Bruckner's Symphony No. 4 "Romantic"; a monumental masterpiece!

00:00:00

John Banther: I'm John Banther, and this is season six of Classical Breakdown. From WETA Classical in Washington, we are your guide to classical music. In this episode, I'm joined by WETA Classical's Evan Keeley, and we are diving into one of the biggest symphonies in the repertoire, Anton Bruckner's Symphony Number Four in E Flat Major, Romantic. We look at what sets this symphony apart, what to listen for and how Bruckner uses repetition. Plus, we look at a particular problem when it comes to Bruckner's symphonies, and we enjoy a full performance of this masterpiece at the end.

I wanted to start with this quote, Evan, because in a way I think it says really everything that we're trying to unpack here with this symphony by Bruckner. In the words of Duke University music professor Bryan Gilliam, he wrote, " Bruckner's symphonic forms are infused with devout piety, Austrian heritage, and love of landscape. The modes of musical expression are unique, the broad arching sequential gestures, the powerful repetitions, the orchestra as a sum of various choirs, string, wind and brass. It is far- reaching chamber music, though the chamber is now a cathedral." Especially that last sentence, Evan, right? " It's far- reaching chamber music, but now the chamber is a cathedral."

00:01:18

Evan Keeley: I think Professor Gilliam has really made a good point here, John, this sense of Bruckner's music as being larger than life. This sort of this cosmic scope, and we'll be getting into this as we explore the Symphony Number Four. Symphony Number Four is one of Bruckner's most popular works, is one of the most often played, and so I don't think I'm unique or even unusual that this was one of my earliest encounters with Bruckner. When I was an undergraduate in the late 80s at the Boston University School of Music. One year the orchestra played this symphony. I hadn't heard it before, so I get to hear a live performance of this symphony played by people that I knew, and I just found the whole experience so thrilling.

We're going to talk about the horns, in particular. The horn players were friends of mine. " Wow, this is so exciting." And yet after the concert, I'm talking to some friends of mine and one of them is like, " Wow, what a snoozer. That went on forever." Another person's fainting on the floor. So I'm thinking, " Okay, Bruckner clearly is pretty controversial." And I think that's the good encapsulation of how Bruckner is one of those composers that some people love and some people just find this music really arcane. I'm hoping that today's episode of Classical Breakdown will make more people appreciate Bruckner, because even if his music can be challenging, it's definitely worth knowing and exploring.

00:02:36

John Banther: I think it will help. I think you are definitely right on that. And we're going to be bringing us along here in a way that I think, well, is hopefully like our experience when we first heard it. I remember in high school I heard the Boston Symphony play this at Tanglewood, and as a brass player, that's life- changing. It rewires your brain chemistry. It's one of those moments. I didn't even know a sound like that was even possible. But even though the symphony is huge, even though we've just said all of those things, it's more straightforward than you think. So we're going to guide you through it, and we have a great performance to enjoy at the end. But let's start real quick before we jump into the first movement. When did he compose this? I know he was born actually September 4th, 1824. So if you're listening on the day this comes out, it is the eve of Bruckner's birthday. Maybe that's a new holiday we can start. But beyond that, when did he compose this?

00:03:30

Evan Keeley: So the question of when Bruckner composed this symphony, of course, is not an easy one to answer, and as we'll be getting into this conversation, we'll be exploring what we know as the Bruckner problem. Bruckner wrote many different versions of all of the numbered symphonies. So this symphony had its premiere in 1881 with the Vienna Philharmonic. Hans Richter was conducting that premiere. He was one of the most celebrated and respected conductors of that time. And there's a wonderful story about Bruckner attending a rehearsal. Maestro Richter is rehearsing the fourth symphony, and Bruckner after the rehearsal is so pleased with what he hears, he walks over to the conductor and he hands him a coin. He presses the coin into his palm, " Yeah, please, please drink a glass of beer to my good health." And that gives you a sense of Bruckner as this kind of awkward, peculiar little man.

People thought of him as a kind of a country bumpkin type of a figure, but also this great genius. And I'm also touched to remember that Maestro Richter wore that coin on his watch chain thereafter as a memento of his relationship with Bruckner. There's a " problem" with this symphony. He initially composed it in 1874, but then he made heavy revisions. And there are, broadly speaking, three different versions of this symphony. He kept revising it over the following 14 years. It was eventually published in 1890 under the third revised version he had made in 1888. And that's the version we're going to be listening to in today's episode and after the episode, but it was also edited and published decades after his death, also in an effort by various editors with various agendas that we'll be getting into.

00:05:12

John Banther: Yes, and as we jump into the first movement, we can see, well, is this a programmatic symphony? In 1884, Bruckner wrote to Hermann Levi, writing, " In the first movement after a full night's sleep the day is announced by the horn, second movement, song, third movement, hunting trio and musical entertainment of the hunters in the wood." And I think it really begins as he writes, " It feels like Dawn, the sun is rising on a beautiful forest landscape. We have this tremolo in the strings, that fast back and forth action on a single note, and it gives you a forest murmuring sound. And then the horn coming in. And it repeats in the winds. And then we still hear some interaction in the background with the horn." And we're going to hear that throughout in a way I think we don't hear from other composers. This is the first of three simple themes that he introduces in that comeback again and again and again. And they're so recognizable in their whole because of, well, I think because of the simple type intervals, but also because of the repetition and how he uses them in fragments too.

00:06:21

Evan Keeley: And it's also interesting to notice, John, how this is a typical Bruckner symphony beginning. Not all of the symphonies begin this way, but a lot of them do. There's a quietness, there's a sense of expectation. Anything the instrumentation and the techniques that he uses are similar in other symphonies. And there's even the term that some use, the Bruckner Nebula, this tremolo strings, this sense of like we're emerging from the mist, or there's this sort of this cosmic starry primeval sense of something. At the dawn of time and horn [ singing] this open fifth that has this sense of openness and possibility. And you really can feel that sense of a new time dawning with this Bruckner Nebula at the beginning of this symphony.

00:07:06

John Banther: And the ideas sometimes start quite small. In the background you see this huge thing coming slowly, slowly, and it's getting bigger and bigger. And that's how he also introduces the second theme, which is really a big part of this symphony, an anchor point, especially this two plus three, this two plus three rhythm that he's using. I love this because, well, one, the horn is leading. It feels like we are an adventure, a hunter riding through the woods. And the two plus three rhythm aspect gives this sense of perpetual motion and unfolding. And it's still a rhythm we hear today. Any kind of two plus three in dances, from Beethoven to today, we hear this rhythm in a way that's perpetual.

00:07:55

Evan Keeley: And this rhythm in particular is often referred to as the Bruckner Rhythm, Dum dum, dum dum dum dum dum dum dum dum, two and three and two and... We hear this a lot in Bruckner, we certainly hear this a lot in this symphony, and we absolutely hear it frequently in this first movement of this symphony.

00:08:24

John Banther: It sounds very heroic, but in a slightly different way than other composers, perhaps because of the instrument that Bruckner himself is coming from. The organ, especially in how he writes the low brass parts, we see that, but the way he writes feels organ like.

00:08:40

Evan Keeley: There's really an organish quality in a lot of his orchestral music. He was, of course, an organist, quite a good one in fact. And there's that this layering of sound you hear in his orchestration that to me really sounds like an organ. And I'm reminded that you're sitting in an organ console, you pull a knob, you press a button on the manual, and suddenly you can have octave doublings or these other sounds that get added in an instant. And I really think of Bruckner's orchestration as having that same kind of quality. You have these layers, these octaves and so forth, and you see the layerings of these different kind of sound, and especially in this first movement of this symphony, with this call- and- response type of thing, that is also a very Brucknerian kind of gesture.

00:09:27

John Banther: And the horn is the star in the symphony, not just in the big sections, but also on how it plays counter lines to things. We get this third theme, and even though it gets passed off, the horn doesn't let up. The horn is always in the background shaping or doing something, almost like a conductor or some kind of director on stage. A second one.

00:09:48

Evan Keeley: I was talking a moment ago about Bruckner, the organist, and remembering you and I, John, had an conversation in last season's episode about Nadia Boulanger, who was a generation later, but lived late 19th, early 20th century, a really important time in the development of the organ as an instrument, the technology really changing, and creating these massive sounds that are just a new sound world for European ears and the ears of the human race in the late 19th century. And Bruckner is part of this movement of creating this larger than life, this hugeness of this sound, not only with organs, but with orchestral writing, this idea that music can be larger than life, which we really take for granted in our time with the incredible technology that we have. It's really emerging in a whole new way in Bruckner's lifetime and in Bruckner's music in particular.

00:10:48

John Banther: The more I was listening to this in recent weeks, the more I was thinking about composers like Mahler, who it seems, heard this and also drew from it in their own way. And you can also think of another composer in some of the contrasts that Bruckner uses, especially with two big opposing forces, some of that call and response that happens, sometimes, or at times it will coalesce into a unison descending line and then start over. Tchaikovsky, of course, we've talked about building up and then bring it back down, build it back up, bring it back down. This seems a little bit different, and the way it coalesces into unison feels kind of eerie or unsettling in a way. It doesn't feel like I'm peacefully resolving down to something different.

00:11:35

Evan Keeley: And that's an aspect too of Bruckner's music that I think makes him so appealing for some and so challenging for others, maybe both at the same time. There's this sense of terror that comes into... We'll be talking about this in some specific passages in this symphony, but this hugeness brings with it sometimes a sense of cosmic doom, this world's colliding, and this use of unison that you were just talking about, John, is one of the ways in which he just drives home a point that really creates almost this sense of existential horror. And then he brings us through it to a different place.

00:12:09

John Banther: And part of the difference in sound is this focus on horns versus trumpets and trombone, and how he's using the horns to lead versus maybe trumpets and trombone at some points. And that's because the horn is a conical instrument, the trumpet and trombone, those are cylindrical. So the horn, from the mouthpiece, it basically gets wider all the way to the end. So it's like a cone if you unwrapped it. A trumpet is basically the same size tubing until you get towards the end and there's a big flare. This makes it sound, well, more direct. The sound is a little bit more compact compared to a conical instrument like horn or tuba, which is a little bit more rich, a little bit fatter, a little bit more spread out, like a big bean bag or a huge ball filled with oil or something, has some kind of movement to it. That is a sound difference you can think of compared to a composer like Tchaikovsky.

00:13:09

Evan Keeley: And I think Bruckner is really aware of those sound differences as an orchestrator and as an organist, he's really playing with those different sound qualities.

00:13:17

John Banther: It's the sound quality, and it's also the repetition that is so key with Bruckner and his style. In part, it is just full things getting repeated with maybe a slight difference in coloration. Other times it's a fragment of something that he takes. And I think because they're so characteristic or recognizable, even as a fragment, it grabs your attention.

00:13:43

Evan Keeley: Yes, fragmentation and repetition are both very important in Bruckner's music.

00:13:48

John Banther: The opening horn call returns, and these are our three distinct themes. Listen for what's different when they return. The second theme, for example, comes back, but now with a sense of struggle. And this is part of Bruckner using repetition but not really quite verbatim. There's something different with it. And sometimes it's literally the note, sometimes it's a feeling like a sense of struggle.

00:14:14

Evan Keeley: Yeah. So a lot of repetition in Bruckner, as we were saying. And the way he repeats things is usually similar but not the same. So unlike say a 20th century minimalist composer, where you have a phrase or whatever, think Philip Glass, for example. There's a particular ostinato-like quality, something exactly the same way over and over again. Bruckner's not doing that. he does something similar to it. But if he brings you back to a theme that you've heard before, there might be a descant with another instrument joining it that wasn't there the first time, or the repetition might be ascending or it might be descending. So it's repetitive, but it's not verbatim repetition.

00:14:52

John Banther: Now a descant, that's a new word for most people. What is that in a sentence?

00:14:56

Evan Keeley: So that's, for example, this passage we're hearing here where we're hearing the da dum da da from the very beginning, but then there's something else that's also happening. A counter melody that's been inserted. That's a new way of reintroducing this theme. So it's like, as I said, repetition that's similar but not identical.

00:15:16

John Banther: And the descant, it's an independent thing. It's almost like they're these two melodies, but their backs are to each other.

00:15:22

Evan Keeley: Exactly. And yet they fit together perfectly.

00:15:25

John Banther: Thinking of another composer, I didn't think I was going to think about so many other composers, but Wagner as well, of course, a lot of harmonic similarities. They're from a similar area and also similar inspiration, heavily major based, I think.

00:15:42

Evan Keeley: Absolutely. And Bruckner, of course, revered Wagner, revered Wagner's music, and you definitely hear a Wagnerian influence on Bruckner's music, which is fascinating to me, both in terms of the similarities and the great differences, the harmonic language, the orchestration, you hear a lot of similarities. Wagner never wrote a symphony, he was an opera composer, and Bruckner never wrote an opera. So you see how they influenced one another, especially how Bruckner was influenced by Wagner. But why didn't he just write operas about Norse gods. He didn't write any opera. He's doing something completely different and yet very much indebted to Wagner. You mentioned Mahler earlier, who was younger than Bruckner. They knew each other. And of course you see how... You listen to Mahler's music, you can definitely hear a Brucknerian influence there.

00:16:28

John Banther: Sometimes it's like a whole melody or something was lifted.

00:16:32

Evan Keeley: Yeah. And even here in this symphony, there are little passages that make me say, " Oh yeah, that sounds kind of like something Mahler would do later on."

00:16:39

John Banther: And as we've been thinking about this symphony, we've been thinking, well, this is a big symphony. It's an hour long, basically. This first movement is 18 to 20 minutes long. And you think, well, how accessible is something like this? I think actually, though, the symphony, now that I've spent a lot more time with it, it's actually very accessible. And that's because Bruckner is laying out very clearly, very Logically, all of these themes, and they're so simple, yet there is so much to play with within them, and it just makes it very recognizable. You're just being carried all the way through from beginning to end. So there's basically half of this movement left. So we'll just say a couple of things to listen for. One is his use of tremolo. I find so many of his quiet sections here and elsewhere are built off of tremolo and the strings, so that this fast murmuring sound or a roll in the timpani, sometimes it's low strings, sometimes it's upper strings, but it feels like it never quite rests. There's always this rippling like you've thrown a bunch of pebbles or something into a pond.

00:17:54

Evan Keeley: That's a great way to describe it, John. There's a sense of trembling. There's a sense of this tension that's constantly present even when the music is triumphant or there's a sense of... The resolutions always feel somehow incomplete in Bruckner, to me, or when they are complete, there's a sense we really had to wait for it. He made us go on this journey with him, and then we're finally arriving. But that use of tremolo that you mentioned is really one way that he keeps that tension alive through the music. Another thing that you were talking about this too, John, this sense of this, everything is laid out in a way that actually makes a lot of sense. It's very accessible if you look at the big picture.

I like to think about this as these huge works of Bruckner, like Russian novels. And there's this sense of, " Oh, I couldn't possibly find the time to read the Brothers Karamazov or Anna Karenina or something like that. But if you give them the time, you see how there's a lot of these different things that are happening, but there are these distinct chapters, there are distinct storylines, and it all fits together. And I think Bruckner is like that too. With a novel, you're going through the... You can go back and so forth in a way that with music is much more difficult. But there's sense of distinct chapters, distinct sections in Bruckner, and if you can pull back and think about it in that way, it does make a lot more sense, and it's very coherent in the way he lays out these humongous structures.

00:19:21

John Banther: I never listened to this, and then get to a section, " Oh, I totally forgot about this section." It's always... you know it. Another thing to listen for is, again, how the horn is involved, so involved in presenting an idea, handing off an idea, and also guiding an idea or a line, like we have a second director on stage. Part of what also makes this sound really organ- like is how he's written, like I said, into the music, especially the brass parts. And we play this, I don't think we really play Bruckner in a way we play any other composer. We have tons of marcato accents in our part. Marcato looks like a carrot topper or a rooftop accent. And it's actually played different depending on even the style of music you're playing, but it's usually a shorter note, like a quarter note. We have marcatos on whole notes here.

And so what is a marcato? You can think of it as an accent that carries through the beat. That's how it was often described, especially in Bruckner. Well, how do I carry this accent through a whole note, four whole beats? Well, you're basically, I'm hitting the note very strong and just keeping it very strong and sustained all the way to the end. It even says in the score, " Strong and sustained. Do not let up with this sound." Oftentimes I come in with a big, say, fortissimo whole note. I come in, then I back off 10, 15% to let things breathe. And of course, the sound that I made is still there, kind of philosophical I guess. But with Bruckner, there is none of that. It stays like an organ pedal pushed all the way to the end. So it has this strong type of authoritarian sound, I guess. A long way to explain that but even when it's explained to me, it doesn't even quite make sense in school.

00:21:17

Evan Keeley: Yeah. And there's this paradox to what you're describing, John, and yet it's really indicative of the style that Bruckner demands of instrumentalists, the idea of emphasizing a long note, putting a strong accent on a long note, where do you go if it's a long note? And yet, like you said, with the organ, you press down on that pedal or you press down on that key, and there's just this huge sound that just gets sustained through over a period of time. And I think that that's a real key component of Bruckner's style, more so than a lot of other composers we could think of.

00:21:51

John Banther: Yes, and to even highlight some of these points, right towards the end, one of my favorite sections is we get that opening horn call motif, but not with big open fifths. It's in half steps, and everyone coalesces in unison. And then the end, this processional slow march that ends, it seems like with the final form of the horn call that opened the symphony with. Now something we've not talked about yet, Evan, is what he includes in the title after Symphony Number Four in E Flat Major, and that is Romantic. And you have to think for a second, well, this isn't a Romance like a love symphony he wrote to get someone to date him, but we're talking about the Romantic Period and the culture and more rise in individualism, I think, in freedom, subjectivity. Maybe you can expand on that.

00:23:20

Evan Keeley: Absolutely. Yeah. The Romantic spirit, and we can think of many composers who embody it, Beethoven being the (inaudible) the source of Romanticism in European music in many ways. The 19th century is infused with, as you said, this sense of individualism, the sense of freedom. There's these revolutions that are breaking out throughout Europe through that century, and Bruckner is invoking that spirit. I think this is the only symphony of Bruckner's that has a title that he gave it.

There are other symphonies that have these nicknames that have been tacked on by others. Some people call the Eighth Symphony, the Apocalyptic Symphony, but Bruckner didn't call it that, but he did call this symphony the Romantic Symphony. Is it more in the Romantic spirit in terms of the aesthetic of Romanticism than other Bruckner symphonies? I'm not sure that it is, and yet he really wanted to emphasize it with this piece. And that's a puzzle to me. I'm not sure why it is that this symphony is " Romantic" in quotation marks in ways that others might not be. Maybe all of the Bruckner symphonies are Romantic, but this one, he really wants us to pay attention to that. And it's an unsolved question in my mind, but as we go through this, I wonder if we'll have more insight into it.

00:24:30

John Banther: And you definitely get the sense of something heroic like those romantic German mythics, I think.

00:24:36

Evan Keeley: Absolutely. And again, the Wagnerian influence is there and this larger- than- life aesthetic. Wagner is writing these operas about these ancient myths or these Norse gods and so forth. And I don't think it's a coincidence that the era in which Bruckner is writing these symphonies, this one in particular, is also the same age in which the Statue of Liberty and other kinds of colossal statuary have come into being. We talk about the cathedral- like sound in Bruckner. We hear this a lot, the sense of the flying buttresses of cathedrals or what this music evokes, but there's more to this music than just it being long pieces.

And I find the analogy of a colossal statue helpful. If we're standing up close to the statue, we might not understand what we're seeing. If we flew a drone up to the Statue of Liberty and it was right up by her ear, we would think, " Why would someone want to create a sculpture of an ear?" We have to pull back and see the whole thing. And it's so huge, you have to be far away from it in order to really see the whole thing. It's a lot harder to do that with music, which exists through time rather than in space like a statue does. But as I was saying earlier, these symphonies of Bruckner, they're huge in their scope, both in terms of the number of instruments and the number of minutes that you're playing, and yet there's an overarching coherence just like there is with a statue like the Statue of Liberty. They're not abstract.

He's not trying to be esoteric or arcane. There's these huge structures built out of smaller blocks. They fit together in a way that makes sense. And the blocks of musical parts fit together in a way that draws from traditions that Bruckner inherited. There's a direct line from Haydn to Bruckner in terms of structures. There's this Sonata Allegro form, there's the minuet and trio form. This is all... He's very aware of his indebtedness to the 18th century. And I think one of the things that makes Bruckner's music both challenging and satisfying, he makes a demand of us that we listen for that overarching picture of what he's creating. But when we do listen for that, we find something that's not only coherent, but there's something deeply moving. It's not just cerebral music. It's not just this interesting architectural puzzle. There's a profound sense of struggle and terror and joy and hope and anguish that gets expressed in this music. I think it's especially true of the Symphony Number Four, which maybe is why it's one of the most often performed of the Bruckner symphonies.

00:27:11

John Banther: That cohesive you're talking about really stretches across the movements. Into the second movement, we hear it starts very solemn. I love how it gets to the thematic material basically right away. And when you listen to this in context, from the first movement into this, you feel this continuation. We just had this big ending, but no, this is very much a part of the path that we're walking down with this. And I love this theme. This is one of my favorite slow movement themes, I think, because it just goes on and on and on, and maybe reminds us of that quote from the beginning, from Gilliam, " Infused with devout piety." I hear that here, in addition to Austrian heritage and landscape.

00:28:09

Evan Keeley: Absolutely. I quite agree with you, John, and I'm reminded of what Schumann said about the slow movement of Schubert's Ninth Symphony, talked about heavenly length, and that's that aesthetic that Bruckner inherits, this sense of these huge structures, this long melody, goes on and on, and then yet it doesn't feel like this sort of tedious rambling thing. There's a coherence to it. It takes you somewhere, you're really interested in hearing where it's taking you. It's really a fairly simple melody, and yet we're just drawn into this sense of something really exquisite that's happening that we really want to stay with it and find out where the story is leading.

00:28:47

John Banther: And already in just the first minute we hear a lot of these things. Just coming back the horn repeating a similar rhythm from the first. And this movement Bruckner called Song in that note to Hermann Levi, we read a little bit earlier calling it song. I'm wondering what do we think about that? Because it sounds like a solemn processional, not something I usually call a song, but this melody is so long with different right angles in it, that it goes on longer than you expect that. That's song like, but I wonder about this.

00:29:21

Evan Keeley: It's definitely not a lighthearted song, whatever it is. When I talk about processional, I think about Mendelssohn's Italian Symphony, this low movement with this pilgrim's procession, and there's a sense of this pious, this devotion that gets expressed to this music somehow. Is it a religious song? Is it a love song? Is it a heartbroken song? Is it a... What is this song that he's talking about? We can't even visualize what it might be, but as I said, we're so drawn into wanting to hear it.

00:29:54

John Banther: You talking about the Statue of Liberty has me thinking more about music within time and not so much a space, and especially how he delays some of these things for us. The horn section has its own solo moment, a few minutes in, and it's just a little moment, but it sounds so, I don't want to say precious, but it feels like it's just existing in the air, and this resolution is so long and delayed, it just feels very satisfying.

00:30:31

Evan Keeley: I love too, the way he writes for the viola section. Violas so often have to play the fifth of every chord type of thing, and they get to have this beautiful melodic section, and that alto range, one that we don't hear as frequently highlighted in orchestral string writing, he does it so exquisitely here.

00:30:54

John Banther: He does. And it draws you in, in a hypnotic sense as well, I think. And there's moments that other composers have, I think, drawn from, there's a moment here where I think Mahler literally just peered over Bruckner's shoulder. I think maybe in his second or third symphony, there's an excerpt that's just like that. But before you know it, the music swells and there's this expansion on this dotted eighth, 16th rhythm. And although it's been peaceful, the second movement gets quite huge as well, I mean fortissimo at times. And I think what makes the brass so effective here playing fortissimo and a slow movement that seemed otherwise solemn and more soft, like piano, it's that it's kind of sudden, it's bigger, it's more than what you expected, like a bright light. Maybe you walk out the door, you're blinded by the sun all of a sudden. And then what's great is it dissipates quickly too, and then they return a little bit later, even bigger. But it's this quick buildup and dissipation compared to the other things that come so slowly over the distance, like something coming over the horizon.

00:32:15

Evan Keeley: Very often Bruckner really takes a lot of time to prepare us for some big statements. And then some other times, like this one, he'll just jump in and it surprise us. Like you said, you step outside, the bright light suddenly blinds you because it's so unexpected.

00:32:30

John Banther: And I think this brings to life what Bryan Gilliam said in that quote. " It is far- reaching chamber music, though, the chamber is now a cathedral." And then Bruckner settles it down into the end with some more fragments from things we heard earlier on. And we'll get into the Bruckner problem, and the remaining movements right after this. Okay, Evan, now we get into what is known as the Bruckner problem. And this is confusing. So if you, the listener, are confused when you hear this, you are correct. That's the correct response.

00:33:13

Evan Keeley: It is, in fact, confusing.

00:33:15

John Banther: Yes. So I'm not going to pretend I know the differences between the different versions and all of these things. I'm not going to pretend. I think if you went on stage and asked a bunch of musicians, you're going to get a lot of blank stares as well, unless there's a point where, " Oh, I hear my parts slightly different," that sticks out. But then all these other things, it's just so easy to lose track of. And it gets even worse when you get into the 1930s, and even the Nazi regime gets involved. So tell us about this.

00:33:45

Evan Keeley: A lot of layers to this. Well, as we were saying, with every Bruckner Symphony, there are multiple versions. Why was Bruckner constantly rewriting his symphonies? That by itself is part of the, so- called, Bruckner problem. There are many different approaches to why he might have been doing that. And then what do we do with these different versions? Well, if he wrote three different versions of a symphony, maybe we could just pick one of the three and say, " Well, I like this one, and this is why he wrote it, so I'll just play that one." But then with each version, you have multiple editions and different editors who disagree about what he intended with each version and why he made the changes that he did. So you really get down this rabbit hole of... It's really almost impossible to make a firm decision about what the heck you're actually going to play if you're a conductor or a music director, or if you're a classical music radio programmer, by the way, or a podcast host, which Bruckner Symphony am I going to play?

And John, you and I, as we were preparing this episode, had these long conversations, which recording do we want? Which version do we want? And it's immensely confusing. So if you're new to Bruckner and you feel confused, it's not because you're missing out on something, it's because the people that have spent their whole lives exploring these questions are confused by them. You're in good company. Bruckner died in 1896. What happens in Austria, his home country, and then Germany, his neighboring country in the decades that follow, horrible, horrible things. And one of the horrible things, of course, is the Third Reich comes into power in the 1930s. The war starts at the end of the thirties, goes into the 1945, these horrible, horrible people, this pure evil regime, appropriated things. They were thieves, they stole lives, they stole land, they stole territory, and they stole art.

And We have all this thing about the monuments, men and so forth. They stole paintings, they stole sculptures, they stole music. So these composers who had died before the Third Reich ever existed were suddenly appropriated as part of their propaganda. Wagner, most infamously. We know that they loved Wagner. And you think about Wagner as a person and what he might have agreed with and so forth, and that's a whole other conversation. Bruckner, I doubt very much would have approved of his music being a part of this monstrous regime. But by association, he's guilty by association, quite unfairly, in that his music became associated with this terrible tyranny that created so much misery and suffering in the world. And really, you have to step back and remember that he died in 1896. He wasn't involved. And the people that stole his music for their own evil purposes don't get to decide what his music means. Even though one of the most influential editors, Robert Haas, lived during that time, he was a member of the Nazi party.

Was he a true believer? That's a controversial question. But he edited these Bruckner symphonies and these editions that still get performed today. What were the decisions that he made as an editor? What influenced them? Was there a gun being held to his head, literally and or figuratively? What was the agenda there? These are enormously complicated questions that we can't get away from if we're going to listen to Bruckner, and yet they're so difficult to answer. And we just want to turn on the music or go to the concert hall and hear the music and enjoy it. And yet there's all these questions in this Bruckner problem that we can't get away from. And they're part of what makes Bruckner's music so daunting. But they're also part of what makes it so fascinating. Because underneath all that is this genius who created this music and trying to understand who he was, what he was trying to say, why he made the changes that he made, are questions that are so worth our time and energy to explore.

00:37:31

John Banther: That is a lot. It's all very confusing. I think you laid out very well, especially just the humanity aspect of it. Because there was another edition after Haas, the Nazi that made his own edition that was then played for quite a while. But then is that other one, is it good because it's good or is it good because it's not made by a Nazi, right? It's like, Evan, if I give you two plates of spaghetti and I say one has bleach on it, one has Dr. Pepper, you'll probably eat the Dr. Pepper one, but not enjoy it. So it's a problem. For instance, the recording we've been sampling from is using the 2004 edition with slight changes to the 1888 version, which was the third one that Bruckner made and the first and only one he published, I think. So the layers of complexity and musicologists disagreeing and writing papers. The scholarship and the research are going on to this day.

00:38:31

John Banther: And there's even another different finale, which we'll mention briefly once we get to it. But with all of that, let's jump into the scherzo now. This is wonderful. This is the part of the symphony that also rewired my brain chemistry when I heard it the first time.

00:38:50

Evan Keeley: Yes. I think I had a similar experience.

00:39:01

John Banther: It starts and you can feel it from the beginning. Something's in the air. It feels like you are on some kind of Disney ride about to shoot out of a mountain or something. And it is just extraordinary. And again, tremolo within the strings.

00:39:14

Evan Keeley: The Bruckner Nebula once again makes its appearance. And then right away we hear this, da- da-da-da-da-da two and three, the Bruckner Rhythm. I should emphasize too, that where with the other movements of the symphony, the versions are different, but they're not completely different except for this third movement. The first version, completely different piece, the Alpine Scherzo, you and I aren't even going to talk about that. What we're talking about is the second and third versions, for the most part, completely different movement. Why did he do that? I think this question of his self- confidence is a really fascinating one.

A lot of Robert Haas was a good example of a musicologist whose approach was, " Well, Bruckner was easily persuaded by his friends or his publisher or whatever to make these changes because he didn't have confidence in himself." And if we believe that, then that's going to inform our impression of what his intentions were. But if we knew for certain that he actually did those changes because he did believe in himself and he actually just preferred to make these changes, then we might have a different approach about what we think is a way to interpret this music or how to listen to it.

00:40:26

John Banther: Especially being that this is the one he ended up publishing.

00:40:29

Evan Keeley: Exactly.

00:40:31

John Banther: And Bruckner does something that he's done several times so far, which is having this germ of an idea lead and bring us up into something big, and then there's silence. Or some low rumbling in a bass or a timpani. And this is the movement that feels maybe the most heroic and the most like it's a portrait of some kind of German mythic. I think of Robin Hood riding through the woods or something like that. I know Robin Hood more than I know the Norse and the German gods, but it feels like that's something that he's going for here.

00:41:08

Evan Keeley: But even Siegfried, you have him in the forest, and the forest bird tells him where to find Brunhild. So that's a mythic sense... Of course, it's supposed to be a hunting party and so forth. And yet you get a sense this isn't just a hunting party. There's some great heroic struggle that's unfolding here. I always think... You were saying, John, this rewired your brain. I had a similar experience hearing this for the first time, I heard it live, like I was saying. And it just blew me away. Every time I hear it now, it's such a thrill. Anybody who says, " Oh, I don't like Bruckner, his music is boring," play them this. Play them this third movement to the Fourth Symphony. It's not boring. There's something absolutely thrilling going on here.

00:41:47

John Banther: It makes me feel like I can accomplish anything, and I just want to throw something out a window.

00:41:52

Evan Keeley: Onward [ singing].

00:42:01

John Banther: And what's funny is this big German mythic, these huge organ- like moments, this larger- than- life stuff. Now we go down to a little tiny toy organ. We get towards this middle section, and it sounds like this is the hunters relaxing, singing in the woods. It sounds like maybe an imitation of a barrel organ, these small little organs, a little drone.

00:42:22

Evan Keeley: Yes. It's almost like a hurdy- gurdy or an accordion or something. They're sitting around the campfire. Maybe we would have a harmonica in our culture. It's something like that. This very relaxed, very casual of a Ländler, kind of a folk dance, kind of a thing going on. Again, Austrian heritage, and again, this is a Haydn- esque minuet and trio type of structure. It's just with this romantic aesthetic, but the structure is the same as it was a hundred years before. But this use of repetition in Bruckner, and this use of these very old, these a hundred- year- old forms from the 18th century, but infused with an aesthetic that's very much modern to his time, the Romantic aesthetic and the Romantic harmonic language, the Romantic orchestration with these very old- fashioned forms, fusing something, creating something new out of something old.

00:43:12

John Banther: And now you have me hearing this a little bit differently, Evan, because going closer to the end, the whole thing just guides you along. Closer to the end, we get this opening idea being brought back, but with a little more involvement or pushing and prodding from the flute. So we have this buildup, but I feel like maybe there's this Siegfried nature, and then the flute, this bird piping away telling them, " Hey, this, this, and this."

00:43:36

Evan Keeley: In that sense, we were saying from Professor Gilliam's quote about the landscapes, the sense of being in nature is really very much alive in this particular section.

00:43:54

John Banther: And we're actually going to hear just the end of the scherzo now and go into just a moment of the finale, the Fourth Movement. Okay. I wanted that transition into the finale to play out for a moment because this transition in this 1888 version is so wonderful, in my opinion, because it sounds like the third movement is, in fact, not over. The third movement isn't over. It sounds like we have just built up to something huge again. Silence, and now we're moving on with this next idea. And again, he gets right into it. Now, if we compare this to the other finale that was once written for the symphony, that he also called Volks Fest, or someone called it Volks Fest, it sounds completely different. I am so glad that he did not keep that Volks Fest finale. What a goofy transition. It works so great in the 1888 one, and I'm not trying to be mean or have a go at Bruckner, but that violin line, that deep, that's so uncharacteristic of everything we heard.

00:45:32

Evan Keeley: It doesn't fit as well as the later versions.

00:45:34

John Banther: No.

00:45:34

Evan Keeley: I agree with you. And maybe others, if our listeners want to write in and disagree with us, I'd welcomed hearing from them. But there's this sense of maybe Bruckner made all these different versions for a good reason. Maybe it wasn't because he lacked self- confidence, it's because he didn't want to give up on himself. What a wonderful insight into someone's creative process to have. It's very confusing to go through all these different versions, and yet we get to see how this genius sat through these things over a period of years and years, and kept reimagining what he could say and how he could say it more powerfully.

00:46:06

John Banther: It might sound harsh, but I mean for me, it's like this Volks Fest finale. This is what I would expect if I ordered it off of Temu. This is the Temu version of the finale. Because there's other things he does that make no sense.

00:46:18

Evan Keeley: The bargain- basement Bruckner.

00:46:19

John Banther: I expect Ratatouille or Remy to come out conduct this. It's just at some point with that little (inaudible) sound. So anyway, I love how it gets into the 1888 version finale because it sounds like a continuation of what we've heard. And you can tell this is going to be huge.

00:46:37

Evan Keeley: And I think also this Fourth Movement in the 1888 version is the most intellectually demanding of the four movements of the symphony. Again, there's this sense of structure, there's a sense of the components fit together like the chapters in a novel, but they're a little harder to follow in this finale. And yet, like you said, John, the way he went about revising this piece to create something that made more sense than the Volks Fest finale of the earlier version, really does take us on a journey that's worth pursuing.

00:47:08

John Banther: And we get to a moment that is really maybe the biggest of the symphony, and it is beyond terrifying. I have anxiety and an overactive imagination, so I'm really good at that in general. It just reminds me of seeing... If you've ever seen one of those huge 500 foot statues of a deity or Buddha. To me, I get a little nervous when I see that. It's too big.

00:47:39

Evan Keeley: Yeah, there's a sense of judgment almost, like you're in the presence of something that's so universally powerful and sacred, whatever your beliefs are, and this music, this use of unison in this particular passage, and I agree, John, it's terrifying. There's a sense of " What have I done wrong?" Or " Am I worthy to listen to this sound that it's revealing this cosmic truth to me?" And yet you can't look away.

00:48:06

John Banther: And it continues into the strings. There's this aggressive call and response between the strings, and you felt like you're caught in the middle. Now, this is super terrifying, and this is just the beginnings of the finale. And a few minutes later, he brings us to where maybe we thought we were going to go the first time, back to those big open intervals and harmony, like the first movement, not the abject existential terror that we had, but the delay in that experience makes it all the better. Listen, for example, to the opening again, but I've made an edit that skips that whole big first entrance. I think it's Bruckner saying you need to eat dinner before your dessert kind of thing.

00:49:06

Evan Keeley: Yeah. And then right after that, he recaps the second movement. We hear that song from the second movement once again. And as we were saying, it's repeated, and yet it's not exactly the same as it was before. And of course, this is also a nod to Beethoven and the finale of the Ninth Symphony, where you hear, at the beginning of the finale, the echoes of the earlier movements. But they're very brief in Beethoven, here they're much more extended. It's almost like he said, " Oh, by the way, I forgot this other thing that I wanted to say when I was talking about that other thing, so let me go back and say something else about it."

00:49:41

John Banther: And one of the differences when I hear this melody brought back here is that it doesn't quite feel like that solemn processional that we heard it previously. And then soon after, those folk elements, grace notes, that bagpipe drone, what a contrast from something huge to something so small like that. And right beside all of this terror are one of the more, I think, warm and endearing sections of the work. You're being swaddled or cradled now by Bruckner.

00:50:20

Evan Keeley: Yeah, there's this sudden sweetness that just emerges, and it's such a contrast, and yet it makes perfect sense.

00:50:29

John Banther: Now, we've talked about composers around Bruckner, like Wagner and Mahler that have, well, sounds like they've all shared ideas together, but we also hear sounds, I think we hear it today in composers like John Williams, there's a moment here that sounds like... You can't tell me film composers haven't been picking out from this stuff.

00:51:00

Evan Keeley: Well, and as you were saying earlier, John, conical versus cylindrical instruments, that fuller, warmer sound. You can be sure John Williams knows his Bruckner.

00:51:12

John Banther: And we'll hear another element of that right towards the end too. We also get a sudden return to this big minor theme, but it's an interesting way to get to it. Bruckner's music, I think you can imagine, it's like a freight ship compared to something like a jet ski. A jet ski you turn on a dime and do all of these things. You can have all kinds of crescendos, decrescendos, dynamics, all these things written in. In Bruckner, it's less over a longer period of time. A freight ship takes an hour to stop or something, right? So you can see these things coming so far. But here the strings are doing their own thing and it sounds like they're not finished. And the horn section just swells and then just takes over.

00:52:12

Evan Keeley: So much of this symphony, you feel like things are prepared. He builds up to them, and then you have this climactic moment. Here there's something that's very abrupt, that's uncharacteristic of a lot of the rest of the symphony, where they're caught off guard. There's new thematic material, this whole new tone. Like I said, the horns just take over. There's this kind of aggressive quality that emerges almost out of nowhere, and it just really catches us off guard.

00:52:36

John Banther: Beautifully put. And really, we're at a point similar to where we were in the first movement where, look, he's laid out these things. He just lays it out for the rest of it as well. We have more big moments coming back and they come back down. We have more moments where there's tremolo, timpani rolling in the background, adding ripples and murmurs or something like in a pond. So listen for the repetition that he's doing. Also bringing back even the folk elements as well, and how he's doing them differently, because with all of this repetition, Evan, it sounds like, well, we have to stop at some point. We have to arrive in some place.

And it feels like he takes us on a searching journey, I guess, if you will, for a moment, where it really sounds like we're searching for something and we're asking, " Am I in the right place? Am I doing what I'm supposed to be doing?" These life questions that we all find ourselves asking from time to time. And it feels uncertain. And then he does resolve that. And it feels like, " You know what? This is the place I'm supposed to be all along."

00:53:46

Evan Keeley: If we stick with the chapters of a book analogy that I was using earlier, this is a section of the story where things become really more ambiguous and there are hanging plot elements that are waiting to be resolved. So that sense of searching really is very intense here.

00:54:02

John Banther: And especially the pious nature. I think that comes back quite intensely in a very big way, like a huge statue with the trombones as they usher us in to the final moments here. It feels like, again, like when we (inaudible) you're so excited. It feels like stepping into Valhalla. Everything is behind you. You are never looking back, and you are walking through the gates of Valhalla or something.

00:54:58

Evan Keeley: I totally agree, John, and I think... You mentioned the trombones, and there's a long tradition of the trombone being associated with religious kinds of things. You go back to Mozart, for example. You think of Don Giovanni and he finds the statue of the Commendatore, and suddenly the trombones, which have been silent for the whole opera, suddenly starts sounding, and there's a sense of otherworldliness. And I really can't help but think that in this particular passage, Bruckner is evoking that.

00:55:25

John Banther: I think you're right. And I think there's even a little more coloration in the sound. And what's so great is a lot of people probably didn't even notice or thought something was uncharacteristic or quite different. But there is something very different with how he's, I think, approaching the end. These huge chords that are ringing out, this E Flat Major, the horns are absent. They're not sustaining that. That's trumpets, trombones, tuba, and some others. The horns are actually playing in the last six bars and E flat Major arpeggio in unison together.

So they're playing these moving arpeggiated line, not the sustained chords that adds a type of momentum to the music, and of course, a totally different sound with this conical versus cylindrical that we talked about with the moving versus still line. And on top of that, what's really adding flavor are the violins. They're playing a C- flat a couple of times in each of these measures. And it sounds like to me, something from ET, something super magical like John Williams. I really get that feeling to it, that you would not have that if this was just E Flat Major chords ending something like Brahms even, or Beethoven. There's more coloration.

00:56:39

Evan Keeley: C Flat is the lower, it's the minor sixth of the E Flat Major scale. So there's this minor inflection that pops in there in a way that really adds a wonderful color.

00:56:50

John Banther: And if we want to take this even further, should I take it further?

00:56:53

Evan Keeley: Take it further.

00:56:54

John Banther: Okay. What also changes the sound is how I think he's also writing for tuba, which is a conical instrument. And the last bars, they're playing a sustained note with the trombones, not the moving lines that the horn has, but in the last four bars, he has the tuba jump an octave higher than it once was. This actually puts it in octave higher than the bass section. The string bass is right next to you. This goes to a point that you experience, especially, well as a musician, and for me as a tuba player, when composers write for your instrument, but don't quite know how, sometimes they put a super low note in a tuba thinking this is going to be a big, wide, rich, low sound.

But the trombone section, there's too big of a gap, literally an interval gap. So it actually sounds less full. It sounds even weaker, as opposed to letting the tuba jump up to the middle register, playing closer to the trombones, to give that rich kind of ripping sound. And then on the last note, you drop down to the E Flat that the basses are playing. Long- winded story to just say he's doing really, even down to the last measures here, things with the color and the sound that you don't even notice but are just there. I like it.

00:58:06

Evan Keeley: There are times when I really envy you, John, being a tuba player who has played this music, and what it must be like to sit there in the orchestra pit and play this extraordinary music.

00:58:17

John Banther: It is quite life altering. I'm listening to this now a bunch of times, and I'm finding things I never heard before. And hopefully everyone has gotten something out of this guide here. A lot of repetition ourselves, right? We're repeating because Bruckner's repeating.

00:58:33

Evan Keeley: A Brucknerian conversation about Bruckner seems appropriate.

00:58:36

John Banther: Yes. And we have a full performance to listen to in just a moment. But before we get to that, let's read a review from Apple Podcasts. What do we have, Evan?

00:58:46

Evan Keeley: We got a five- star review. The tagline is " A much- needed podcast," and our listener writes in, " I love classical music and cannot understand most of my friends who just don't get it. The presentation of the music makes it more accessible as an introduction, and provides a deeper dive for those of us with more experience. As a retired music educator, I appreciate this effort." That's from Full Moon Child via Apple Podcasts. Full Moon child, thank you so much for listening and for your feedback.

00:59:16

John Banther: Thank you so much, Full Moon Child, and Evan, they point out even another kind of problem, not a Bruckner problem, maybe a musician problem. This person is saying they love it, they're listening, they're enjoying it. Why doesn't anybody else enjoy this? As a retired music... This person's retired and they're sitting here learning and studying and doing more. I'm sitting And I'm listening to music all day. You know what I often do at night? I go to a different room and I'm listening to more music.

00:59:43

Evan Keeley: Always learning, always learning. I was an undergraduate, I got a musicology degree, and my advisor was the head of the department, one of the most brilliant men I ever knew, Dr. John DeVario. And he said to me, " I'm still a student." I never forgot that. We're always learning. There's always things to discover. You never reach a point where you know everything, and having that spirit of endless curiosity, endless inquisitiveness, endless hunger to learn and discover more. And you know, John, I appreciate you, and every time I have these conversations with you on Classical Breakdown, I learn something. And I'm grateful for that.

01:00:17

John Banther: Well, thank you. And thank you everyone for listening. And now after all of that, we get to enjoy a performance now of Bruckner's Symphony Number Four in E Flat Major, Romantic. Here is Giuseppe Sinopoli conducting Staatskapelle Dresden.