Bruckner's Abbey

[Cato]

GMG member @Foxandpeng mentioned elsewhere that he was interested in people's reactions to Bruckner's works: here is an excerpt from an unpublished novel with something of interest perhaps on that basis.

"...when (at age 11) Tom heard the Fourth Symphony of Anton Bruckner for the first time, a section of the symphony's first movement, bars 334 to 350, suddenly conjured forth an image of himself as a very small child watching a B-52 meander through the clouds on its way to the base.  Exactly why and how the music of a 19th-century Austrian composer should resurrect this memory in his soul remained a mystery that he often contemplated and marveled at.  Strange that such a death-dealing aircraft could be linked to the poetry of sounds! 

[Cato]

From the same book, but concerning a different symphony, but the same comment from @Foxandpeng...

GMG member @Foxandpeng mentioned elsewhere that he was interested in people's reactions to Bruckner's works: here is an excerpt from an unpublished novel with something of interest perhaps on that basis.

"...a melody from Tom's musical memory began playing, as he read the obituary...

The melody was a somber funeral march, complete with muffled drumbeats.  The important thing, however, was that the second part of the march rose somewhat, and seemed to aspire toward hope, or at least to counterbalance the tragedy of the opening notes.  It was from the Sixth Symphony of Anton Bruckner, from the Adagio, the second movement.  But Tom also remembered that Bruckner brings this theme back toward the end of the movement, in a shortened form, and the little tragic funeral march becomes involved in a short brass chorale that softens the lament, which then leads to a dialogue in the strings, an up-and-down debate, with the upwardness of the music winning gently at the end, the two flutes and a single clarinet slowly, benignly, smilingly voicing their opinion that all is well, that the turmoil and sadness heard earlier have been dissolved into nothingness..."