through this kind of temporal lensing, Bruckner's symphonies invariably struck me as unreasonably long, annoying repetitive, and harmonically old-fashioned (insufficiently chromatic).
What I seem to have completely blocked out of my mind, however, was the fact that, by the standards of the nineteenth century, Bruckner's life span was unusually long (decades longer than those of Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Schumann). Although he missed Verklärte Nacht by only three years, Bruckner was born when Beethoven and Schubert were still alive (Beethoven's Ninth Symphony had its premiere in the same year), Hummel was at the apex of his fame, and Chopin, Liszt, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Wagner were still in their early teens.
Having realized that, chronologically, Bruckner was as close to the early Romantics as Berg and Webern were to Schoenberg, I had to admit that his symphonies are not longer than those of Mendelssohn (Lobgesang) or Liszt (Eine Faust-Symphonie, Dante-Symphonie), no more repetitive than Schubert's Ninth, and more chromatic than anything written by a composer born after Wagner and before Mahler (save for some harmonically adventurous pieces by Peter Cornelius who was born in the same year as Bruckner).
As often happens with musical epiphanies, my change of perspective on Bruckner's music was initiated by specific performances of his Seventh and Ninth symphonies, the performances to which I returned time and again thinking (erroneously) that the sheer beauty of orchestral playing was the principal attraction. Performed by the same orchestra (New York Philharmonic) under two different guest conductors (Zubin Mehta in 2007 and Christoph Eschenbach in 2008), the Seventh felt as if it were sculpted by Brâncuși, while the Ninth unfolded with such intense concentration that its phrase-to-phrase breathing acquired musical significance rivaling the symphony's melodic and harmonic content. I thought adding these two broadcast recordings (7th, 9th) to my blog would be a meaningful gesture of atonement for my earlier sin.
2 comments:
One great help "decoding" Bruckner for me was to listen to Hans Rosbaud's recordings of his symphonies. An admirable interpreter of the Second Viennese School, he connected modernism c. 1910 with Bruckner. Having said that, may I also commend "traditionalist" recordings by Hans Knappertsbusch and Carl Schuricht. If you listen to the first movement of the Fifth as conducted by any of these people, you would swear you were listening to an early draft of the alpine Andante in Mahler's Sixth. In any case, Bruckner came to me later in life, too. Wasn't it Brahms who deplored Bruckner as the musical equivalent of a boa constrictor? Not true, but such judgments held sway for too long a time in my life. I love Eschenbach and consider hearing his performance of Das Lied Von Der Erde with the Philadelphia Orchestra (on a program with Edgard Varese's "Arcana") one of the greatest musical experiences of my life. I eagerly look forward to his Bruckner.
A valuable lesson in orientation. I’m sure we’ve all had composers who seem to do nothing for us until some Pauline conversion, often brought about by even a small change in perspective.
As in the quote from Charles Rosen which you commented on a few posts back, understanding the proper criteria by which music should be judge is important — at least in the first instance — and often difficult, particularly for later generations. And this is achieved more easily with some composers or genres than others, for example: in respect of contemporary music, where there are an abundance of criteria, some might say no fixed criteria at all.
Although musically, Bruckner can be seen as suspended somewhere between Schubert and Wagner, there’s no denying that his symphonies can still be tricky for some — an embodiment of a very particular sensibility. In terms of instrumental music, there’s nobody very much like him. Mahler’s music is often compared, but apart from the length of their symphonies, I think they’re very different composers.
And on the subject of great performances, I saw the Concertgebouw under Haitink give a mesmerising performance of Brucker 9 at the Barbican in London a few years ago - ravishing woodwind playing. I know some say that Haitink is a conductor lacking character but in my view, he just avoids getting in the way.
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