Originally posted by Serial_Apologist
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I missed the very start of the repeat of this Prom due to a neighbour's having problems with their chainsaw, so had to catch up on the slow opening movement of the Bruckner. I have not listened as much to Bruckner as I should as part of my musical self-education. Given my past dislike of this composer I really do want something interesting to come out of it. I was wrong discomparing this composer's music with Wagner's - there is a definite Wagnerian harmonic imprint, definnitely pre-"Tristan" - though Wagner would never have orchestrated in this heavy-handed late Schubertian way. Schubert is the greater influence of the two composers, I feel.
Then follows the scherzo, and I just manage to stay in the room as that dreadful repeated descending five-note figure which stands in for melodic development repeats again for the how many-eth time? The idiom is surprisingly Brahms-like in other respects - Scottycelt, please note; I clocked this earlier, and it is very noticeable in the trio section. To me repetitive music is boorish; there has to be something interesting to offset the repetitiousness, otherwise I might just as well be listening to heavy metal.
And now it is the slow movement, which so knocked one poster out. Clearly this is where Mahler gets his feel for slow movements from, as well as from Beethoven: the melody harmonised on sixths. I also hear where Schmidt was coming from in the long build ups in his fourth symphony, except that with Schmidt (and Mahler in a slightly different way) poignancy seems to arise from a sense of something beautiful that has gone and whose loss is deeply mourned, and he and mahler were great contrapuntalists, which Bruckner self-evidently from this listening was not. In Bruckner it is hard to figure what is being expressed, apart from that he can build an extended slow movement up to a big climax without having much of interest or fascination to say in melodic richness, harmonic surprise (it is all so predictable!) or orchestral colour. Which I can do at a piano with a few beers inside me. It is a shame that there is nothing memorable about the theme he builds up. There seems nothing universal about this music, and I honestly don't get what it is that has posters writing in swooning prose about it; I guess one has to find ones own meaning in it, without being able to put a finger on what it is that gets across to them.
Here comes the last movement. How one longs for some lightness! Mahler was able to say so much more than one spends an hour and a half of a life one will presumably one day have to account for, trying to discover what links one to ones fellow beings; I am glad Gustav added so much more to these bare Brucknerian bones; this is all too inflatedly pompous, unremittingly po-faced and bleedin' obvious quite frankly for me to want to pursue further, my friends.
Time for tea!
S-A
Then follows the scherzo, and I just manage to stay in the room as that dreadful repeated descending five-note figure which stands in for melodic development repeats again for the how many-eth time? The idiom is surprisingly Brahms-like in other respects - Scottycelt, please note; I clocked this earlier, and it is very noticeable in the trio section. To me repetitive music is boorish; there has to be something interesting to offset the repetitiousness, otherwise I might just as well be listening to heavy metal.
And now it is the slow movement, which so knocked one poster out. Clearly this is where Mahler gets his feel for slow movements from, as well as from Beethoven: the melody harmonised on sixths. I also hear where Schmidt was coming from in the long build ups in his fourth symphony, except that with Schmidt (and Mahler in a slightly different way) poignancy seems to arise from a sense of something beautiful that has gone and whose loss is deeply mourned, and he and mahler were great contrapuntalists, which Bruckner self-evidently from this listening was not. In Bruckner it is hard to figure what is being expressed, apart from that he can build an extended slow movement up to a big climax without having much of interest or fascination to say in melodic richness, harmonic surprise (it is all so predictable!) or orchestral colour. Which I can do at a piano with a few beers inside me. It is a shame that there is nothing memorable about the theme he builds up. There seems nothing universal about this music, and I honestly don't get what it is that has posters writing in swooning prose about it; I guess one has to find ones own meaning in it, without being able to put a finger on what it is that gets across to them.
Here comes the last movement. How one longs for some lightness! Mahler was able to say so much more than one spends an hour and a half of a life one will presumably one day have to account for, trying to discover what links one to ones fellow beings; I am glad Gustav added so much more to these bare Brucknerian bones; this is all too inflatedly pompous, unremittingly po-faced and bleedin' obvious quite frankly for me to want to pursue further, my friends.
Time for tea!
S-A
VH
All music is heard through other music, subconsciously or not, I think? Unless for a new-born baby. I'm just rattling through Beethoven scherzos, and they're very singeable. Mind, I'm not a great LvonB (or Robert Simpson) fan either, before the late Beethoven sonatas, string quarterts, Diabelli etc, where I feel he got in touch with a feminine side we blokes all have but mostly deny ourselves in the competitive world Beethoven was one of the first creative musical spirits to give witness to in his music. 
, he simply listens to his 'inner voice' and gazes in wonder at what surrounds him and the purpose of his and our existence. He had a deep religious faith so his many personal disappointments and fears are eventually overcome in a blaze of triumphant joy which transmits itself to the receptive listener who shares in that wonderful, uplifting experience.
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