Bruckner, symphonies & National Socialism

[Nile_577]

In my view this composer is everything that Mahler should be - epic, brass-driven music with transcendental religious themes - without the egotistical neurosis and airport novel melodrama.

I am interested to hear preferences regarding his symphonies. I think the 9th is his best work. This is an absolutely titanic symphony and seems, at least to me, very similar in feel to death metal music. I also enjoy the 7th symphony and I'm particularly enamoured with an organ adaptation of the adagio. To my surprise I recently learned that this piece was played on German radio following the announcement of Hitler's death.

Here are a couple of articles about Bruckner's life and how his music was revered by National Socialism.
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/20/arts/for-bruckner-a-vague-nazi-aura-persists.html
http://typo3.ort.org/index.php?id=335

There is significant controversy surrounding artists/thinkers related to the National Socialist movement. Interestingly, I think that the resistance to Heidegger is significantly stronger than to Wagner, Bruckner and Karajan. Although I believe Wagner was banned outright for a time by some Israeli music societies, people like James Levine have subsequently successfully conducted his work*. Beethoven seems to have escaped implication almost entirely. I wonder if this represents a belief that music is free from political "contamination" whereas philosophy is not?

For the most part, I think that condemnations against these works are the result of a genetic fallacy (eg. Hitler believed that the combustion engine worked, therefore the combustion engine is evil), or a simplistic and satanic understanding of National Socialism whereby the extent of its meaning and appeal was and is about "killing people," such that it is indistinguishable from what is taken to be Communism, Satanism, serial killing and general sadism, with these things, on aggregate, being a mass of homogenised "evil," indistinct in any essential fashion.

* - There have been a number of Jewish philosophers and academics who have engaged with Heidegger, of course, but resistance to him among Anglo-American circles is staunch, with his hermeneutic approach to philosophy being seen as the "path to Nazism" over against rational, analytic thinkers. This was exacerbated by the Paul de Man controversy.

[Nile_577]

Has anyone read this? 

http://www.amazon.com/Bruckners-Symphonies-Analysis-Reception-Cultural/dp/0521081858/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253375660&sr=8-3

[HessianObscura]

It also reminds me of the bias that existed after Elisabeth Nietzsche and the Nazi's were said to have hijacked her brother's philosophy, although, since he's slightly on the edge of the method of formal philosophy, some liberal and humanist types managed to contribute a second-wave of hijacking to his ideas as he set them forth.

I heard the 9th symphony at St. Paul's cathedral in July and it was one immense experience, as transcendental music and architecture collided to form a kind of gesamtkunstwerk. I've seen in many places Bruckner being labelled as 'plain' or 'incoherent'; his bombastic approach being a crude representation of reverential feelings, but the more I listen to him, the more unfair this seems. He is, especially for fans of other forms of heavy music, quite accessible, but this isn't so much because of any simpletonship in his writing as it is the clarity of it. Take the 4th symphony and how he sacralizes the experience of nature from that first mystical call that evolves to a divine, booming and echoing crescendo. Or in the second movement of the 9th - of particular interest to Hessians - where that staccatification of a central theme from the first movement is ripped asunder by an infernal Black/Death Metal 'riff'! Genius.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbQkFTtDQLg (Not the best performance)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0UhTYqn5fE

[HessianObscura]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0UhTYqn5fE

Way better version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjKeUCdM_PI

[Conservationist]

Interestingly, I think that the resistance to Heidegger is significantly stronger than to Wagner, Bruckner and Karajan. [/url].

Do you support or oppose this pogrom?

Don't forget what happened to Respighi.

Music is always going to be judged less harshly than philosophy -- philosophy talks ideology and seems to ratify National Socialism, which would have been considered a mundane political choice, like being a Democrat or Republican, in pre-1930s Europe.

[Ungeheuer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0UhTYqn5fE

Way better version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjKeUCdM_PI

While Karajan has the better orchestra, Wand's interpretation is far less bombastic and more transparent – however, this is one of the easier Bruckner movements to get right (for there's virtually no counterpoint and no long-prepared climaxes), so I wouldn't judge either conductor's ability in Bruckner by it. If you listen to the whole performances though you'll find Wand blows Karajan out of the water, especially in the last movement where Wand's reading is a lot more fluid and climax-conscious than von K's, which sounds static and soft-grained by comparison due to the huge forces under von K's baton.

Feel free to disagree with me, but I think Karajan was a mediocre Bruckner conductor - neither are his performances as analytical/classical as those of Wand, Böhm or Harnoncourt, nor are their as Dionysian and dramatic as those of Furtwängler, Jochum or the young Walter (one of the most underrated Bruckner conductors). And no, he doesn't marry these two different approaches either (you could say Klemperer does) - his performances are just neutral, safe and middle-of-the-line, most of his attention went into creating a beautiful, sumptuous cloud of sound, he neglects structure and drama alike.

Since I'm talking Bruckner performance, am I the only one who prefers brisker tempos in Bruckner? If you listen to recordings by conductors who still saw a glimpse of the 19th century (Furtwängler, Walter, Klemperer, Kabasta, Knappertsbusch, at least before they reached venerable age) you'll find that they chose far faster tempos than are common today for most passages, slow, reverential Bruckner a la Giulini, Tintner or Celibidache seems to be a product of the later 20th century.


EDIT:



This is, in my humble opinion, the greatest performance of this symphony – no other recording I know conveys the child-like sense of wonder the pervades this work like this one does, it perfectly elucidates the kinship between Bruckner and Schubert. Walter's tempos are brisk but flexible throughout, the performance is dramatic yet never exaggerated (just listen to the Scherzo that all too often turns into a crawl, here it truly is a dance movement), despite the frequent tempo changes the structure of the work is communicated impeccably, the NYPO's follows Walter's every move immediately. The orchestra's sound is extraordinarily slender and transparent and despite the recording date the sonics are more than adequate, roomy and with little to no audience noise. Enjoy.

[nous]

NYPO ... with little to no audience noise.

I should have known it right then: little to no audience noise, in this context, means continuous coughing, choking & gagging ;-)
Have you listened to Wand BPO?

P.S. Thanks nonetheless for sharing this very lively and earnest interpretation with us.

[Ungeheuer]

NYPO ... with little to no audience noise.

I should have known it right then: little to no audience noise, in this context, means continuous coughing, choking & gagging ;-)
Have you listened to Wand BPO?

P.S. Thanks nonetheless for sharing this very lively and earnest interpretation with us.

I should've said little to no audience noise compared to various Furtwängler recordings.

And yes, I know and like that version. It's a bit on the slow side in the middle movements, but the sheer amount of information Wand conveys makes up for the slow tempo (it's similar with a lot of late Klemperer).

Is anyone familiar with Heinz Rögner's unusual Bruckner interpretations by the way? The rhythmic force and tempos of his recordings are near-unequaled, he emphasizes Bruckner's ostinati and other rhythmic devices like no other conductor - he also uses extraordinarily small forces, which makes for some almost chamber musical interplay at times. Instead of striving for the long line Rögner deliberately stresses the fragmentary structure of some Bruckner works, especially that of the Ninth Symphony - I may have to upload that one in the near future, it's an unbelievably moving recording. And that the ostinato-heavy Te Deum is in good hands with Rönger goes without saying, his recording of it is easily my favorite next to the Jochum/Dresden one.

[wEEman33]

Mahler, to me, is a man with a fine ear for motives but a poor mind for composition.

I am very familiar with his 5th symphony, as well as the cycle "The Song of the Earth," both of which remind my of Pink Frothy AIDS in the sense that they have some great "riffs" stuck in random song structures that have way too much going on in terms of ornamentation and not enough in the way of actual content.

When isolated out of context and compared to Mahler's, Bruckner's motives might not be as good, but where Bruckner's music begins to move past Mahler's is how Bruckner creates simpler, more linear structure with more direct harmony.

Where Mahler constantly shies away from traditional cadences and perfect intervals in favor of wild dissonances and unusual chords, a piece like Bruckner's 4th symphony, for instance,  is full of perfect intervals and linear chord progressions, letting the music build momentum as it inches up to each climax instead of standing in place doing backflips and jumping jacks through the whole piece and only reaching a real climax in the last two or three minutes of the piece.

"Song of the Earth" is a great example of that, as it has some brilliant motives as well as an amazing 2-3 minute finish, but for the most part, the piece just runs itself into a daze with all the excessive color and motion.

A good point of comparison would be Burzum vs. Drudkh.

[Ungeheuer]

Mahler, to me, is a man with a fine ear for motives but a poor mind for composition.

I am very familiar with his 5th symphony, as well as the cycle "The Song of the Earth," both of which remind my of Pink Frothy AIDS in the sense that they have some great "riffs" stuck in random song structures that have way too much going on in terms of ornamentation and not enough in the way of actual content.

When isolated out of context and compared to Mahler's, Bruckner's motives might not be as good, but where Bruckner's music begins to move past Mahler's is how Bruckner creates simpler, more linear structure with more direct harmony.

Where Mahler constantly shies away from traditional cadences and perfect intervals in favor of wild dissonances and unusual chords, a piece like Bruckner's 4th symphony, for instance,  is full of perfect intervals and linear chord progressions, letting the music build momentum as it inches up to each climax instead of standing in place doing backflips and jumping jacks through the whole piece and only reaching a real climax in the last two or three minutes of the piece.

"Song of the Earth" is a great example of that, as it has some brilliant motives as well as an amazing 2-3 minute finish, but for the most part, the piece just runs itself into a daze with all the excessive color and motion.

A good point of comparison would be Burzum vs. Drudkh.

For starters I don't like everything Mahler churned out, a lot of it is rather cheesy and long-winded but to me it sounds like your main grief with "Das Lied von der Erde" is that it is too intensive, too expressive for you most of the time. I for one don't find it excessively colorful or disjointed, quite on the contrary, I think it's the Mahler piece that comes closest to having something like classical poise, take the second movement/song for example, how is the music "standing in place doing backflips and jumping jacks"? It's all directed towards the "Ich komm zu dir" climax with the beautifully consonant, descending g'''-e'''-f'''-g'' motif, which's the disembodied fragments echo through the sparse orchestral texture long before we finally reach it. And once we do it's over in a few seconds, from there on the structure of the song begins to crumble and wilt like the flowers it bemoans. My point is that the structure of each song poetically mirrors the content of the text, they are far from random, be it the ever maddening, maniac, intensifying repetition of the first movement or the merry rondo of the third to the endless, vast, transcendent structure of the final movement. Personally I think "Der Abschied" is on par with Bruckner's best Adagios, few other pieces of music portray the loss of self as effectively as this song does. His Ninth symphony does, too. In the end it's a matter of taste, let me quote the great Bruno Walter on this matter:

"With Bruckner the most impassioned movement has a foundation of certainty; not even Mahler's inmost depths remain undisturbed. Bruckner's scope of expression is unlimited, though it has but few main subdivisions; with Mahler these are prodigal in number, embracing all lights and shades of a weird diabolism, a humorous buffoonery, even resorting to the eccentric and banal, besides countless expressive nuances ranging from childlike tenderness to chaotic eruption. His heartfelt, folk-like themes are as Mahlerian as his sardonic cacophonies, whose lightning apparitions render all the darker the night of his musical landscape. Mahler's noble peace and solemnity, his lofty transfiguration are the fruits of conquest; with Bruckner they are innate gifts. Bruckner's musical message stems from the sphere of the saints; in Mahler speaks the impassioned prophet. He is ever renewing the battle, ending in mild resignation, while Bruckner's tone-world radiates unshakable, consoling affirmation."

Mahler was an extrovert being, Bruckner an introvert. Mahler seeks faith where Bruckner has faith. Mahler seeks release in the instant, Bruckner finds it in vastness. Comparing the two is like comparing the driven, rambling Beethoven to the serene Mozart. I wouldn't want to be without either.

EDIT: Everyone into Bruckner needs to check out his pupil Franz Schmidt, easily one of the greatest late-Romantic composers. After being declared the greatest living Austrian composer by the Nazis he also suffered from bad image following WWII, unjustly. Symphony No. 4 and the apocalyptic oratorio "Das Buch mit Sieben Siegeln" are his masterpieces and absolutely essential listens.

[Satan is my Stewardess]

Nile, the severity of the criticism leveled at Heidegger is explained, in part, by budgetary politics within the academy.  The bête noire of analytic-leaning philosophy departments (virtually every single one in the English-speaking world) - not to mention history, psychology and Classics departments  - everywhere was the movement toward "cultural studies" and other "interdisciplinary" major paths that began emerging in universities from the mid-1980s on.  These upstart programs have eaten considerably into the resources schools make available to more "traditional" humanities degree programs, and, not surprisingly, people that are otherwise pretty tolerant become wildly intolerant when it's their ox being gored.  For various historical reasons, most having to do with the internal politics of various "traditional" disciplines, "interdisciplinary" departments tend to lean heavily toward the various breeds of French/Continental "postmodern" thought, all of which, of course, is heavily dependent on the insights of Heidegger.  Delegitimizing Heidegger isn't so much about Heidegger or the Hitler regime as it is about delegitimizing a professional threat to the personal livelihoods of philosophers of the Anglo-American school.