Bruckner's Majestic Eighth Program notes

Bruckner’s Majestic Eighth Program notes

Symphony No. 8 in C minor (1890 revised version)

Anton Bruckner

Born September 4, 1824 in Ansfelden, Austria | Died October 11, 1896 in Vienna

World premiere December 18, 1892 in Vienna. Hans Richter led the Vienna Philharmonic

Bruckner was a devout Catholic and a church organist
He was superstitious, and associated certain numbers with mystical significance
Insecure about his music, he revised compulsively
The massive structures of his symphonies have prompted the description “cathedrals of sound”

Any symphony concert with only one work listed on the program page tells us that we are hearing a monumental musical statement. When the program runs without an intermission, as it does this weekend, that import is intensified. Anton Bruckner’s symphonies are not only long, but also emotionally weighty and extremely demanding for performers and listeners. Bruckner rarely shares the program with another composer. The Eighth Symphony is his most massive, employing an oversize orchestra expanded to triple woodwind, eight horns (four doubling Wagner tubas) and three harps. And it is indeed long. David Daniels’s Orchestral Music: A Handbook, a standard reference tool for orchestra librarians and staff, lists the length of the original 1887 version as 76 minutes; the 1890 version (which we hear at these performances) is trimmed to a ‘mere’ 70 minutes.

Such figures are estimates at best, and subject to the interpretation of each conductor. Daniel Barenboim’s recording with the Berlin Philharmonic, for example, which uses a hybrid edition of the 1887 and 1890 versions, clocks in at 77 minutes. But Hans Knappertsbusch’s expansive readings, recorded in the early 1960s with the Munich Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic, run to a whopping 84 minutes. Clearly pacing is an important element in such a large symphonic score. The conductor and orchestra must work to sustain the composer’s momentum and establish a broader sense of musical architecture, while also securing our interest in each moment as the music unfolds.

Those tasks are more difficult when there is no programme: no words sung by chorus or soloist, no tale told through music, no extramusical association with a place, poem or painting. Bruckner was a devout Catholic. His love of God informed his music at the most fundamental level. Beyond that, his works are rarely programmatic. He admired — even worshipped — Richard Wagner, but neither Bruckner’s gifts nor his interests led him in the direction of Wagner’s music-dramas. What, then, sustains our interest in a mammoth, abstract symphony whose opening pair of movements each lasts a quarter-hour, followed by twin slow movements—a lengthy adagio and a slow-paced finale—that each exceed 25 minutes?

To begin with, one takes pleasure in the sheer sensual glory of Brucknerian sound. Bruckner was a celebrated church organist. His orchestral music begs for a cathedral-like sound. The musical effect of such an environment is most noticeable in the silence after a loud cadence or close to a movement, when the sound seems to ‘hang’ in the air for several seconds. It is equally important, however, in the quieter moments, such as the violin tremolando and low string motif that open the symphony. (The low string figure, incidentally, is identical in rhythm– but not in pitch– to the analogous figure in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.)

Bruckner may have used a large orchestra for this symphony, but he still understood how to write quietly, and how to take full advantage of the dynamic range possible with a symphonic ensemble. He likes to contrast blocks of sound from different instrumental families and tends to avoid doubling of parts. This means that we are likely to hear distinct juxtaposition of string sonorities with woodwind or brass choirs. Bruckner the organist is clearly in evidence in such passages, which are analogous to registration changes for different organ manuals.

Bruckner began work on his Eighth Symphony in 1884 at the age of 60. That December, the distinguished German conductor Hermann Levi led a performance of his Seventh Symphony in Vienna. Audience reception was ecstatic. The public recognition that had eluded Bruckner for most of his adult life finally seemed to be his. Encouraged and validated, he plunged deeper into work on his Eighth Symphony and some choral motets, despite some bouts with dropsy that had begun to slow him down. The new symphony was his principal focus in 1885. Although the first draft was complete by mid-August, Bruckner spent two years polishing it before he was satisfied enough to make a fair copy of the full score. By 4 September, 1887, he was able to write to Levi, whom he regarded as a champion and mentor: “Hallelujah! At long last the Eighth is finished and my artistic father must be the first to know about it. . . . May it find grace!” Alas, that was not to be. Levi had serious reservations about the new symphony, which he believed was unperformable. Hesitant to put his criticism into writing for fear of hurting Bruckner’s feelings, he made his comments known through Joseph Schalk, a student and friend of Bruckner’s.

The composer was devastated. Never overly confident, he was consumed with self-doubt. Levi’s repudiation of the Symphony No. 8 triggered an overhaul of this and other works that lasted for three years: the most exhaustive revision frenzy in Bruckner’s life. His obsession with reworking earlier scores probably prevented him from completing his Ninth Symphony, which remained incomplete at his death. Ironically, many of the changes he wrought were at the suggestion of well-meaning students such as Joseph Schalk and his brother Franz Schalk, who thought that Bruckner ought to embrace Wagnerian principles of thematic development and orchestration. Some of the changes are theirs, rather than Bruckners. As a result, nearly all Bruckner’s symphonies exist in two or even three versions. A total of 26 versions exists for his nine symphonies. Getting to the heart of the composer’s intent has kept scholars arguing for more than one hundred years.

The Eighth is the only symphony that seems to have been truly improved by Bruckner’s alterations in the late 1880s. He rewrote the conclusion of the first movement, choosing to close it quietly, the only pianissimo ending in an outer movement among his symphonies. He also composed a new trio for the scherzo, and made major cuts in the finale, thereby shortening the original by several minutes.

Another change was the expansion of the instrumentation from double to triple woodwind plus the addition of harps. Friedrich Eckstein, an Austrian journalist and philosopher who was prominent in Viennese musical circles at the turn of the twentieth century and took a few lessons with the composer, recalled Bruckner’s decision about including harps in the Eighth Symphony.

All the time that I had known him, in our evening conversations amongst his friends or during my own lessons, I had heard him declare repeatedly that there was no place for the harp in a true symphony. Liszt of course had used the instrument very effectively, but his creations were tone-paintings, programme music, symphonic poems, not genuine symphonies in the strictest sense. For this reason Bruckner had absolutely renounced the sound of the harp in his own symphonies.

Before long, though, I got the impression that at some point in the Adagio he had reached an impasse, as it was several weeks since he had last spoken of his work or played me anything from it. Then one day I arrived for my lesson to find the Master in unusually high spirits. I was scarcely in the hallway when he cried, ‘Samiel!’ [Bruckner’s nickname for Eckstein] ‘I’ve put harps in the Adagio! I just had to, there was no other way!’

After a few words ‘justifying’ himself, he sat at the piano and played to me the newly reworked Adagio right from the beginning. I listened, deeply moved, to the solemn entry of the three harps, and as they spread their magical sounds over the stately chorus of string voices, they seemed to lift the movement above all earthly things. . . I must surely be the first mortal to have heard these incomparably sublime, psalm-like sounds!

Most modern performances use one harp. The Eighth is the only one of Bruckner’s symphonies to employ the instrument.

One distinctive feature of the Symphony No. 8 is its placement of the Scherzo/Trio second, rather than third. Only in his final two symphonies did Bruckner opt for this arrangement. The scherzo is typical of Bruckner, with an ostinato figure in upper strings complemented by a theme in lower strings that doubles as a bass line. These two ideas, set forth in the first four measures, provide the basis for the entire movement. With characteristic insistence, these superimposed fragments underpin a surging dramatic buildup that slides through a bevy of distant key centers. Bruckner uses the timpani very effectively, sometimes for thunderous emphasis, elsewhere to suggest uncertainty or mystery, as when it provides the only bass for a passage featuring woodwinds. The slow, lyrical trio reminds us how strong was Bruckner’s musical connection to Franz Schubert: here a Schubertian march rather than a Laendler. Horns and clarinets provide lovely counterpoint above the violins’ melody.

Bruckner never married, but always had a weakness for a pretty face. In middle age he was particularly susceptible to teenage girls, although he was completely harmless in his crushes. While his symphonies are essentially abstract music, they are not altogether without associations. In the case of the Adagio to the Symphony No. 8, Bruckner spoke of a young girl’s eye into which he had gazed too deeply. One suspects that the older man saw a great deal more than did the maiden staring back at him, for these lengthy, passionate themes bespeak the complex emotions of an experienced adult. The cello melody is particularly eloquent. Bruckner also told the aforementioned Friedrich Eckstein that the pulsing close of the Adagio was a Totenuhr: Death’s clock, ticking for everyone. This combination of the earthly and the eternal is oddly appropriate for a composer who never found happiness in this world, but believed steadfastly in the prospect of Heaven and everlasting redemption. His adagio is sublime.

With the finale, Bruckner gives us ecstatic, brass-heavy music that evokes military ceremony. Once again, there is a peripheral extramusical association. The catalyst was apparently a meeting in 1884 of the emperors of Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia at the Polish site of Skierniewice. The majestic display of the imperial summit is thrilling, with the galloping of horses at the beginning and the brilliant fanfares that echo their double-dotted rhythm. Bruckner eventually dedicated the Symphony to the Austrian Emperor Franz Joseph, who absorbed the cost of printing the first edition. In all fairness, the finale has more to offer than power and surface glitter, with more expansive melodies that recall the elegiac strains of the adagio. Bruckner uses the last movement’s length—709 measures—to spin the maximum amount of drama and tension. Toward the end, he reintroduces melodic material from the first three movements, concluding the symphony with an exultant C major coda.

Instrumentation: three flutes (third doubling piccolo), three oboes, three clarinets, three bassoons, eight horns (four doubling Wagner tubas), three trumpets, alto, tenor and bass trombones, contrabass tuba, timpani, and strings. The Scherzo/Trio and Adagio add harps; the slow movement also entails triangle and cymbals.