Bruckner's life and composing career is, for me, as surprising as that of Mahler: it is difficult to realise (given the fuss we make about his music today) that he only wrote 8 symphonies (plus most of a ninth) and a handful of sacred choral pieces (masses, anthems and so on), very similar to the surprise I get at contemplating how Mahler's musical reputation rests on just nine symphonies (plus a chunk of a tenth) and some orchestral song cycles. What's more, like Vaughan Williams, Bruckner wrote practically nothing of significance before he was around 40, after which he never stopped! So he started late, output very little -and yet stands as a giant of the symphonic form, which he did so much to revolutionise (and paved the way for the aforementioned Mahler in some ways).
He was born in 1824, in Ansfelden, northern Austria (very close to Linz). His upbringing was provincial/rural -something that he carried with him for the rest of his life and which was the source of considerable social embarrassment when moving in 'sophisticated' and 'polite' Viennese society in the latter part of his life. He trained as a provincial teacher and, in 1845, became the organist at the St. Florian monastery where he had formerly been a chorister. It wasn't until 1855 that he took up musical studies seriously with Simon Sechter, a famous Viennese teacher of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory. When Sechter died in 1868, Bruckner took over his position, so at this point he was still very much a teacher and organist first, and amateur composer second.
Only around these early years of the 1860s did he start writing symphonies in earnest. His first couple of 'trial' symphonies date from 1863-1869, with his first numbered symphony being completed in 1866. Symphonies 2 to 5 appeared during the 1870s; 6 to 8 were written during the 1880s; and the final symphony (never finished) dates from the early 1890s. He died in Vienna in 1896 and was buried underneath the organ at the same monastery (St. Florian), where he had once been choirboy and organist.
Many stories and myths abound about Bruckner and his alleged 'weirdness'. Non-musical ones usually involve mentioning his repeated infatuation with teenage girls he hoped would agree to marry him (when aged in his sixties!); his numeromania (a tendency to obsess about counting and numbering bars in his works, counting the chimneys visible on the Vienna skyline, counting the number of bricks in walls and so on); and his fascination with corpses (he is alleged to have kissed and caressed the skulls of both Beethoven and Schubert when they were re-interred in Vienna in the 1860s; lobbied the government to be able to view the body of the deceased Emperor Maximilian of Mexico on his return to Austria in 1867; and had a photo of his deceased mother on her deathbed in his teaching room).
The more musical stories (really, more myths than fact) tend to be that he was infatuated with the music of Wagner and brought Wagnerian ideas and techniques to the symphony. Whilst it's true that Bruckner revered 'The Master' (as he called him) in Bayreuth, and started writing his own symphonies shortly after having been introduced to Wagner's music, he roamed far from any initial inspiration he may have received from that source. It is true that he followed Wagner’s ideas about the need to expand the orchestra, particularly by reinforcing the brass section: his last three symphonies all use Wagner tubas, for example. But whereas Wagner saw Beethoven's 9th symphony as the end-of-symphonic music (and hence why he exclusively wrote music-drama in his maturity, as an attempt to combine symphonic thought with operatic drama), Bruckner developed the symphonic form, pushing it new directions which Wagner would not have imagined. It should also be said that the stench of raging antisemitism that besets Wagner to this day does not attach to Bruckner in the least. Despite Hitler unveiling a bust of Bruckner replete with swastika and Reich eagle emblems in 1937, his music was not capable of Nazi appropriation as Wagner's was, and wasn't subject to such nationalist perversion to anything like the same degree.
Rather than that mess of Germanic nationalism and its poisonous outcome, however, the problem the 21st Century classical music listener has to contend with when dealing with Bruckner is nevertheless quite serious: revisions. Bruckner was not a confident man and was easily convinced that his works were not of sufficient quality; or that they were too complex to be played as written; or that they were too big to arrange for profitable performance. Accordingly, he persistently 'fiddled' with his symphonies, re-writing bits here and there, or adding entirely new movements, or even getting his friends to re-write parts of them for him. There are thus different versions of practically everything, all in Bruckner's handwriting or with his imprimatur of approval: this seems to make knowing 'which is the right version to listen to' a bit of a problem! Things were not helped by his editors: Robert Haas produced performing editions of most of the symphonies during the 1930s and 40s, but was thought to be a little 'Nazi-tainted' in 1945 and was thus replaced as editor by Leopold Nowak -who proceeded to produce a completely different performing edition of everything all over again!
The general thrust of critical opinion today tends to suggest that Haas's versions are more true to the Brucknerian 'spirit', whilst Nowak's are more 'musicologically rigorous'. It's also fair to say that the differences between the editions, on the whole, are modest: a Nowak correction to a dynamic marking here, a note corrected there. Symphony No. 3 is a mess, however, and the differences involve large sections of re-orchestrated and re-composed work. For a long time, not knowing what was the 'right' version of a symphony to listen to actually put me off listening to pretty much anything by Bruckner at all -but, really, it's not as bad as all that and, apart from the third symphony, you are not likely to notice much difference between available editions. Musicologists might, of course, but they won't be reading my words about any of this in the first place!\
The 'versions problem' is also largely mitigated by Bruckner himself: he knew what his friends were doing to his works, and what they had persuaded to do to them, but remained clear about his actual intentions: when he died, he made sure to deposit his manuscripts in the Vienna Imperial Library and to express his desires that these would be the last word as to his musical intentions.
The short version is, therefore, that for all except Symphony No. 3 (which Haas never got to) and No. 9, Haas is the preferred edition. Symphony No. 3 is probably best in a performing version by Fritz Oeser, published in 1950. Symphony No. 9 is probably best in Nowak's edition. Recordings usually follow this sourcing these days, anyway -though you will always find a narcissist conductor who thinks resurrecting a version containing a whole new bar of triangle music, which Bruckner probably penned in a pub one dark and stormy night as a joke for a teenage barmaid, is a good idea. Bruckner fanatics exist and can be like that, I'm afraid...
Summing up, then: I was a late convert to Bruckner (I sang his sacred works in assorted choirs from my twenties on, but I didn't listen to a single symphony by him until I was 43!), and the complex editorial history of his works put me off for a long time (needlessly, as it turns out). But his symphonic works are unique, extraordinary and intensely moving. Bruckner was not an imbecile, pervert or fool, but a devout, spiritual man of relatively humble origins but with incredibly vast symphonic ambitions. He sounds to me, often, as a precursor to Mahler: Bruno Walter once wrote that, "Great was the difference between the two; but conjure up one and the other is not very distant. Along with Bruckner's music (aside from the more concrete connections) there vibrates a secret Mahlerian undertone, just as in Mahler's work some intangible element is reminiscent of Bruckner." Don't neglect him, therefore: the very conception of what is possible with a symphony was transfigured by the man. You will certainly need patience and time to appreciate them (they are long!), but they are so worth it!
Music Plays from my collection
(since January 9th 2021)
| Date of Play | Time of Play | Genre | Composition | Length | Play Count |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Date of Play | Time of Play | Genre | Composition | Length | Play Count |