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From: francois@yale.ARPA (Charles B. Francois)
Newsgroups: net.music.classical
Subject: Any Brucknerians out there?
Message-ID: <562@yale.ARPA>
Date: Wed, 5-Feb-86 13:17:23 EST
Article-I.D.: yale.562
Posted: Wed Feb  5 13:17:23 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 8-Feb-86 04:55:50 EST
Distribution: na
Organization: Yale University CS Dept., New Haven CT
Lines: 43

The following was meant to be a reply to a private note, but I would
be interested in hearing other people's thoughts about it.

	> Another Mahler fanatic, so it seems!
	> I wonder if you feel the same way about Bruckner.  Many people
	> tend to lump M & B together.  I find them quite different and
	> in some senses Bruckner's music is far more intense.

I do agree that his music is quite different from Mahler's.  In fact,
while Mahler the conductor was one of the first champions of the
Bruckner symphonies, Mahler the composer did not see eye to eye with
Bruckner the Wagner groupie.  For my own part, I've always had a
certain stumbling block with Bruckner's music.  An article I was
reading recently described his music as "a mixture of sublimity and
padding", and I'm afraid that sums up my feelings perfectly.  The
heights he sometimes scales are quite heavenly, but too much of the
time I find myself waiting for something to happen or simply losing the
thread of the symphonic argument.  That's especially true with his
finales.  The only Bruckner symphony I don't find anti-climactic is the
Ninth, and that's only because it's lacking a (completed) final movement.  

I do realize that in classical and neo-classical compositions, the
closing movement is *traditionally* not meant to carry the rhetorical
weight of the opening and slow movements, but Bruckner's finales
typically strike me as, if not inconsequential, but without focus.
Even in my favorite work of his (the Sixth), I find myself fidgeting
and struggling to concentrate during the last movement.  Granted, it's
much easier to be swayed at a live performance by the sheer weight of
the orchestra, but as absolute music his finales just don't do it for
me.  I guess I just can't understand how someone who can create so
head-spinning an effect as he achieves in the opening measures of the
Seventh symphony can spend so much time in the same symphony's last
movement seemingly not saying anything.

I do wish I felt differently, and would appreciate any insights into
a perhaps more rewarding approach to take to the Bruckner symphonies.  
Any thoughts?

--Charles B. Francois    {...,decvax,allegra}!yale!francois

Then again, didn't someone once say that one's true feelings for 
a composer's music are indicated by one's reactions not to the
highlights, but rather to how he gets from one juicy part to another?