Spring Symphonies, No 63 - Bruckner: Symphony No 9
Bruckner 9
I’m still so much in awe of this symphony that I hardly dare listen to it. I’m very moved and I dare say disconcerted by it. It lies in my memory more than in my ear nowadays. When I do listen to it, I start off with intentions of objectivity but soon come under it’s powerful grip. It’s a salutary listen as my own experience of mortality bites. Having said all that I feel it is a truly great work and when done well Bruckner 's Ninth is a spiritual experience, up there with the Ninth's of Beethoven, Schubert and Mahler. Years in the making and never reaching a conclusion. To my mind it is more modern than anything in Mahler and is aligned perhaps best with the fiercest music by composers of the 20th century. In it music of boundless power and imagination and sheer otherworldliness.
It is incomplete though - Bruckner didn't finish the last movement. There have been various attempts to complete it and Sir Simon Rattle has made a very good case for one of them - as he pointed out we know more about Bruckner’s intention for the end of his Ninth Symphony than we do about Mozart’s intentions for his Requiem. It doesn't feel incomplete to me but some feels I needs to be finished off. A recent performance conducted by Currentzis was revelatory when he followed a performance of the Ninth with a piece by Ligeti. A much better end point than say Bruckner's own Te Deum. But more generally this Ninth is a singular work - harder to couple. So much of it’s language and it’s episodic structure it is hard to marry with another piece. I remain shaken and comforted by it's performance and nothing about it’s incompleteness worries me.
I commend it to you as one of the most unforgiving, realistic and humble journeys in music, dedicated to God written by a man who faced mounts troubles. After listening though, it puts our pre-occupation with the material in perspective. But it show's these aspects only that we realise what real comfort is - we must hear it out.
There’s not much we hear today in the earlier Bruckner symphonies that prepares one for the Ninth symphony. It is not Bruckner's finest complete conception but it is a complete revelation about his direction of travel. That said the seeds of the dramatically ecstatic world of the Ninth are found all over the original version of the Eighth Symphony (which is rarely heard). The roots of the asymmetry, discord and fierce drive of the Ninth can be heard as Bruckner struggles to find ways between the mostly noble ideas of the Eighth. The symphony has had a hard time after it's discovery on the writing desk on Bruckner's death. Souvenir hunters took pages. When it was premiered in 1903 by Ferdinand Lowe, in his own edition it was toned down. This grime reworking - smoothed out with dissonance removed - and this was the only version heard until 1932. When the original version was premiered it was soon picked up and the earliest extant recording is Klemperer's with the New York Phil from 1934. It’s popularity has grown especially as Bruckner’s has. There have been numerous additions (like most of Bruckner’s symphonies) to the catalogue. There have been numerous attempts to complete it. Bruckner spent years trying to complete it himself, later working from his bed as a frail old man. But he couldn’t assemble something sufficient majestic - and so others have tried. I thought all this a bit pointless though Maestro Currentzis has me thinking again - all it needs is a piece we can reflect on - Ligeti’s Lontano is such a piece.
I commend it to you as one of the most unforgiving, realistic and humble journeys in music, dedicated to God written by a man who faced mounts troubles. After listening though, it puts our pre-occupation with the material in perspective. But it show's these aspects only that we realise what real comfort is - we must hear it out.
There’s not much we hear today in the earlier Bruckner symphonies that prepares one for the Ninth symphony. It is not Bruckner's finest complete conception but it is a complete revelation about his direction of travel. That said the seeds of the dramatically ecstatic world of the Ninth are found all over the original version of the Eighth Symphony (which is rarely heard). The roots of the asymmetry, discord and fierce drive of the Ninth can be heard as Bruckner struggles to find ways between the mostly noble ideas of the Eighth. The symphony has had a hard time after it's discovery on the writing desk on Bruckner's death. Souvenir hunters took pages. When it was premiered in 1903 by Ferdinand Lowe, in his own edition it was toned down. This grime reworking - smoothed out with dissonance removed - and this was the only version heard until 1932. When the original version was premiered it was soon picked up and the earliest extant recording is Klemperer's with the New York Phil from 1934. It’s popularity has grown especially as Bruckner’s has. There have been numerous additions (like most of Bruckner’s symphonies) to the catalogue. There have been numerous attempts to complete it. Bruckner spent years trying to complete it himself, later working from his bed as a frail old man. But he couldn’t assemble something sufficient majestic - and so others have tried. I thought all this a bit pointless though Maestro Currentzis has me thinking again - all it needs is a piece we can reflect on - Ligeti’s Lontano is such a piece.
Even once it was out that it's not easy to understand - though the sound of it is awe-inspiring. The English speaking world were lucky to have Robert Simpson to explain the Ninth to them in his book about Bruckner published in the 1960s and happily revised with more up to date scholarships in the 1980s. He elucidates the structure and the exquisite twists of harmony this modern sounding work. Here I will just touch on the three movements briefly because the work really does need the kind of hard concentrated familiarity of study
The first movement has a novel structure: what Simpson calls, the Statement is followed by a counter statement and then a coda. The Statement is made up of eight episodes and the Counter Statement repeats and elaborates on each. It is, as a result, a movement of longer term recycling in an environment where each episode repeat feels fresh and different but familiar. It’s tone is spare, uncomfortable at times but exceptionally powerful. This is some of the most powerful music I know not least because there is no sentimentality in this work. The gears grind and the metal grates. Dissonance is as familiar as harmonic calm. The layering accumulation of powerful moments creates something of deep psychological effect like Wagner but by completely unique means. It is Bruckner’s only post-Wagner work I think.
The Scherzo and Trio are unlike the bucolic romps of the early symphonies. After a mellow start his scherzo hits with a rapier like edge to it and is without any redeeming features. It stomps, demands and yelps. It seems like a severe headache. I still can’t decide whether the Trio is winsome or obsequious. On one hand it seems like a relief from the raging scherzo smoother lines, delicate orchestration a lush sweep to it’s dancing melodies. But it also seems to me to be bordering on parody - the vision of the ballroom through clenched teeth, something slight false about it’s provenance. Trollope’s loathsome Barchester vicar - Mr Slope comes to mind. Whatever the uncertainty - it is a relief from the ear-battering Scherzo which is then repeated full. The whole movement is more Shostakovich than Beethoven and puts Mahler in the shade.
The final movement begins with the same giant leap on strings which Mahler utilised for his Ninth symphony a decade or so later. That may be intentional - Bruckner taught Mahler, and Mahler was something of a fan. Bruckner’s life's work finished in 1896 and premiered in 1903. The struggle for the completion of yes symphony is worth noting - Bruckner didn’t run out of time. He worked on the final movement for nearly three years but he simply couldn’t find a way to complete the work he had dedicated to God. It was too difficult a task though there was enough material left behind for others to try - crucially the coda remains a mystery, How would or could Bruckner, riddled with mental health illnesses, go to his grave without completing it? One wonders if the sheer importance of the task in his own mind, overwhelmed him?
To my ear it matters little - like many symphonies intentionally written with three movements, we have balance between the outer movements. And Bruckner’s seismic proposes lead to a very good place. Simpson rightly quotes Beethoven in this regard - both internal and external peace is achieved, The "final" movement is a wonder and as a whole there is a journey and a symmetry, it seems to me, in the vivid description of the horror and the effort of reaching internal resolution or closure. One wonders how it felt for the composer? One analogy might be to the struggle he had mental health problems to revealing the depths of despair in this work and the slow precariousness journey to a comforting balance. Or perhaps his struggle with faith.
Any great symphony takes us all on a journey - this one like many takes us on a familiar journey darkness to light, but it is a deal more deeply psychological than the symphonies most - Brahms Four being a contemporary exception. Bruckner's work is commandingly vivid of the inner workings of our lives and the elements are stacked up - alternating bold dissonance and disturbance and tranquility. Three times the final movements grand climax attempts resolution and in the final one we slip away - almost without fanfare - into the most tranquil coda Bruckner had written since the Sixth Symphony.
Overall Bruckner’s Ninth is a tough listen for those of us who respond to it’s depths and heights: it has the shocking power of as an intimate letter from the troubled composer. His grander design wasn’t achieved but its a very fine work as it is. Poor Bruckner, he lived a life and triumph against conditions which blight our lives today. His shared pain and peaceful repose are a model for us all - this symphony is a treatment many of us need. Unknowingly, his greatest work is written for the betterment of mankind.
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