Bruckner quoted out of context
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| Posted on April 19, 2000 at 14:23:28 | ||
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patrick S 
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a couple of weeks ago, petew, in buttressing his theory that music has no intellectual content, refered to Bruckner saying that he had no idea what he was thinking about in the finale of the 4th symphony. what he was referring to, and the context in which whatever he said was said is as follows: "[Bruckner] wrote symphonies, undisturbed by the central Wagnerian doctrine that with Beethoven's Choral Symphony (as interpreted by Wagner) the era of absolute music had ended. Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony of 1829 and Liszt's Mountain Symphony of 1849 had inaugrated the age of programme music which alone was allowed to exist in the shadow of the great music drama. Bruckner wrote his symphonies as if he had never heard of the controversy...Bruckner's young students, of course, were aware of the problem and it worried them. The logic of their thought was determined by blind belief in the Wagnerian doctrine; since only poor Brahms wrote in the archaic ways of absolute music, and since Bruckner was devoted to Wagner, his symphonies could not possibly represent absolute music. Ergo, they have a programme. They kept asking Bruckner for the hidden "programme" of his symphonies until the composer kindly obliged by telling them some stories. The finale of the Eighth Symphony...was explained by him: "Finale. Our Emperor was in those days visited by the Czar at Olmutz---strings. The Cossacks on horseback---brass, military music. The trumpets: fanfare when Their Majesties met..." When making the attempt to improvise some stories for the Fourth Symphony, Bruckner's resources as a poet dried up before he had revealed the "key" to the Finale and he had to confess: "Well, now, that Finale---what I thought when writing that Finale? I really can't remember it any longer." from "The Life and Symphonies of Anton Bruckner" by Erwin Doernberg which is not quite what pete purported it to mean/represent. special to you from the Sewers, patrick S
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