Bruckner's Abbey

[Cato]

Agogic ( "hat" ) accents have the extra energy more evenly spread through the note, without the initial emphasis. This gives the note the impression of added weight, which can be preferred where the harmonic movement has slowed, such as in the passage in question.

That is what I thought, until I read someone defining it as a combination of > and a staccato dot, the latter seeming therefore to contradict the "keep it loud all the way through" definition.

[Roasted Swan]

That is what I thought, until I read someone defining it as a combination of > and a staccato dot, the latter seeming therefore to contradict the "keep it loud all the way through" definition.

This kind of super-detailed definition is something beloved of musicologists and theorists but all but ignored in practice by performing musicians.  You can end up so tied up in "how short to make the dot", "how heavy to make the accent", "how long to sustain/not sustain" the 'extra' weight that the more important line and phrase in the music is lost.  Further more unless you're probably Gunter Wand and given the rehearsal time you simply do not have the luxury to spend time fixating on this kind of detail - even if you want to.......

[Cato]

This kind of super-detailed definition is something beloved of musicologists and theorists but all but ignored in practice by performing musicians.  You can end up so tied up in "how short to make the dot", "how heavy to make the accent", "how long to sustain/not sustain" the 'extra' weight that the more important line and phrase in the music is lost.  Further more unless you're probably Gunter Wand and given the rehearsal time you simply do not hav eht eluxury to spend time fixating on this kind of detail - even if you want to.......

Are you saying that they spoil things?   

I believe that they can do indeed spoil things at times!

Not unlike someone sniffing during an uproarious standing ovation: "But I heard several wrong notes!"   

[Roasted Swan]

Are you saying that they spoil things? 

I believe that they can do indeed spoil things at times!

Not unlike someone sniffing during an uproarious standing ovation: "But I heard several wrong notes!" 

There is value in detailed analysis of any Art but at the same time - especially in performing arts this takes little or no account of the spontaneity, the "here and now" that a great/inspiring performance needs to be.  For me, the great conductors are those who rehearse meticulously yet also leave room for expressive/interpretative freedom in performance.  That is what empowers players rather than having them tied up in knots over some tiny detail.  I remember once playing in an orchestra with a well-known/rather despotic leader who decided that a certain phrase was being played "too loud!!!!!!!!"  After about 6 repetitions where we were "still too loud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" my desk partner and I decided to literally air bow - not play at all.  Guess what - yup, it was still wrong.

People who claim to hear wrong notes are really just signalling their own "knowledge" and "understanding"/"appreciation" of the work in question.  It really has little to do with the impact of the performance and instead is just a case of "look at me , I'm such a connoisseur".......

[Cato]

There is value in detailed analysis of any Art but at the same time - especially in performing arts this takes little or no account of the spontaneity, the "here and now" that a great/inspiring performance needs to be.  For me, the great conductors are those who rehearse meticulously yet also leave room for expressive/interpretative freedom in performance.  That is what empowers players rather than having them tied up in knots over some tiny detail. I remember once playing in an orchestra with a well-known/rather despotic leader who decided that a certain phrase was being played "too loud!!!!!!!!"  After about 6 repetitions where we were "still too loud!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" my desk partner and I decided to literally air bow - not play at all.  Guess what - yup, it was still wrong.

You remind me of a very similar Bruckner story via Alma Mahler's memoirs: supposedly Bruckner was conducting an orchestra in one of his works, and things were "too loud."  Finally all the members decided to "Air Play" and not produce a single sound, at which point, apparently listening to his imagination, Bruckner proclaimed the volume to be "just right." 

[quote author=Roasted Swan link=msg=1539534 date=17001602

People who claim to hear wrong notes are really just signalling their own "knowledge" and "understanding"/"appreciation" of the work in question.  It really has little to do with the impact of the performance and instead is just a case of "look at me , I'm such a connoisseur".......

Amen!  😇

[Cato]

You see an interesting program here:

B R U C K N E R  S y m p h o n y  # 1


Dickie Wagner: Tristan und Isolde Prelude and Liebestod   


And why do need to see Andris Nelsons hanging around and trying to pick up a date?   

[Cato]

I have not had a chance to hear this yet, but another Bruckner aficionado has recommended it:

From a group called Classical Music Reference Recordings:

"Furtwängler comes straight from the 19th century. Son of an archaeologist specialized in ancient Greece, consciously or not, he certainly lived from the inside this mythical belief that Germany was the successor of Greece, bearer of an idealistic message, both Dionysian and Apollonian. What he gives us to hear, it is not a restored past, "historically informed", it is the sound product of a sensitivity and a thought deeply anchored in the romantic era, in the time of Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner. The work would be an organic being whose interpreter, acting like an inspired prophet and as if in a trance, would bring out and feel the telluric forces that work it. Nothing could be more anti-modern than this idealistic conception. This is why, when one listens to a Furtwängler interpretation, one feels a different emotion

(My emphasis above.)

The high humidity in the above is not be missed!       

Certainly in 1942 the Dionysian "message" was already being delivered with a vengeance!

[Wanderer]

(My emphasis above.)

The high humidity in the above is not be missed!     

Certainly in 1942 the Dionysian "message" was already being delivered with a vengeance!

The highlighted passage certainly informed the great flair with which the German occupation forces committed atrocity after atrocity in Greece from April 1941 until their final defeat and withdrawal from the country in October 1944. They could not forgive us for still existing.

[Cato]

The highlighted passage certainly informed the great flair with which the German occupation forces committed atrocity after atrocity in Greece from April 1941 until their final defeat and withdrawal from the country in October 1944. They could not forgive us for still existing.

Somewhere in the 1984 movie about the infamous Wannsee Conference, I recall one of the participants worrying how to respond to people asking how the culture which produced Beethoven and Goethe could carry out "the final solution."

No verbatim record exists, although a summary of sorts was found after the war, and I believe Adolph Eichmann gave more specific details in his trial.

Anyway, in the movie, if I recall it correctly, the question of a response is simply batted away as not important.

One gets the impression from the participants that they would have not raised the problem to begin with...

Writer Guenter Eich, in an epilogue to a series of radio plays called Träume (Dreams) wrote of a solution for the future to follow, lest something like Nazism occur again.

Seid unbequem...seid Sand, nicht das Oel im Getriebe der Welt =

Be uncomfortable...be the sand, not the oil, in the gears of the world.

Eich's point was that there was obviously not enough sand in the gears of the Nazis!

[Mandryka]

Quite enjoying the Ken Russell film this afternoon

[vers la flamme]

Quite enjoying the Ken Russell film this afternoon

Is this based on fact, ie. was Bruckner OCD about numbers?

[DavidW]

Is this based on fact, ie. was Bruckner OCD about numbers?

I mean it is Ken Russell so it is probably about sex and weird hallucinations!

[Jo498]

There seems some evidence that Bruckner had some OCD features, including counting all kinds of things. I also read that when there were bad reviews of his symphonies he recounted the measures/bars to verify that he "had done everything correctly" (and thus certainly missed whatever point the reviewers might have had).

[Cato]

Quite enjoying the Ken Russell film this afternoon

I mean it is Ken Russell so it is probably about sex and weird hallucinations!

Well, often that is true!


On Bruckner as a near mental case, here is an excellent article against it:

https://www.brucknerjournal.com/Issues/ewExternalFiles/17i.pdf

Anton Bruckner: a non-pathological view on his personality and implications for his approach to the task of composing.

Malcolm Hatfield C. Psychol. A.F.B.Ps.S

...I don't like what may be called the 'received wisdom' explanations about Bruckner that are often given,
and indeed continue to be so given. An example is the introduction to the BBC Prom broadcast of Bruckner's
6th Symphony in the summer of 2012, that referred in a somewhat condescending way to his difficulties in
establishing relationships.

... It is almost as if the intention is to prove that Bruckner was slightly crazy or a troubled personality, or simplistically focused on theCatholic religion, or sexually repressed, or psychologically impaired in some other way.

Even the Professor of Psychology at University College London ...commented on Bruckner, 'wasn't he supposed to be rather OCD?' Others seem happy, for example, to refer to Bruckner's 'numeromania' in relation to his revision and numbering of the bars in his scores; however 'numeromania' does not exist as a psychiatric condition, so the use of the word could be interpreted as an attempt to claim understanding through use of a (probably spurious) label....

...(One should look at Bruckner's) personality in terms of focus, conscientiousness, courage and aspiration, even
though the stress that this created opened many demons in his own life. So on this reading, he is not a kind of
flawed or inadequate indecisive rustic genius, locked into a 19th-century Catholicism or the restrictions of
obsessive compulsive disorder, but a much more human individual...

[Cato]

The topic on Bruckner's possible numeromania reminded me of Arnold Schoenberg's morbid fear of the number 13 (triskaidekaphobia).

Schoenberg sometimes numbered each bar in a manuscript, using 12A in place of "13."


https://www.jstor.org/stable/832890

[vers la flamme]

The topic on Bruckner's possible numeromania reminded me of Arnold Schoenberg's morbid fear of the number 13 (triskaidekaphobia).

Schoenberg sometimes numbered each bar in a manuscript, using 12A in place of "13."


https://www.jstor.org/stable/832890

True, if Bruckner did truly have a manic obsession about numbers, he's in good company with Schoenberg, at least 

[Jo498]

Someone with OCD or other "spleens" we'd classify as mental disorders today can be mostly functional in life. Cf. the Jack Nicholson character in "As good as it gets". He has severe OCD but is a successful pulp author.

And it should be arithmomania, not numeromania, please!

[Cato]

Courtesy of a Bruckner fan: Herbert Blomstedt with the Gewandhaus Orchester Leipzig.

"Bruckner's symphonies are strenuous alpine hikes, and Blomstedt is a mountain guide who not only has the next fork in the road in mind but knows every stone on the path before the group has even started. The listener observes an ongoing creative process as if watching a sculptor at work. Blomstedt's unique Bruckner cycle impressively reflects the extraordinary spirit of the long-standing partnership between the legendary conductor and the Gewandhausorchester Leipzig. The nine symphonies released in this box were recorded at the Gewandhaus Leipzig between 2005 and 2012.

With this new edition, the box set will be available for the first time across all digital platforms."

See:


https://accentus.com/discs/575/?fbclid=IwAR3Lo46a-OSv3DyBKrIpm1j146DyrbUWV60wriwTyG1-ruYWT_HWw7Nc-rI

[Cato]

From another Bruckner fan: part of a documentary showing a certain conductor rehearsing the Bruckner Mass #3:

[Cato]

I came across this news item this morning: a download of all 4 movements of the completed Ninth Symphony is available in "FLAC" versions:

Bruckner enthusiasts worldwide were saddened by the news of the passing of Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs on November 21, 2013. Mr. Cohrs was a tireless researcher and was best known for his collaborative reconstruction of the Finale to Bruckner's Symphony No. 9. At the time of his passing Cohrs was working on his own "Urtext Edition" of the symphonies.

Cohrs was also a conductor, but we have few examples of his work. One such example is the download this month as we pay our respects.

https://www.abruckner.com//downloads/downloadofthemonth/december23/