Stop making me think, Bruckner! It was so much easier when I could just point and laugh at you. Should what a composer did in his life influence what we think of his work? I don’t know that it should – so why does it? Personal life aside, why is his work so repellent to me? (Because I’m pretty sure I’d still hate it even if I thought he was a super amazing guy…) What exactly about his work is repellent to me? Orchestration? Harmony? Tempo? Lack of contrast? Everything? How can one person cry at one passage’s strength and beauty while I start cackling at its absurdity? Will I someday hear a Bruckner interpretation that I enjoy? How much of my hatred is the fault of conductors and performers? How much of my hatred is my fault? What exactly causes certain people to love certain styles of music, and others to loathe others? Could I ever – gasp – love Bruckner, if I invested the time and energy and resisted the ever-present urge to make fun of him? Since I learned his biography before I had a chance to really dig into his music, I know I was biased against it from the start. (A totally scientific comparison of what goes through my mind when I listen to Fauré versus what goes through my mind when I listen to Bruckner)īut I’ve been thinking about it, and realizing I’m not giving Bruckner a fair shake. Bruckner is the one who apparently can’t say anything worthwhile without a hundred-piece brass section blowing away for over an hour. Fauré is the wistful urban sophisticate who sums up delicate, ephemeral emotions in emotionally ambiguous nocturnes. Fauré is my favorite composer, and the two couldn’t be more different. I GUESS MAYBE BECAUSE EVERYTHING FELT AS IF IT WAS IN CAPITAL LETTERS! EVERYTHING WAS LIFE OR DEATH OR BRASS OR TREMOLO FOR NINETY MINUTES STRAIGHT! AND JUST WHEN I THOUGHT IT WAS ALMOST OVER I LOOKED AT THE CLOCK AND SAW THERE WAS STILL AN HOUR LEFT TO GO OH MY GOD SOMEONE GET ME OUT OF HERE! And I couldn’t explain why, which made me even twitchier. The music repelled me - repelled me in a way no other music ever had. I was twitching throughout the entire thing. I listened through the eighth symphony the other day while reading through the IMSLP score. You know he’s probably harmless – maybe he’s even nice – but you have no desire to get any closer to find out. He seems like the great composer version of the lonely old guy who hangs around gas stations, mumbling things to himself and asking female clerks easily answerable questions. For some reason literally nothing endears him to me. He just takes the creepiness to a whole new level. I can deal with one or two creepy traits in an artist…because let’s face it, most of the great composers were creeps in one way or another…but Bruckner. And he was obsessed with teenage girls, even when he was old enough to be the girls’ grandfather, going so far as to keep a list of who he found physically desirable. He came to a Beethoven exhumation without permission and cradled the skull. His heroes were Wagner, Beethoven, tremolo, this rhythmic pattern, and Christ. It’s entirely possible I read about him before I heard any of his music. But I do remember the impression it left: what the heck? I don’t remember when I first heard his music. Even though Grout succeeded in sucking nearly every human element out of his narrative, I’ve uncovered a lot of great pieces this way and put them into historical context. I then listen to Youtube videos of the mentioned works and follow along with scores on IMSLP. Printer-friendly version I Hate Bruckner, Part Iįor the last two years, whenever I’ve had any spare time, I’ve been drifting through Grout’s History of Western Music and taking notes at the end of each chapter.

Composer bruckner