I just can't get into Bruckner

Excellent posts, Jane. Eventually, a subject where we may be allies.

However, allow me to disagree with the "continuation of Schubert's Symphonies". Schubert wrote one original and different Symphony after the other; Bruckner composed almost identical musical "Cathedrals" of virtually the same "ingredients": form, structure, orchestration and an obsessed devotion to dear God (something that alienates quite a few people, including me and...the late Lenny, who virtually conducted none in his life).

I used to say in various threads of this forum that I (vastly) appreciate his music but I cannot "enjoy" it. What I want to say is that I can admire and stand in awe listening to these marvelous structure of sound, to these magnificent musical edifice of enormous proportions, to a very harmonic writing, to glorious orchestration (particularly for the Brass and woodwinds), but, emotionally, I feel somehow empty. I think in his Scherzi, he managed to smile a bit, sometimes even more (one of my favourite movements is the Scherzo of the Sixth).

In any case, Bruckner is a milestone composer with monumental works (not only his Symphonies) and, at least, he has to be studied. In the end, you may "enjoy" his music as well. (However, one needs great courage and strength to do so with the Ninth, such a bleak and austere work, unless this one is...the dedicatee!).

Parla

I was only thinking of the last two Schubert symphonies, Parla. I have never really thought of the preceeding 6 as "mature" Schubert. They are all pretty early by his standards (No. 6 is only D589) and they are all built according to the standard classical models. Juvenalia, really - not uninteresting, or without merit, but pretty derivative on the whole. But the final two, 8 and 9, are fully Schubertian and reflect a very different conception of the symphony. The similarities between these and Bruckner seem fairly obvious to me: the melodic flow, the mysterious harmonic progressions, the use of an expanded brass sections, the heavenly length, the sense of space.............Bruckner certainly had Schubert in mind when he worked on them (along with the adagio of Beethoven's 9th). 

A pity you don't enjoy them, though. Pure bliss for me.

Nicely put, Naupilus. I was just thinking about this aspect of Bruckner. Certainly, we are talking about a very different symphonic tradition to that which runs from Haydn to Beethoven to Mendelssohn to Brahms. Instead of moving along with the symphony, as you do with these, you somehow stand still and let the symphony move around you instead. There is something essentially static about them, as if different aspects of the same vision were being revealed. Very much like a landscape, in fact - or a walk around a great cathedral. As with Beethoven's 9th (a radically different beast, in other respects), the symphonies don't actually start: they emerge. It is as if they have always been there, but we have only just tuned into them. (In some ways, Bruckner's symphonies have more in common with contemporary minimalist symphonies than they do with, say, Brahms.)

I was going to say, too, that before you can really enjoy them you first have to acclimatise to the larger spans and the broader scale. If you keep waiting for things to happen - as you do with many other composers - you will get impatient and think nothing has taken place. That's why I keep going back to Schubert and his "heavenly length"...... 

Yes, the first movement of the 7th is a good place to start. But certainly the 4th or the 7th.

Hmmm.. I don't like these associations with landscapes in Bruckner. That totally misses the point. And anything intellectual I say also misses the point.

Bruckner is a master of symphonic development in its highest art form. Despite the lengths of his symphonies he can span an arch from the first opening notes to the final notes of the finale and create a unity. Everything belongs together, any one moment perfectly builds on previous music. 

Just listen to the finale of his fourth symphony, or take that of his fifth, an absolute masterpiece, unparalleled in the music literature. How he manages to bring together all that happened before in the symphony, absolutely breathtaking! That's what makes Bruckner different and unique for me. It's the development of musical ideas, what happens to them, rather than the ideas themselves. 

I find Bruckner difficult to bring across on disk. You have to sit in the concert, the response to the music has to be live. And you need a conductor capable of performing the symphonies adequately, capable of bringing across to the listeneres the correlations, the development of the music. That takes time, and most conductors are simply too fast. You need a Furtwängler, a Celibidache, possibly Tennstedt.

Mahler, in contrast (much like Wagner) always sounds interesting, no matter who performs it.

Doesn't all music sound better live? No matter how fantastic the equipment or how perfect the recording it is a facsimilie of the actual performance. That said, Bruckner is so dependent on the relationship between the music and the acoustic that the live setting is an important consideration. It is not the issue of spatial effects so much as the way frequently in Bruckner's music that it appears or disappears... one wonders sometimes if his music would not be better served rising from a pit like that at Bayreuth, instead on a traditional stage where the players are in full view.

Parla - I understand your view about austerity but I am not able to agree that this necessarily contravenes the sense of 'bliss' that you describe. There are many ways to reach religious bliss (if you think this is what Bruckner was about - I have never seen it that way personally) but spirituality comes in many forms, as does all pleasure, so personally I find the asthetic fits the goal.

As for melodies I have not listened to any Bruckner for quite a while but I was just able to hum a version of the opening of the adagio of the seventh, the opening of the sixth and the wonderful horn fanfares from the fourth. The wonderful discursive opening to the last movement of the fifth comes to mind, with that searching for a theme so similar to the opening of Beethoven's last ever symphonic movement. All of these give me pause to think that Bruckner could, within his own sound world create melodies and themes that work just fine. What is noticeable is that Bruckner seems to have found it rather difficult to go beyond excelling within his own milieu, which is an acusation that can be made of many creative artists. And as you have said before in another context, 'weak spots' are less important than strengths.

I do understand the concern at the use ofthe landscape analogy, which as I said is highly personal (and probably goes from having spent a great deal of time observing the way light reveals nuances - too much time behind a camera!) but I would, in humble defence, make it clear that it is not the pastoral that I am alluding to but the way, as the earth turns, light reveals. If we are going to use the architcture analogy instead (which I do understand, although I find it inadequate as it does not include the element of time) the way I would use it is to imagine looking at a great architectural structure such as Norte Dame (if we are going try and be spiritual, let's go the whole hog!). When you sit outside for some hours and just look at the edifice it changes, not in substance, but in relief. That is how I see and hear Bruckner - for better or worse.

Jane, in all my posts here, I do not and cannot possibly denigrate the greatness of Bruckner (I'm 100% with you on that). I just try to explain why this greatness cannot appeal, pass, get through into some people, musicians, conductors and musicologists.

By all means, his form and structure have originality and there are no other Symphonies of that kind, but, still, the "ingredients" of this huge construction is neither original or memorable enough: strong melodies, memorable development (so that one can remember a whole movement). Normally, one admires the huge musical "Cathedral" in front of him/her, but he/she can remember much less of what actually happened. In Wagner's gargantuan Gesamtwerke, one can at least have a full memory of the formal layout and, with some brilliant and memorable leitmotives, he makes the listener highly interested in the unfolding of the whole project.

Mahler, for all his musical verbosity, is so eloquent in using so memorable (and most of the time even beautiful) tunes, in building almost easily accessible development of his ideas, and creating his orchestration with an amazing variety of colours, while his Symphonies are so different in each work. In any case, I don't mean Mahler is a greater composer; simply, a much more exciting, interesting and even more profound one.

So, to sum up: Bruckner is as great as he can get, but he may not be interesting and exciting to some...(out of 10 of my immediate friends in the Classical Music business, only one is absolutely fond of and loyal to Bruckner!).

Parla

One good melody by Haydn? Well, lets start at the end. Yes, the main theme of the finale of symphony 104, Jane.

Actually, this is proving to be one of the best debates I've read on this forum. I happen to have just listened to the new Hyperion Bruckner 7, with the BBC Scottish under Donald Runnicles. It has received outstanding reviews, and I'm inclined to agree with them. I've added Runnicles to the fairly short list of conductors who know how to pace Bruckner properly (a list led by Haitink, since you ask). But a friend of mine who has also heard it thought the first movement superb, the second too swift, and that it tailed off thereafter. One thing we did agree on was that the Scots played fabulously well, and that we didn't miss Vienna or Berlin at all. BUT we then played an early digital CD of the Dresdens under Blomstedt (we'd been listening to the Runnicles on a 96/24 download, for those who are interested in such things), and they sounded simply glorious. And proved that Denon, at least, knew how to record well in digital in 1984. 

But I digress. I remember a BPO/Karajan concert at the RFH in the late 70s (his late VPO recording was terrific) of Bruckner 8. He let the brass rip to the extent that they overloaded the hall's acoustic, and frankly the sound was unattractive. A rare misjudgement from HvK.

Anyway, please keep the debate going. It's already persuaded me to give the Zander Bruckner 5 a chance!