Liked my introduct’ry rhyming verse, And wonder’st how thou mightest help this cause? On Patreon and Bandcamp, funds disperse- It helps my work here more than mere applause.
Classical Nerd unfortunately, i am a student composer with no money. All i have is my humble "like" and "share", if it helps. But great video, as always. The intro is a masterpiece and i encourage you to cosplay more composers in the future.
I speak not to disprove what Classical Nerd spoke, But here I am to speak what I do know, You all did love him once, not without cause. What cause withholds you then to mourn for him? O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts! And men have lost their reason. Bear with me. My heart is in the coffin there with Bruckner. And I must pause 'til it come back to me.
Alas, my reading of these verses Came late in the day of my acquaintance With your channel and its treasures Where, struck by its brilliance On Patreon I had already pledged my meager purse
I have never understood why Bruckner is such a problem for so many people. I recall my first experience of Bruckner: the horn call which begins the Fourth. I knew instantly that I was about to hear something with which I would be connected. Thanks for the presentation.
I played the 4th when driving into the Rocky Mountains for the first time. An hour later, my companion said “I don’t know what that was, but it was absolutely perfect.”
The corpse photo is by no means the only example of Bruckner's fascination with the macabre. When Beethoven's body was exhumed and translated, Bruckner dived into the melee to get the best view and dropped his pince-nez in the newly dug grave where it presumably still remains to this day. It was even worse when the same event occurred with Schubert's remains: when the body was exposed in the old grave, Bruckner jumped bodily right into the grave and grabbed the skull which he cradled in his hands before having to hand it over. Perhaps the most disturbing episode was when the theatre across the road from his apartment burned down: he paid a special point of paying a visit to see the many charred bodies before they were removed. Even after death, there is a macabre element to his burial. He is buried in a sarcophagus which has a coffin inside it through which his face can be seen through a window. The backdrop to it, placed behind the sarcophagus is a heaped arrangement of skulls belonging to deceased Augustinian canons which are mounted behind a grille. Periodically, his embalmed body is sent abroad for restoration. There are photos on the web showing the cadaver which is completely recognisable and does not look much different from those last photos taken in 1896.
Bruckner's final examination: “He should have examined us!” exclaimed the chief examiner and distinguished conductor Joseph Herbeck. “If I knew just one tenth of what he knows, I’d be happy.”
Bruckner has always been one of my all time favorite composers. I never knew he had such a tragic, troubled life. A tremendously interesting video! Thanks for sharing.
My first experience of Bruckner was attending performances of his 8th and 9th Symphonies by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Claus Tennestedt. I was immediately smitten! Fast forward 44 years or so; I still am! ❤
I think it's important to note that Sechter taught Schubert for a little while right before Schubert's death. So there is a very close connection: Schubert - Sechter - Bruckner.
Recently played cello in a performance of Bruckner's 5th symphony and really loved the experience. Bruckner requires patience--nothing happens quickly. Also less happens than with Mahler, who likes to cram his orchestration with myriad details. They key is to listen to the small changes, and these supply a surprising richness and depth.
It is always a pleasure as well as inspiring to listen to the comment of a musician, who actually PLAYED Bruckner's scores and experienced both technically and emotionally, the greatness and depth of Great Master's MUSIC.
Great video! Enjoyed it! My favorite composer. I recall the quote by some musicologist years ago: "Brucker's symphonies sound like masses, and his masses sound like symphonies."
Regarding the observation at 13:26 : they emerge from some other universe rarely perceptible in ours where they have always been going on eternally--and stay for a time.
The photo of his dead mother isn't really that weird. Back then it was common practice to take pictures of recently deceased relatives for the simple reason that they never had the opportunity to do it while they were alive. It's known as post mortem photography. And thanks for a great video!
It's the having-it-on-the-desk part that gets me, because I've had this unshakable mental image of my theory professor doing that ever since I learned it about Bruckner.
@@ClassicalNerd I was a bit unnerved when I visited Ainola, Sibelius's home, and saw that he had a large portrait of his dead daughter Kirsti overlooking his piano. Different times.....Great talk by the way.
@@Marcel_Audubon It wasn't weird at the time:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-mortem_photography#:~:text=Post-mortem%20photography%20%28also%20known%20as%20memorial%20portraiture%20or,post-mortem%20photography%20is%20that%20of%20Europe%20and%20America.
Corpse photos were very common at the time and would not have been considered creepy. Considering the photo technology of the time it was one of the easiest ways to get a subject to sit still
His symphonies, from my first hearing, sound like orchestral transcriptions from works originally composed for organ. Upon learning he was an organist...😊 His manuscripts are ASMR for the eyes.
Bruckner as composer has been unfairly underestimated for decades by the musical authorities, even in academic circles. But despite that fact, his music deserves admiration. It becomes clear with the first listening. It is immediately perfectly obvious that he was capable of creating an immense structure of sounds and development of musical ideas, knowing the orchestration well and controlling the events within the fascinating dimensions of his movements. There's no doubt he was the great composer and only as such he could invent the beauty of slow movements in both the Second or the Seventh symphonies, or the middle one in the Ninth.
Hello Classical Nerd, warm regards from HK. I'm a dedicated lover for Bruckner's Music and I listened to your brilliant talk with intent interest. Your talk on Bruckner's personal history and art is very captivating, informative and educational, I loved it very much. I have just subscribed your channel and looking forward to listen to you talk about the life and art of Johannes Brahms. Keep up your good work Pal. From HK
Thank you for the video! I always love to see new content about Bruckner on YT! To me there is only Bruckner and Bach when it comes to ultimate musical craftmanship dedicated to the lord.
Bruckner's eighth symphony, the greatest, most sublime symphony ever written. The absolute mystery of love and death is contained within this symphony. Sans pareil. Transmogrifying. Beyond words. Makes all other symphonies sound rubbish. All of them, by comparison. When asked what inspired him to compose it, he said, looking into a beautiful girl's eyes. "the eternal feminine draws us ever upwards" Goethe
Bruckner's symphonies are some of the greatest I've ever encountered. yes Mahler's are even longer and have more orchestral sophistications, but Bruckner's symphonies have a lot of muscularity and decisiveness in them.
You mention Bruckner's improvisational prowess at the organ. In his extensive work as a concert organist, he always only improvised, never playing composed repertory. BTW, he was the only non-French organist to participate in the inaugural concert of the organ at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, in March 1868. You're not the only one to seek to explain Bruckner's compositional style in terms of his being an organist. But, as an organist-composer myself, I feel a need to challenge this, in that so many other composers were also organists, but there never seems to be a compulsion to explain their composing their non-organ works in those terms: J. S. Bach, Händel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Bizet, Brahms, Gounod, Fauré, Franck, Elgar, Holst, Ives, Barber, Messiaen, Persichetti...
I love Bruckner athough if i think about it I only know symphonies 4,7,8,9 well. I have heard the other symphonies but not for a long time and I know very little of his other output. I adore symphony 4 and the coda in final movement is magnificent (especially with Celibidache). When I think of Bruckner's symphonic construction I think of cathedrals - there is the magnificent whole and then details on a smaller scale. He is a very interesting character.
Bruckner was literally known to enter a trance while he improvised at the church organ. John Berky of the abruckner website refers to the "Bruckner moment", which for me was at age 15. There is I think in Bruckner a unique paradox between the objective and subjective. In Brahms this is resolved through lyricism, where in Bruckner through mysticism.
A fantastic video of Bruckner. You did him a great justice. I feel fortunate and blessed to love his music. It amazes me that Brahms bashed Bruckner. Artists who by definition embrace and champion change not accepting something different than what they think blows my mind. I love both Brahms and Bruckner and am happy they both existed and wrote immortal music.
Are there any particular subjects within counterpoint that you would like to see covered? This entire channel could be devoted to counterpoint and just barely scratch the surface of it, so I'm skeptical of doing one on the subject as a whole.
fantastic comprehensive video. Thank you for your insight. Always enagaged with Bruckner on an emtional level but to have a theorotical explonation is fantastic - cheers!
I find critics endlessly amusing, especially of the Hanslick breed. We see that in movies all the time, when people like Siskel and Ebert just mostly spouted incredible nonsense about great movies (Carpenter's The Thing not least among them), but were revered for it. The usual critic's inability to accept anything that's outside what they're used to or consider "good" would just be amusing, were it not for the power these guys often wield.
Liked and subscribed. This was an excellent tribute to this underappreciated master. What I liked best is how you brought out details that even I, a confirmed Brucknerian, wasn't aware (I'd love to hear the grand fugue prefaced by theme and variations--a work I presume is lost), and you didn't repeat the many common misconceptions about and even dismissals of him so often encountered. I see you've done a video on Richard Wetz, which I much look forward to watching. P.S. You easily could do a follow up: Gustav Mahler: The _Other_ Macabre Symphonist.
Another wonderful post. So much research and information that I thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you so much. Two things come to my mind. 1. No mention was made to what i have always considered the highlight of a Bruckner Symphony... The Scherzo. And 2, Like Schubert, I would have loved an explanation as to why Bruckner wrote no concertos in his life. Minor points on the grand scale of things, but interesting ones. David
1. In this particular case, I felt that the script worked better by focusing on Dahlhaus's circumpolar theory as opposed to specific tendencies within each movement; every time I talk about form in a non-generalized fashion, the video tends to drag. That's a big part of the reason that I put sources in the video description for those who are interested in more technical detail. 2. That's something I never really considered! I suppose, for each composer, there are infinitely more "why didn't"s than "why did"s. The best I can fathom is that Bruckner, being unaffiliated with the grandiose, virtuosic, heroic displays of contemporaneous concerto composers, didn't think that there much for him to say in the form. Without much chamber music in his output, he had almost no instrumentalists who would champion his works; he had no soloists to write for (especially with his aversion to writing for his own instrument, for himself to play), and thus no one who would consider commissioning him for one. The few champions he had for most of his life were conductors, who would be perfectly satisfied with the symphonies.
A very informative lecture, even for this devoted Brucknerian. One suggestion: "Notoriety" is a state of being well-known for some bad quality. In your presentation, which uses "notoriety" twice, I think you mean fame for achieving something good.
Fantastic video, thank you! Bruckner was such a strange character, you don't even know if he was boring or interesting. It is really hard to grasp how a man so lacking self confidence could write such deep, powerful music. Not one day goes by in my life without some parts of one of Bruckner's symphonies somehow humming inside my head. I am planning a pilgrimage tour to Austria in 2024 for his 200th birthday.
Mine too, the 8th I heard at a concert hall but I didn't know Bruckner at that stage but the finale left a lasting impression. In particular the sheer torrent of sound with the strings working as hard as they could with the brass blaring out on top.
Maestro Bruckner has become a recent fascination for me though I am not sure of the reason. I would not yet be able to identify his works and would probably confuse them with Mahler or Wagner. However, learning about the man himself and his deep faith and humility has earned him a place in my "Composers I would like to meet in the next life" list. Thank you as always for your video sir. Blessings and peace
Splendid video. I would have liked references to the places in the 8th & 9th you referred to, where Bruckner super-imposes all the themes at once in the 8th and sounds all seven notes at once in the 9th. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to listen to the symphonies again myself to see if I can find them - sigh. ;)
After hearing it performed, Berlioz called Beethoven's 9th symphony a 'revelation'. Yes, Berlioz admired the 6th too. Berlioz was a piece of work! The David Cairns bios about him are wonderful. As Mahler matured as a composer, his opinion of Bruckner's music became more critical. True, Mahler championed Bruckner's music throughout his life. I find parallels with both of their 9th symphonies. Especially in the final adagio of each work. Of course Bruckner 9 was missing a defined 4th movement (he died before he could complete it) so the symphony ends with the 3rd movement adagio. I enjoyed this clip very much. I also look forward to viewing more of your clips. I really enjoyed your opening! I actually read about Bruckner's exhumation fixation in Jan Swafford's excellent bio about Brahms. I subscribed to you channel. Wonderful job with the pronunciation! Keep it up, Prost!
Swafford's writing is excellent; his three biographies are probably my favorite books on my shelf. I've not read Cairns' work, but I'll be sure to check it out.
"Of course Bruckner 9 was missing a defined 4th movement". Majority of it survived, main item missing was the coda. 18 out of 23 minutes isn't bad. Mainly I'd ask you to listen to it if you haven't already.
I don't agree that Bruckner's music is an 'acquired taste'. I found the attraction instant. I have adored Bruckner's music since I first heard it as a child. His musical style sounds conservative to my ears, but when you listen, you often find that a conventional theme is stated to establish the tonality, then it immediately veers off into some alien tonal realm and becomes something totally different. And yet it doesn't seem to sound radical in the least. Also, many of his themes are nothing more than a scale or arpeggio, or a fragment thereof - sometimes Bruckner can draw intense meaning from a mere two or three notes. As William Blake put it - "To see a world in a grain of sand...."
Nice video. Heavy on the info and with no padding. I would, however, object to your description of Bruckner as "macabre". Enigmatic, perhaps, or eccentric, or even bizarre, but not macabre. Also, the success of his 7th symphony brought Bruckner fame, not notoriety. He was already notorious.
I suppose I'd conflated "notoriety" with "notable" instead of "notorious;" I'd always used it as a neutral term to describe someone who'd achieved notability in general, not because of anything bad. I'll be more careful on that in the future, but now I'm wondering why I've never heard it used in its dictionary definition before ... perhaps it's a matter of having grown up in the American south, where the dialect doesn't embrace that particular nuance?
Highly recommended for serious understanding of Bruckner's symphonies is The Essence of Bruckner by Robert Simpson. Maybe indeed Bruckner has more in common with someone like Giovanni Gabrielli than with Mahler or Wagner. As far as symphonic lineage goes it seems pretty damn obvious to me that it goes Haydn - Schubert - Bruckner. Schubert's Great C Major Symphony has so much Bruckner in the first movement.
Thomas: Every composer has been inspired by a Beethoven symphony. Schubert was inspired from 1 And 2, Schumann was from 3, 5, 7 and 8, Berlioz by 6 and Bruckner and Mahler by 9. Sad Beethoven 4 noises.
This custom of photographing dead relatives reminds us of the Victorian era, in fact, the time in which Bruckner lived. On TH-cam, the item "post-mortem photos" or something similar to that already shows us many of them (not recommended for those who are afraid of the dead). It should not have been the custom in Vienna at the time, but it was in Victorian England.
A strange title as I've never thought of Bruckner as being macabre, but many interesting things here. Personally I find most of Bruckner's symphonies awesome and are greater than those of Brahms and Mahler. Bruckner the man in modern terms would probably be best described as being slightly odd and many have commented that the composer's music bears no insight into the man and vice versa. Monolithic and granite-like Bruckner's symphonies are top of the genre and his music will live forever.
Socially awkward and obsessed with numbers . As a father of an autistic son I am sure that these days Bruckner would have been classed as "On the spectrum"
I saw Bruckners 7th at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and the last word I would use to describe it is macabre. It was totally spectacular, the kind of music you have to listen to live really. The only way you could say composers are macabre is that they're Freemasons.....there doesn't seem to be a major composer who wasn't one. I would say Bruckner is cheerful and cosmic despite being rejected a few times by 16/17/18 year old girls lol. (Which makes a change from being rejected by five years olds in the masonic world doesn't it mun.) I'm not the Freemasons biggest fan but I love pretty much all the musicians who were and are Freemasons, I hope they take over the organisation from within and try and calm it all down really. Trying to calm it down from without has been something of a curse quite frankly.
Several years ago I watched a great multi hour documentary on Bruckner. but now I cannot find it here on youtube or elsewhere. Does anyone know what the title might be? It had an English narrator.
A huge thankyou for an excellent video . Very enjoyable and such insight into this really decent man . Am rather a fan of the 6th Symphony which perhaps doesn't always get a good write out . On the other hand I don't find Brahms easy to get along with ! He didn't help himself by being a notorious hater of cats .
Thank you! I am not as familiar with the sixth symphony as some of his others, but I will be listening to it for sure. (I have a 12-hour road trip coming up and need a playlist!)
patreon.com/classicalnerd is for recurring donations, or one-time donations can be made through purchase of my music (including sheet music) available at lentovivace.bandcamp.com
Wagner was far from being a good person. And he was so absorbed in himself that I don't think he even really noticed Bruckner's predicaments. I'll never forget the immeasurable stupidity of Cosima saying (perhaps even prompted by Wagner himself) that Lohengrin was the greatest monument the Middle Ages had granted the world. That kind of thing alone serves to show that for him and his immediate circle of worshipers, nothing and no one else existed but Wagner. Poor Bruckner... And he's such a wonderful composer too!
May I ask where do you think the missing sketches for the finale of the 9th may be ?? Could someone find them somewhere ? If Lautreamont's portrait was found more than 100 years after his death by a very clever man, I hope the same could happen to the missing sketches one day ❤
While we know that friends and colleagues suggested changes, what we don't know is if Bruckner put those changes in because he legitimately thought they were good ideas to improve his symphonies, or if he included them because he thought it would better his chances at performance. Bruckner scholarship seems mostly focused on discerning which changes fall into which category, and reverting the latter.
Oh my god, wait... Are those books behind your head the Dover books for Beethoven’s symphonies??! If so I HAVE THOSE TOO and they’re great editions! Also, great and informative video! Thank you so much : )
I love Dover editions! I had to get those for a class in the Beethoven symphonies taught by David Levy (whose book on the Ninth Symphony I have somewhere else on the shelf), and I'm very glad I did.
![Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Mastermind of Orchestration [The Mighty Handful, Pt. 6/6]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/lh2_sFNJCYQ/mqdefault.jpg)
![Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov: Mastermind of Orchestration [The Mighty Handful, Pt. 6/6]](/img/tr.png)
Liked my introduct’ry rhyming verse,
And wonder’st how thou mightest help this cause?
On Patreon and Bandcamp, funds disperse-
It helps my work here more than mere applause.
Classical Nerd unfortunately, i am a student composer with no money. All i have is my humble "like" and "share", if it helps. But great video, as always. The intro is a masterpiece and i encourage you to cosplay more composers in the future.
I speak not to disprove what Classical Nerd spoke,
But here I am to speak what I do know,
You all did love him once, not without cause.
What cause withholds you then to mourn for him?
O judgement! Thou art fled to brutish beasts!
And men have lost their reason. Bear with me.
My heart is in the coffin there with Bruckner.
And I must pause 'til it come back to me.
Alas, my reading of these verses
Came late in the day of my acquaintance
With your channel and its treasures
Where, struck by its brilliance
On Patreon I had already pledged my meager purse
I love that mahler was there supporting bruckner
"Bruckner! He is my man!" is one of my favorite quotes in classical history!
I have never understood why Bruckner is such a problem for so many people. I recall my first experience of Bruckner: the horn call which begins the Fourth. I knew instantly that I was about to hear something with which I would be connected. Thanks for the presentation.
People like to think that their subjective musical taste is objective fact. It seems to be the source of most all snobbery in the field.
I played the 4th when driving into the Rocky Mountains for the first time. An hour later, my companion said “I don’t know what that was, but it was absolutely perfect.”
The corpse photo is by no means the only example of Bruckner's fascination with the macabre.
When Beethoven's body was exhumed and translated, Bruckner dived into the melee to get the best view and dropped his pince-nez in the newly dug grave where it presumably still remains to this day.
It was even worse when the same event occurred with Schubert's remains: when the body was exposed in the old grave, Bruckner jumped bodily right into the grave and grabbed the skull which he cradled in his hands before having to hand it over.
Perhaps the most disturbing episode was when the theatre across the road from his apartment burned down: he paid a special point of paying a visit to see the many charred bodies before they were removed.
Even after death, there is a macabre element to his burial. He is buried in a sarcophagus which has a coffin inside it through which his face can be seen through a window. The backdrop to it, placed behind the sarcophagus is a heaped arrangement of skulls belonging to deceased Augustinian canons which are mounted behind a grille. Periodically, his embalmed body is sent abroad for restoration. There are photos on the web showing the cadaver which is completely recognisable and does not look much different from those last photos taken in 1896.
Bruckner's final examination: “He should have examined us!” exclaimed the chief examiner and distinguished conductor Joseph Herbeck. “If I knew just one tenth of what he knows, I’d be happy.”
Bruckner has always been one of my all time favorite composers. I never knew he had such a tragic, troubled life.
A tremendously interesting video! Thanks for sharing.
If you have a easy life you can't be a great artist apparently.
@@ClassicalPowertrue 😢
Same for Shostakovich, mozart, Dvorak,Tchaikovsky etc
@@PortugalZeroworldcup wagner seemed to have enjoyed himself, after he escaped death sentence...
Excellent. This covered an amazing amount very cogently in a short compass.
My first experience of Bruckner was attending performances of his 8th and 9th Symphonies by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Claus Tennestedt. I was immediately smitten! Fast forward 44 years or so; I still am! ❤
Bruckner s melodies are some of the most beautiful ever written
I think it's important to note that Sechter taught Schubert for a little while right before Schubert's death. So there is a very close connection: Schubert - Sechter - Bruckner.
Very interesting, and very informative. You must have put a lot of work into that. Thank you.
Recently played cello in a performance of Bruckner's 5th symphony and really loved the experience. Bruckner requires patience--nothing happens quickly. Also less happens than with Mahler, who likes to cram his orchestration with myriad details. They key is to listen to the small changes, and these supply a surprising richness and depth.
It is always a pleasure as well as inspiring to listen to the comment of a musician, who actually PLAYED Bruckner's scores and experienced both technically and emotionally, the greatness and depth of Great Master's MUSIC.
Great video! Enjoyed it! My favorite composer. I recall the quote by some musicologist years ago: "Brucker's symphonies sound like masses, and his masses sound like symphonies."
Regarding the observation at 13:26 : they emerge from some other universe rarely perceptible in ours where they have always been going on eternally--and stay for a time.
I really love beuckner symphonies.
hoo dat
The photo of his dead mother isn't really that weird. Back then it was common practice to take pictures of recently deceased relatives for the simple reason that they never had the opportunity to do it while they were alive. It's known as post mortem photography.
And thanks for a great video!
It's the having-it-on-the-desk part that gets me, because I've had this unshakable mental image of my theory professor doing that ever since I learned it about Bruckner.
@@ClassicalNerd I was a bit unnerved when I visited Ainola, Sibelius's home, and saw that he had a large portrait of his dead daughter Kirsti overlooking his piano. Different times.....Great talk by the way.
just because it was common practice does not mean is wasn't weird
@@Marcel_Audubon It wasn't weird at the time:en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-mortem_photography#:~:text=Post-mortem%20photography%20%28also%20known%20as%20memorial%20portraiture%20or,post-mortem%20photography%20is%20that%20of%20Europe%20and%20America.
@@Marcel_Audubon Yes it does! Cultural practices change.
Thanks!
Best summary of Bruckner ever. What a treat.
Corpse photos were very common at the time and would not have been considered creepy. Considering the photo technology of the time it was one of the easiest ways to get a subject to sit still
His symphonies, from my first hearing, sound like orchestral transcriptions from works originally composed for organ. Upon learning he was an organist...😊
His manuscripts are ASMR for the eyes.
Bruckner as composer has been unfairly underestimated for decades by the musical authorities, even in academic circles. But despite that fact, his music deserves admiration. It becomes clear with the first listening. It is immediately perfectly obvious that he was capable of creating an immense structure of sounds and development of musical ideas, knowing the orchestration well and controlling the events within the fascinating dimensions of his movements. There's no doubt he was the great composer and only as such he could invent the beauty of slow movements in both the Second or the Seventh symphonies, or the middle one in the Ninth.
Oh my God! This is fantastic! I am very happy that I found Your channel!! This is so interesting and informative!
Congratulations for the video!
Bruckner had an extraordinary and strange life and I learned a lot of things.
Greetings from Brazil!
Great job!
Hello Classical Nerd, warm regards from HK. I'm a dedicated lover for Bruckner's Music and I listened to your brilliant talk with intent interest. Your talk on Bruckner's personal history and art is very captivating, informative and educational, I loved it very much. I have just subscribed your channel and looking forward to listen to you talk about the life and art of Johannes Brahms. Keep up your good work Pal. From HK
Thank you for this excellent, energetic and informed video
Thank you for the video! I always love to see new content about Bruckner on YT! To me there is only Bruckner and Bach when it comes to ultimate musical craftmanship dedicated to the lord.
Bruckner and Bach are the absolute pinnacles of Western Civilization.
Bruckner's eighth symphony, the greatest, most sublime symphony ever written. The absolute mystery of love and death is contained within this symphony. Sans pareil. Transmogrifying. Beyond words. Makes all other symphonies sound rubbish. All of them, by comparison. When asked what inspired him to compose it, he said, looking into a beautiful girl's eyes. "the eternal feminine draws us ever upwards" Goethe
Agreed…the 8th is the GOAT
@@tom2tones223 for those of you who don't understand this, I didn't until only a few weeks back. G. O. A. T is The greatest of all time. Noel
I am inclined to agree - I have been studying the eighth lately.
Bruckner's symphonies are some of the greatest I've ever encountered. yes Mahler's are even longer and have more orchestral sophistications, but Bruckner's symphonies have a lot of muscularity and decisiveness in them.
Love it! The intros just keep getting better and better. (And as always the information is presented efficiently and effectively :)
Thanks for all the great videos on these great composers! They're great to listen to while working on essays and the like.
I really enjoyed this man. Bruckner fascinates me both as a composer and as a human.
You mention Bruckner's improvisational prowess at the organ. In his extensive work as a concert organist, he always only improvised, never playing composed repertory. BTW, he was the only non-French organist to participate in the inaugural concert of the organ at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, in March 1868.
You're not the only one to seek to explain Bruckner's compositional style in terms of his being an organist. But, as an organist-composer myself, I feel a need to challenge this, in that so many other composers were also organists, but there never seems to be a compulsion to explain their composing their non-organ works in those terms: J. S. Bach, Händel, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Bizet, Brahms, Gounod, Fauré, Franck, Elgar, Holst, Ives, Barber, Messiaen, Persichetti...
Excellent video and very informative. Also very balanced presentation of Bruckner the man and his eccentricities.
I love Bruckner athough if i think about it I only know symphonies 4,7,8,9 well. I have heard the other symphonies but not for a long time and I know very little of his other output. I adore symphony 4 and the coda in final movement is magnificent (especially with Celibidache). When I think of Bruckner's symphonic construction I think of cathedrals - there is the magnificent whole and then details on a smaller scale. He is a very interesting character.
Those are the best ones. The others, eh...Yes, cathedrals
Bruckner was literally known to enter a trance while he improvised at the church organ. John Berky of the abruckner website refers to the "Bruckner moment", which for me was at age 15. There is I think in Bruckner a unique paradox between the objective and subjective. In Brahms this is resolved through lyricism, where in Bruckner through mysticism.
A fantastic video of Bruckner. You did him a great justice. I feel fortunate and blessed to love his music. It amazes me that Brahms bashed Bruckner. Artists who by definition embrace and champion change not accepting something different than what they think blows my mind. I love both Brahms and Bruckner and am happy they both existed and wrote immortal music.
Hmmm....maybe that's why I have never liked Brahms' compositions. 😊
Literally got shivers around 13:45 when I noticed the crucifixus from the e-minor mass in the background
I'd like to see a video purely on the study and art of counterpoint. I realize that is quite a broad subject, but I'd still like to see it
Are there any particular subjects within counterpoint that you would like to see covered? This entire channel could be devoted to counterpoint and just barely scratch the surface of it, so I'm skeptical of doing one on the subject as a whole.
@@ClassicalNerd The history of the development of counterpoint would be cool to see
As always some fascinating information and insights. Very much appreciated, thank you.
Thank you. That was a good introduction to Bruckner. I'm attending a performance of Symphony #9 this month and wanted to know more about the composer.
fantastic comprehensive video. Thank you for your insight. Always enagaged with Bruckner on an emtional level but to have a theorotical explonation is fantastic - cheers!
This was a great overview of a great but misunderstood symphonic master. Bravo!
谢谢你精彩的介绍，为我理解布鲁克纳提供了很多很重要的思路！！
love your casio vl tone,ideal sketch book for a composer
Bruckner's music, the sound of the universe.
More like the sound of the human soul that observes and experiences the universe.
A very documented work. Thank you so much!
A very nice video. There is plenty of insight on Bruckner's music and depth of analysis. I really enjoyed it.
Me 2. Excellent.
I find critics endlessly amusing, especially of the Hanslick breed. We see that in movies all the time, when people like Siskel and Ebert just mostly spouted incredible nonsense about great movies (Carpenter's The Thing not least among them), but were revered for it. The usual critic's inability to accept anything that's outside what they're used to or consider "good" would just be amusing, were it not for the power these guys often wield.
No! Bruckner is magnificent.
Superb job! Occasionally, so droll!
YOu deserve more views dude
Liked and subscribed. This was an excellent tribute to this underappreciated master. What I liked best is how you brought out details that even I, a confirmed Brucknerian, wasn't aware (I'd love to hear the grand fugue prefaced by theme and variations--a work I presume is lost), and you didn't repeat the many common misconceptions about and even dismissals of him so often encountered.
I see you've done a video on Richard Wetz, which I much look forward to watching.
P.S. You easily could do a follow up: Gustav Mahler: The _Other_ Macabre Symphonist.
Another wonderful post. So much research and information that I thoroughly enjoyed. Thank you so much.
Two things come to my mind. 1. No mention was made to what i have always considered the highlight of a Bruckner Symphony... The Scherzo. And 2, Like Schubert, I would have loved an explanation as to why Bruckner wrote no concertos in his life. Minor points on the grand scale of things, but interesting ones. David
1. In this particular case, I felt that the script worked better by focusing on Dahlhaus's circumpolar theory as opposed to specific tendencies within each movement; every time I talk about form in a non-generalized fashion, the video tends to drag. That's a big part of the reason that I put sources in the video description for those who are interested in more technical detail.
2. That's something I never really considered! I suppose, for each composer, there are infinitely more "why didn't"s than "why did"s. The best I can fathom is that Bruckner, being unaffiliated with the grandiose, virtuosic, heroic displays of contemporaneous concerto composers, didn't think that there much for him to say in the form. Without much chamber music in his output, he had almost no instrumentalists who would champion his works; he had no soloists to write for (especially with his aversion to writing for his own instrument, for himself to play), and thus no one who would consider commissioning him for one. The few champions he had for most of his life were conductors, who would be perfectly satisfied with the symphonies.
@@ClassicalNerd Fabulous reply. A very, very interesting theory. Many thanks, as always. David
A very informative lecture, even for this devoted Brucknerian. One suggestion: "Notoriety" is a state of being well-known for some bad quality. In your presentation, which uses "notoriety" twice, I think you mean fame for achieving something good.
Maybe 'notorious' for his social awkardness etc?
Very informative, thank you very much.
Fantastic video, thank you! Bruckner was such a strange character, you don't even know if he was boring or interesting. It is really hard to grasp how a man so lacking self confidence could write such deep, powerful music. Not one day goes by in my life without some parts of one of Bruckner's symphonies somehow humming inside my head. I am planning a pilgrimage tour to Austria in 2024 for his 200th birthday.
Oh wow yes sep this year 🇦🇹
Fantastically interesting. Thank you.
This was wonderful. I never much liked Wagner or Mahler, but when I heard Nezet-Seguin perform the 8th, my eyes were opened to the value in Bruckner.
Mine too, the 8th I heard at a concert hall but I didn't know Bruckner at that stage but the finale left a lasting impression. In particular the sheer torrent of sound with the strings working as hard as they could with the brass blaring out on top.
Maestro Bruckner has become a recent fascination for me though I am not sure of the reason. I would not yet be able to identify his works and would probably confuse them with Mahler or Wagner. However, learning about the man himself and his deep faith and humility has earned him a place in my "Composers I would like to meet in the next life" list.
Thank you as always for your video sir.
Blessings and peace
Interesting to hear about Bruckner. I've been watching Sounds Strange's channel on YT. He highlights a lot of classical too.
Splendid video. I would have liked references to the places in the 8th & 9th you referred to, where Bruckner super-imposes all the themes at once in the 8th and sounds all seven notes at once in the 9th. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to listen to the symphonies again myself to see if I can find them - sigh. ;)
After hearing it performed, Berlioz called Beethoven's 9th symphony a 'revelation'. Yes, Berlioz admired the 6th too. Berlioz was a piece of work! The David Cairns bios about him are wonderful.
As Mahler matured as a composer, his opinion of Bruckner's music became more critical. True, Mahler championed Bruckner's music throughout his life. I find parallels with both of their 9th symphonies. Especially in the final adagio of each work.
Of course Bruckner 9 was missing a defined 4th movement (he died before he could complete it) so the symphony ends with the 3rd movement adagio.
I enjoyed this clip very much. I also look forward to viewing more of your clips. I really enjoyed your opening! I actually read about Bruckner's exhumation fixation in Jan Swafford's excellent bio about Brahms. I subscribed to you channel. Wonderful job with the pronunciation! Keep it up, Prost!
Swafford's writing is excellent; his three biographies are probably my favorite books on my shelf. I've not read Cairns' work, but I'll be sure to check it out.
"Of course Bruckner 9 was missing a defined 4th movement". Majority of it survived, main item missing was the coda. 18 out of 23 minutes isn't bad. Mainly I'd ask you to listen to it if you haven't already.
Un mystique hors norme. Un des plus symphonistes avec Beethoven et Mozart.
I don't agree that Bruckner's music is an 'acquired taste'. I found the attraction instant. I have adored Bruckner's music since I first heard it as a child. His musical style sounds conservative to my ears, but when you listen, you often find that a conventional theme is stated to establish the tonality, then it immediately veers off into some alien tonal realm and becomes something totally different. And yet it doesn't seem to sound radical in the least. Also, many of his themes are nothing more than a scale or arpeggio, or a fragment thereof - sometimes Bruckner can draw intense meaning from a mere two or three notes. As William Blake put it - "To see a world in a grain of sand...."
That introduction sonnet thing was absolutely hilarious, and somehow legitimately sinister at the same time lmfao
Nice video. Heavy on the info and with no padding. I would, however, object to your description of Bruckner as "macabre". Enigmatic, perhaps, or eccentric, or even bizarre, but not macabre. Also, the success of his 7th symphony brought Bruckner fame, not notoriety. He was already notorious.
I suppose I'd conflated "notoriety" with "notable" instead of "notorious;" I'd always used it as a neutral term to describe someone who'd achieved notability in general, not because of anything bad. I'll be more careful on that in the future, but now I'm wondering why I've never heard it used in its dictionary definition before ... perhaps it's a matter of having grown up in the American south, where the dialect doesn't embrace that particular nuance?
Infamy, infamy, they've all got it in for me!
@@ClassicalNerd It's ok - we Brits understand the difficulty you Colonials have with our language ;)
I agree - I don't think 'macabre' is an apt description. 'Transcendental' perhaps?
@@hugomiller1025 Oh, dear...
Highly recommended for serious understanding of Bruckner's symphonies is The Essence of Bruckner by Robert Simpson. Maybe indeed Bruckner has more in common with someone like Giovanni Gabrielli than with Mahler or Wagner. As far as symphonic lineage goes it seems pretty damn obvious to me that it goes Haydn - Schubert - Bruckner. Schubert's Great C Major Symphony has so much Bruckner in the first movement.
banjocracy ❤️❤️👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻❤️
Thomas: Every composer has been inspired by a Beethoven symphony. Schubert was inspired from 1 And 2, Schumann was from 3, 5, 7 and 8, Berlioz by 6 and Bruckner and Mahler by 9.
Sad Beethoven 4 noises.
This custom of photographing dead relatives reminds us of the Victorian era, in fact, the time in which Bruckner lived. On TH-cam, the item "post-mortem photos" or something similar to that already shows us many of them (not recommended for those who are afraid of the dead). It should not have been the custom in Vienna at the time, but it was in Victorian England.
Good introduction to Bruckner and his work.
Thank you, Maestro 🌹🌹🌹
Why anyone would require an extra-wide coffin is answered in your next sentence - he lived in a tiny apartment
A strange title as I've never thought of Bruckner as being macabre, but many interesting things here.
Personally I find most of Bruckner's symphonies awesome and are greater than those of Brahms and Mahler. Bruckner the man in modern terms would probably be best described as being slightly odd and many have commented that the composer's music bears no insight into the man and vice versa.
Monolithic and granite-like Bruckner's symphonies are top of the genre and his music will live forever.
Socially awkward and obsessed with numbers . As a father of an autistic son I am sure that these days Bruckner would have been classed as "On the spectrum"
Awesome content!! Have you considered doing a video on Lowell Liebermann?
I don't cover living artists because their careers, by definition, are not yet over.
I saw Bruckners 7th at Bridgewater Hall in Manchester and the last word I would use to describe it is macabre. It was totally spectacular, the kind of music you have to listen to live really. The only way you could say composers are macabre is that they're Freemasons.....there doesn't seem to be a major composer who wasn't one. I would say Bruckner is cheerful and cosmic despite being rejected a few times by 16/17/18 year old girls lol. (Which makes a change from being rejected by five years olds in the masonic world doesn't it mun.) I'm not the Freemasons biggest fan but I love pretty much all the musicians who were and are Freemasons, I hope they take over the organisation from within and try and calm it all down really. Trying to calm it down from without has been something of a curse quite frankly.
I would really listen to a full video about Dalhous's composers classification!❤
what's one skull between friends lol. i named my firstborn after bruckner. got blown away by his 4th.
I love Bruckner! My ultimate facorite, I remember the time when I was studying how to read a score I copied his “Christus factus est” by hand 🤣❤️
Grandissimo!
Several years ago I watched a great multi hour documentary on Bruckner. but now I cannot find it here on youtube or elsewhere. Does anyone know what the title might be? It had an English narrator.
Yes. Well he was certainly an unorthodox character. Thanks. Interesting video.
Amazing video...
Please do a video on Giovanni Bottesini.
Love your videos and keep up the good work
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
Arild Plau? He's a very interesting Norwegian composer that had survived WW2 and wrote a tuba concerto!
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
A huge thankyou for an excellent video . Very enjoyable and such insight into this really decent man . Am rather a fan of the 6th Symphony which perhaps doesn't always get a good write out . On the other hand I don't find Brahms easy to get along with ! He didn't help himself by being a notorious hater of cats .
Thank you! I am not as familiar with the sixth symphony as some of his others, but I will be listening to it for sure. (I have a 12-hour road trip coming up and need a playlist!)
I would love to see video about Francis Poulenc!
Duly noted: lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html
do you have a paypal for donations. stuff on this channel is high quality.
patreon.com/classicalnerd is for recurring donations, or one-time donations can be made through purchase of my music (including sheet music) available at lentovivace.bandcamp.com
Why not to alternate the speach with excerpts related to the verbal exposition?
Thank you, kind human, for helping me pass Music Theory class. 🙏
Post-mortem photography was super common in the 19th century. People did photo shoots with their recently dead relatives all the time.
The relative commonality of the practice back in the day doesn't absolve it from its weirdness.
@@ClassicalNerd that doesn't make any sense. "Weirdness" is subjective. People's attitudes to death differ wildly from culture to culture
Wagner was far from being a good person. And he was so absorbed in himself that I don't think he even really noticed Bruckner's predicaments. I'll never forget the immeasurable stupidity of Cosima saying (perhaps even prompted by Wagner himself) that Lohengrin was the greatest monument the Middle Ages had granted the world. That kind of thing alone serves to show that for him and his immediate circle of worshipers, nothing and no one else existed but Wagner. Poor Bruckner... And he's such a wonderful composer too!
Very interesting and enjoyable
Happy Bruckner 200 day!
May I ask where do you think the missing sketches for the finale of the 9th may be ?? Could someone find them somewhere ?
If Lautreamont's portrait was found more than 100 years after his death by a very clever man, I hope the same could happen to the missing sketches one day ❤
What do you think of his string quintet?
Has Gershwin been requested? Fantastic video by the way!
lentovivace.com/classicalnerd.html should answer all requestions.
Very interesting. You said that B sent copies of his originals to the imperial library. Why are these not used to construct a canonical edition?
While we know that friends and colleagues suggested changes, what we don't know is if Bruckner put those changes in because he legitimately thought they were good ideas to improve his symphonies, or if he included them because he thought it would better his chances at performance. Bruckner scholarship seems mostly focused on discerning which changes fall into which category, and reverting the latter.
Oh my god, wait... Are those books behind your head the Dover books for Beethoven’s symphonies??! If so I HAVE THOSE TOO and they’re great editions! Also, great and informative video! Thank you so much : )
I love Dover editions! I had to get those for a class in the Beethoven symphonies taught by David Levy (whose book on the Ninth Symphony I have somewhere else on the shelf), and I'm very glad I did.