Symphony 4 - Bruckner (1824-1896)

Bewegt, nicht zu schnell: Andante quasi Allegretto: Scherzo -Bewegt: Finale - Bewegt, doch nicht zu schnell

Anton Bruckner, the son of an Austrian village schoolmaster and organist, was playing the violin and harpsichord aged four and deputising in the local church aged ten. In 1837 his father died and the thirteen year old Bruckner became a chorister at the monastery school of St. Florian. This was an immensely influential time for the young man: St Florian became his spiritual home for the rest of his life. Such was its influence that he sustained an almost child-like religious faith throughout. However, it took many years for him to achieve the satisfactory synthesis of his spiritual feelings with the means of expression which resulted in the profound music of his later years. Bruckner has been caricatured as a peasant figure, almost a simpleton, but how can this unfair description be true? How could such a person write the symphonies which are the apotheosis of the symphonic art? Certainly Bruckner always displayed an intense devotion to the spiritual life, an insatiable appetite for musical study and a love of practice and improvisation at the organ. With his provincial background and devout nature, he cut an odd figure among the sophisticated Romantic composers who were his contemporaries. He lost neither his simplicity of character nor his rural accent and dress and he remained inwardly insecure, constantly seeking reassurance from colleagues as to his ability. His private life took on an unhappy pattern of passionate but unrequited attachments to younger, usually teenage, girls.

One of the reasons for misrepresentation was that Bruckner became embroiled, through no fault of his own, in one of the nastiest episodes in the history of Western music. A feud developed in Germany and Austria in the second part of the nineteenth century which was spread far and wide by supporters of opposing musical camps. If you declared for Wagner you were castigated by the pro-Brahmsian faction and if you declared for Brahms there was equal calumnity from the Wagnerites. It is hard to appreciate at a distance the intensity of this musical war but a dig around in contemporary writing shows some alarming opinions and vicious statements. There is no doubt that Bruckner loved the music of Wagner and he found a performance of Tannhäuser in 1863 overwhelming: the breadth and time-scale of the music showed him the way forward for his compositions. It is said that Bruckner sat next to the great conductor Hans Richter at the first performance of Die Walküre at Bayreuth and whispered to him, "Beautiful, marvellous but do tell me afterwards what it is about." He knew though! Notwithstanding his awe of the great man's music, Bruckner was soon hailed as doing for the symphony what Wagner had done for opera. Wagner took up Bruckner's cause and, accepting the dedication of the Third Symphony, hailed him as the greatest symphonic writer after Beethoven. This espousal really turned up the wrath of the anti-Wagnerites; the critics, who had found Brucker's early work satisfactory, fell upon him. "Bruckner composes like a drunkard" was one of the less inflammatory statements.

So much for the background, what of the music and how to describe the scale of Bruckner's mighty thoughts? Usually these notes try not to delve too deeply into the technicalities of the music but, as structure is here so important, it might help to see a few of the trees in the wood. One of the standard form/structures of classical music, perhaps the most dominant, is called "sonata" form. The name is immaterial but the concept is so important that it has survived from the eighteenth century to the present day. Simply then: a piece of music starts with an exposition of a melodic or rhythmic idea in the home tonality, followed by another in a contrasted key. These ideas are then put into a melting pot of development before a return is made to the original subject which is followed by the second idea, both this time in the home key of the music. This is, of course, a gross over-simplification of what happens, yet it is the bare bones on which a composer fleshes out his ideas with varying degrees of inspiration and success. The process can take a few minutes or, in the hands of Schubert, Brahms and, of course, Bruckner, half an hour. The structure itself is like a great bridge - we explore the foundations, revel in the complexity, admire the symmetry and notice the daring departure from the norm before returning to familiar ground. A subdued horn-call over barely audible shimmering strings leads us into Bruckner's adventure. This simple idea is clearly extended before the music changes to a nobler level and Bruckner's "second" subject -in his case, usually two well contrasted ideas.. To extend the idea of "homeness" even further Bruckner recapitulates some of his ideas in the other movements of the symphony. You will hear how the distant horn call becomes a matter of spiritual uplift and release in the final bars of the work.

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