Musical Deletions - R3 programme 31/8/13 12:15

[aeolium]

I'm not sure if there has already been a thread on this programme which was on this morning as it is apparently a repeat from early in the year, but I thought it was fascinating. It dealt with revisions to musical works, first and second thoughts, as well as revisions by later editors and composers. I wished it had been longer, as there were areas which one wanted to hear more about, such as Schumann's numerous revisions (and, e.g. his omission of certain songs from the Dichterliebe). There was also a discussion with Anthony Payne about his completion/elaboration of Elgar's sketches for his third symphony.

[Nick Armstrong]

I heard it in February and some of it again today, and mean to re-listen as I missed the part about Haas and the Bruckner revisions. Great programme - and Roderick Swanston is perfect

[LeMartinPecheur]

I heard it in February and some of it again today, and mean to re-listen as I missed the part about Haas and the Bruckner revisions. Great programme - and Roderick Swanston is perfect

What did you make of the Bruckner-Haas discussion Cali? When I started listening to Bruckner reading Gramophone in the early 70s it seemed as if there was a very clear division on Bruckner editions: Haas good, Nowak etc bad. Simples! So I tended to buy recordings from those conductors who favoured Haas. This also fitted in with a "More is better/ More notes for your money" ethos which was superficially persuasive.

Now I don't want to go down a similarly simplistic route such as "Haas=Nazi:AVOID". I hadn't heard of his Nazi affiliations (and the Nazi party's interests in removing any Jewish editorial/performance influences) until today, but had already sensed something of a turning of the tide away from Haas towards some of the shorter editions. More ain't necessarily better, and we don't have to hear some bastardised mix of B's various thoughts conflated into one edition.

[Roehre]

Haas favoured the idea of a symphony of Bruckner's existing in one version (or "Fassung") and one version only, consisting of the best of the up to four different authorised scores of that symphony.

The Haas edition of nos.1 (Wiener version), 5, 6, 7 (with exception of the cymbal in the adagio) and 9 are naeraly completely identical to the Nowak edition - as Nowak and Haas used the same brucknerian scores as point of departure

Nowak is the editor of the Bruckner Gesamtausgabe which consists of all completed scores by Bruckner, that is in some cases works in their original form. Apart from the symphonies by far the best part of the brucknerian output [like most of the Masses, the Motets, the Te Deum) exists in only one version.
The first versions of 2, 3, 4 and 8 [all first published by Nowak] are all longer than any of the Haas, whereas the "final" versions [especially III 3 and IV 3] are shorter than the Haas.

Haas was (with Orel) the main editor of the Bruckner symphonies until 1945. For his Nazi-sympathies he was fired from all his scientific and editorial jobs, did not come through a simple denazification process [in which e.g. Furtwängler and Richard Strauss quickly succeeded], got a "berufsverbot" until the mid 1950s.
Though an outline for the Anton Bruckner Gesamtausgabe dated from the late 1930s already, Haas' politically motivated editorial choices -plus the addition of music never composed by Bruckner in the first place- speeded up this project considerably and will be completed in a not too far a future (i.e. with the publication of the accounts of the editorial choices made by the editors).

for comparison it is very interesting to have a look at the timings of the Naxos/Tintner series for these symphonies' respective movements. Bruckner did not change much in his scherzos (added a coda to scherzo III2, replaced scherzo IV1 [but scherzos IV2 and IV3 are identical] and replaced the trio in Scherzo VIII2),
hence hardly different timings between these. But for any of the other movements there are sometimes spectacular differences.

I haven't listened to today's broadcast of "Musical deletions", but earlier this year I listened "live" as well as on iPlayer again.
the Brahms example was striking, the one Bruckner ditto. But most intriguing (for me that is) the Beethoven discussion.

[slarty]

If anyone missed it, PM me.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Haas favoured the idea of a symphony of Bruckner's [Eighth Symphony] existing in one version (or "Fassung") and one version only, consisting of the best of the up to four different authorised scores of that symphony.

Indeed - and his edition has been the basis of many of the finest recordings of the work (to this day, Haitink [and, IIRC, Barenboim] will use no other edition). It is the only published version of any of the first eight Bruckner Symphonies that the composer had absolutely no say in, and there are passages of Music "composed" by Haas to accommodate the splicing (bars 609-616 of the Finale, for instance).

I promise I'm not on commission, but this book (which I also recommended on the Proms Thread yesterday) sets out Haas' ammendments very well (if not very sympathetically):

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Bruckner-Symphony-Cambridge-Music-Handbooks/dp/0521635373/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1377973195&sr=1-2&keywords=bruckner+eighth+symphony