How did you discover Bruckner's music?

[Quijote]

Originally Posted by James C. Fretz

(...) I went back to Bruckner and found that in my absence a light switch had been turned on. It's great fun to find oneself excited and enthusiastic over an old new discovery....or a new old discovery.

Hello James. I realize it might be difficult to explain, but what made that difference, that 'light switch being turned on'? Was it something technical, a fuller awareness of what Bruckner was trying to do? Something else? Please do elaborate, if you wouldn't mind.

[Quijote]

Have you also, by any chance, had the opportunity to hear the latest Bruckner 9th (with reconstructed SPCM finale) / BPO / Rattle CD?

[Felix]

I tried to do my duty by BC and listen to the 4th Symphopny. Conducted on my CD by Barenboim - yesterday. I was disappointed, maybe due to the way I have been conditioned to hear music - it's hard for any of us to get away from this.

For me, unlike Mahler, he doesn't go straight to the nitty gritty but seems to waver in his own world of baroque romanticism, but maybe this vagueness is essential to his genius as it was to Liszt's?

I was going to say more about the 4th but fell asleep. Maybe I was in the wrong mood. I didn't get all the way through the last movement I had to listen to a Brahms Symphony afterwards to find out whether I still loved music at all. I did.

But all is not lost, as I am won't to say. I chanced on Bruckner's 8th and this sounds very exciting. I listened to quite large pieces of it. I find I have the CD with Furtwangler conducting it. What do you Bruckner experts say to that? I mean the interpretation.

Yours,
Felix

[Quijote]

Originally Posted by Felix

I tried to do my duty by BC and listen to the 4th Symphopny. Conducted on my CD by Barenboim - yesterday. I was disappointed, maybe due to the way I have been conditioned to hear music - it's hard for any of us to get away from this.

The CD recording I have of Barenboim’s reading of Bruckner IV (BPO, October 1992) I also found rather uninspiring. Was this perhaps the version you heard? Maybe that was the reason, rather than your conditioning. What has been your ‘conditioning’, Félix, in as much as it applies to late 19th music? Or indeed more generally? But to widen to discussion momentarily, this (one’s conditioning) is one reason why I am a big fan of electroacoustic music (genre Parmegiani Smalley, Harvey, et al…) as one cannot easily rely on facile received opinion, CD liner notes, Wikipedia and so on.

Originally Posted by Felix

For me, unlike Mahler, he doesn't go straight to the nitty gritty but seems to waver in his own world of baroque romanticism, but maybe this vagueness is essential to his genius as it was to Liszt's?

Without intending any ‘slap in the face’ whatsoever, I think that is a nonsense. What is your definition of the musical ‘nitty gritty’ in terms of Mahlerian or Brucknerian symphonic discourse? Or indeed in any music? And in what specific passages do you detect ‘baroque Romanticism’? The passages, that is, where you have not fallen asleep.

Originally Posted by Felix

I was going to say more about the 4th but fell asleep. Maybe I was in the wrong mood. I didn't get all the way through the last movement I had to listen to a Brahms Symphony afterwards to find out whether I still loved music at all. I did.

It is true one has to be in a receptive mood for most music of value, if not it can be consigned to muzak. A direct question for you, Félix, in light of the comment above: are you suggesting that Bruckner makes you question your love of music? That is a very provocative statement, if I read you correctly, and I wish to challenge you on it.

Originally Posted by Felix

But all is not lost, as I am won't to say. I chanced on Bruckner's 8th and this sounds very exciting. I listened to quite large pieces of it. I find I have the CD with Furtwangler conducting it. What do you Bruckner experts say to that? I mean the interpretation.Yours, Felix

I am glad you found parts of the 8th exciting. I cannot comment on the Furtwangler, as I have never heard it. I do rather admire Boulez’s reading with the Vienna PO (at St Florian’s, 1996).
Keep it up, and stay awake, dear boy.
Yours, quixotically,
Don Quijote

[Felix]

Dear Quijote!

Firstly, I didn't fall asleep during the performance of the 4th.

Secondly don't take me so seriously! I'm naturally inclined often to write in a humorous vein, not to be taken too literally.

It was a dull, murky day in Verona and the air was fat with humidity, I was depressed about something - the reason for that depression has gone -; I was almost capable of throwing a rotten egg at Brahms - in fantasy not in reality. So I was also in the wrong mood. I'm fully aware that my 'opinions' are not worth much, they are more like tentative efforts to take a step forward. Bruckner was and is admired by great musicians and composers. -

It is conceivable that, even if a composer is great, he may never really be your cup of tea. Mendelssohn, who must have been among the first to conduct Beethoven's 9th, confessed to Schumann that he didn't like the Finale, and Schumann did not contradict him.

In the first movement of Bruckner's 4th he makes much of a falling scale figure and this got on my nerves.

I am conditioned by the central European tradition from Bach onwards to the Viennese atonalists in which the process of self-reflection and motivic work is more immediate. This is what I mean by the nitty-gritty. I have been able to take some joyful steps out of this tradition. I find Debussy and others totally convincing.

Bruckner and baroque - I don't find it so easy to put my finger on it, but a certian 'gloriousness' in the orchestration, big steps that have something processional about them - certianly contrasted with the most delicate of passages - a big church with blazonry and pictures or sculptures af angels blowing golden trumpets.

In Mahler the drama grabs me from the first moment onwards; with Bruckner - for the moment - I feel I have to wait, and maybe this is the way it should be and was his way of composing.

Yours,
Felix

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Felix

... the air was fat with humidity...

Lovely phrase. Never heard it before. Thank you. Orwell was big on this: never use stale metaphors and similes. Use some imagination, invent new ones, keep writing fresh, show some respect for your readers, don't be a bore.

... the air was plump with humidity...

That also works.

... the air was corpulent with humidity...

... the air was rotund with humidity...

... the air was obese with humidity...

Not so good.

[Quijote]

OK, Félix, all is clear now, thank you.

[Quijote]

Still battling with the latest SPCM 'realisation' of Bruckner's IXth Finale.
Not entirely convinced, but as I mentioned above, better this than dusty folios remaining in the archives...

[James C. Fretz]

Originally Posted by Quijote

Hello James. I realize it might be difficult to explain, but what made that difference, that 'light switch being turned on'? Was it something technical, a fuller awareness of what Bruckner was trying to do? Something else? Please do elaborate, if you wouldn't mind.

Sorry for the delay in my reply. It is rather difficult to elaborate, Quijote.

I believe I suddenly found myself less impatient with Bruckner's rather predictable patterns (rhythmic, especially); as though I really hadn't anywhere better to be so why not just try to put myself in the composer's head.

BTW, this approach really hasn't worked as yet with certain other composers........so, by all means, it isn't foolproof.

[autolycus]

Hello James,
I know sort of what you mean about 'a light coming on'. Early in my listening career, I heard a Prokofiev violin concerto and didn't like it. I carried on my habit of giving everything a go. A couple of years later, I hear both violin concertos and thought them lovely. When I soon remembered the earlier unhappy experience, I realised that by listening widely, my ear had grown accustomed to more unusual harmonies.
And of course I agree that getting into the world of each composer is a thing to aim for. Otherwise we condemn each artist for not doing what they weren't aiming at anyway. That was always happening to bruckner who said he was aware of such pressures and nevertheless hehad to write his way.
A big pleasure, for me, with each composer is discovering and relishing what they might have that you cannot get anywhere else. Just the same as with people in life.
Bruckner, after all, can teach us a thing or two about patience.