Bruckner 7

[Roehre]

.... I'm just trying to suggest a mode of listening which doesn't depend on received associations but on a more "personal" relationship with the music (and not with the presumed character of the composer!) which generates its own associations. .....

I do appreciate knowing what has or might have influenced the compositional process. Creative processes do interest me highly, not only composing, but also the visual arts as well as literature, especially poetry.

Back to music: I am very happy to disclose that during my listening to a work I generally don't mind to know what a composer might have meant with the music. For that I've got my own thoughts, feelings, associations and appreciations.
Internal as well as external associations contribute heavily on my personal appreciation of a piece. As a consequence I might appreciate a piece very differently from what obviously most likely were the composer's associations, feelings and thoughts.

And it works vice versa too.
Many works I do translate in my head into landscapes, in all shapes and forms, through all times of the day (or night: Mahler!). Walking or travelling through similar landscapes immediately translate the music returning in my head.
Moods or external situations are recalled in a similar way.

All this doesn't affect my appreciation of a work as a piece of art hardly.
I am very happy to accept and appreciate that Mozart 40 is a masterpiece. Nevertheless I am not far off disliking the piece thouroughly (a former girlfriend involved...). Nevertheless I have read about and discussed the ins and outs and the backgrounds of that symphony, as it is an intruiging work.
Despite 1812's bombast I do like the piece (but it has got to be mentioned that from a structural/compositional point of view it IS a nice piece too), as I like the noise it makes , but before all because of the circumstances I heard it for the very first time (longer ago than I care to remember, must be said), recalling those treasured memories.

Hence: what the composer might have thought during the compositional process: my own thoughts and associations prevail I'm afraid

[Richard Tarleton]

My first contact with Bruckner 7 was also my first with Bruckner - like Tony, it was the Klemperer recording on LP in the 60s. My university landlord (also a don, and an Austrian Jew who'd left in 1939) played it to me one afternoon when I'd returned early from the library. He'd heard Furtwangler conduct it in Vienna. I knew nothing of Bruckner's life, external influences, anything like that, but the effect was immediate and profound. Like Petrushka it's the one I come back to most often. This thread is the first I'd heard of this event. I was given H-H Schonzeler for my birthday in 1971, he doesn't mention it.

And re received associations, I must confess to not bothering too much with mastering the minutiae of the narrative of Strauss tone poems - I find the music tells the story in a non-verbal way......

[Petrushka]

Perhaps one for a thread of its own?

Listening to music is a very personal thing and can have individual associations and meanings very different from what the composer 'intended'. What I really have an issue with is a categorical statement such as the one that Bruckner was influenced by the Ringtheater fire when there seems to be little or no evidence of anything of the sort other that his apartment was situated near the site of the tragedy. This method of imposing an idea or association on to a piece of music is, in my opinion, deeply flawed.

Elgar wrote such associations on the score of his 2nd Symphony ('Venice - Tinagel' and the like) but they are meaningless to us, the listener. Biographical data of this kind can make no sense to us at all. The association of the untimely death of Manon Gropius clearly influenced Berg in the writing of his Violin Concerto and we are told so every time but here we do have direct evidence as well as internal evidence from the music itself that there is a feeling of loss and deep sadness entirely in keeping with the association. The Bach quote makes this explicit.

In the absence of any evidence one can only conclude that the Radio Times blurb regarding the Bruckner 7 is nonsense.

[Roehre]

Perhaps one for a thread of its own?

good idea

Listening to music is a very personal thing and can have individual associations and meanings very different from what the composer 'intended'. What I really have an issue with is a categorical statement such as the one that Bruckner was influenced by the Ringtheater fire when there seems to be little or no evidence of anything of the sort other that his apartment was situated near the site if the tragedy. This method of imposing an idea or association on to a piece of music is, in my opinion, deeply flawed.

Elgar wrote such associations on the score of his 2nd Symphony ('Venice - Tinagel' and the like) but they are meaningless to us, the listener. Biographical data of this kind can make no sense to us at all. The association of the untimely death of Manon Gropius clearly influenced Berg in the writing of his Violin Concerto and we are told so every time but here we do have direct evidence as well as internal evidence from the music itself that there is a feeling of loss and deep sadness entirely in keeping with the association. The Bach quote makes this explicit.

Well said, Petrushka

In the absence of any evidence one can only conclude that the Radio Times blurb regarding the Bruckner 7 is nonsense.

Fully agreed

[Richard Barrett]

Listening to music is a very personal thing and can have individual associations and meanings very different from what the composer 'intended'.

Indeed, and I'm glad you put in the scare-quotes there because composers' intentions (in general, I think) have less to do with evoking particular associations in the listener's mind than with creating a situation wherein the listener in turn creates his/her own experience.

Berg is an interesting example - as you say, we're always told about the personal circumstances behind the expressive world of his Violin Concerto, which were made clear at the time by the composer's dedication of the score. On the other hand, his expressive "intentions" in the case of the Lyric Suite were only discovered long after his death.

[ahinton]

I for one would welcome a new thread on this. Richard's references to "it's about you" illustrate something that is not, I believe, thought about and discussed as often as it ought to be; a composer writes a work as part of a process of engagement with his/her listeners-to-be, so it would be rather absurd if, in one sense, those works were in no sense "about" those listeners. No composer worthy of the name would write a work with no concern whatsoever as to how it may be received and how its listeners might go about absorbing it; composition is a means of communication but not just of the one-way kind that is often taken to be "the way things are". I think that it can be misleading always to try to compartmentalise - or worse , dismiss - the personal associations that a listener may have with a work as though the one cannot possibly have any meaningful connection with the other; it's far from everything, of course, but such associative responses as there may be have an inevitable part to play in the ways in which pieces of music are absorbed.

I'm not sure that I could contribute much that's useful here, but I'd certainly be interested to read such a thread, particularly any part that Richard might take in developing it.

[edashtav]

hmmm... seems there's not much appetite for continuing this discussion, which IMO is a shame. I hope nobody thinks I'm claiming more insight into Bruckner and his music than anyone else, I'm just trying to suggest a mode of listening which doesn't depend on received associations but on a more "personal" relationship with the music (and not with the presumed character of the composer!) which generates its own associations. Petrushka has mentioned this kind of thing, but others seem more concerned with the influence of biographical data...

I've been away & off-line (visiting my Mother) . As verismissimo has written, this is a very though-provoking post, RB.

I think your point is true. However, I think people seek external validation for what they feel when hearing a composition. Their search for "roots" for compositions is related to that. We want others to identify and share the emotions that we experience. Existence can be solitary: shared experiences matter.

Taking the point further, the ultimate validation for one's feelings may lie in identifying events and circumstances that we sense may have caused a composer to have experienced and then given concrete form to the feelings that his composition engenders in us.

[Richard Barrett]

(visiting my Mother)

As is only right today.

I've been sitting here for a while trying to formulate a reply to what you've written but the words won't take shape unfortunately...

[teamsaint]

I've been away & off-line (visiting my Mother) . As verismissimo has written, this is a very though-provoking post, RB.

I think your point is true. However, I think people seek external validation for what they feel when hearing a composition. Their search for "roots" for compositions is related to that. We want others to identify and share the emotions that we experience. Existence can be solitary: shared experiences matter.

Taking the point further, the ultimate validation for one's feelings may lie in identifying events and circumstances that we sense may have caused a composer to have experienced and then given concrete form to the feelings that his composition engenders in us.

I hesitate to step in here......

All our experience is in our own head. So, if we seek the "external validation" that Ed discusses, what we are actually doing is finding that validation within our own internal experience of what we perceived to be an external stimulus.

"Shared experiences" seem to matter. I have always thought that about music, but that shared experience is only in fact a sensation within ourselves. What we feel as a shared experience might just be said to be an enhanced personal experience.
So, It is important, it seems to me, to keep that perspective, fact, call it what you will, when we respond to music, or think about how we respond. What it is that seems to trigger an enhanced personal response may vary from person to person, or time to time, but in the end its always something that we have reprocessed in a fairly major way.

Which is perhaps just another way of agreeing with RB.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Berg is an interesting example - as you say, we're always told about the personal circumstances behind the expressive world of his Violin Concerto, which were made clear at the time by the composer's dedication of the score. On the other hand, his expressive "intentions" in the case of the Lyric Suite were only discovered long after his death.

... and, on the other "other hand", there is the "secret programme" that hides behind the public programme of the Violin Concerto (Berg's own illegitimate daughter, whom he fathered at the age of seventeen after an affair with one of the family servants - the girl worked for the Berg family at their Summer home in Carinthia, hence the Carinthian folk song quoted in the Concerto with its reference to "oversleeping in Mizzi's bed": a strange reference if taken to apply to Manon, but making more sense when the servant's name - Marie Scheuchl - is known.)

Does any of this make the Violin Concerto a "better" piece? Do listeners really feel closer to Berg's sound world by identifying these biographical at various points in the work? Is this really the "ultimate validation" of their emotional connection to the work? Do listeners "like", or "understand" a work they've previously hated if they're given some biographical "hook" to attach them to the work? This isn't how it works for me, I have to say: it strikes me more as "gossip". I'm more interested and involved in the way the work uses sound: how vibrations in the air are varied and repeated, how the Musicians use the pacing and placing of sonic events to create overwhelming experiences I haven't heard or felt before. It is a physical, emotional and intellectual "total immersion", that confirms and even reveals to me who I am - the old adage "you can lose yourself in a good book, but you find yourself in a great one" sums it up.

[Richard Barrett]

... and, on the other "other hand", there is the "secret programme" that hides behind the public programme of the Violin Concerto

There you go. I'd forgotten about that one... and actually my relationship with that piece really has nothing to do with any of its programmatic dimensions. Anyway thanks to you and teamsaint for saying clearly what I was struggling to say.

[bluestateprommer]

For admirers of the Barenboim / Staatskapelle Berlin Bruckner performances at The Proms last summer, here's something off WQXR's website from the Bruckner cycle by the same team at Carnegie Hall that is concluding today (with Bruckner 9), the concert last Friday of Bruckner 7:

http://www.wqxr.org/#!/story/daniel-barenboim-leads-staatskapelle-berlin-bruckner-mozart/

[Conchis]

After listening to some well-recorded but (I thought) routine Bruckner performances by the likes of Christoph Von Dohnanyi, I though I was 'off' Bruckner. Then I picked up Bruno Walter's early 60s performance on Columbia Masteworks - what a revelation! I think hearing Bruckner conducted by a real Romantic (there aren't any about these days) makes all the difference. This is definitely one of my favourite performances of this work.

[richardfinegold]

After listening to some well-recorded but (I thought) routine Bruckner performances by the likes of Christoph Von Dohnanyi, I though I was 'off' Bruckner. Then I picked up Bruno Walter's early 60s performance on Columbia Masteworks - what a revelation! I think hearing Bruckner conducted by a real Romantic (there aren't any about these days) makes all the difference. This is definitely one of my favourite performances of this work.

Those Walter Columbia Symphony Bruckner recordings were my first exposure to Bruckner. I haven’t heard them for about 40 years. I remember the Orchestral playing was kind of rough compared to the super Orchestras, but they would be fun to revisit

[Conchis]

Those Walter Columbia Symphony Bruckner recordings were my first exposure to Bruckner. I haven’t heard them for about 40 years. I remember the Orchestral playing was kind of rough compared to the super Orchestras, but they would be fun to revisit

Walter was one those conductors who just makes everything sound better, imo, even when he was working with pick-up orchestras, as was mostly the case in his later years.

Sadly, he didn't record that much, in the scheme of things: no complete operas (live bootlegs apart) and, apart from Brahms and Beethoven, no complete symphony cycles. So what we have is treasurable. His Bruckner 9 is famous and highly praised but the 7th seems to be (wrongly) in its shade. I've not heard his recording of the 4th, but I think I'm bored with that symphony, anyway.