Posted by Erik Eneroth on June 29, 19100 at 02:28:41:

In Reply to: Anton Bruckner's significance in music posted by Jaimee Kniffen on April 10, 19100 at 09:09:01:

Hi Jaimee!
This is a by far to short way to clear the question out since very much can be said.
One has to remember that Bruckner was a in a way a very conservative person and at the same time very modern for his time. His idol was Richard Wagner and a thing that they have in common is the monumental character of the music and the rich use of br instruments, otherwise there are more differences than similarities between the two. Bruckner has his true hart in the catholic tradition of sacral music, and his works are very mathematical and logical in their architecture, but still the emotional content is very irrational and extatic. It is extatic in the use of big orchestras with fat sound and the long lines separated by periods of deep meditation. His main sources of inspiration when it comes to other composers were Bach(his logical side), Beethoven(monumentality strong will and heavy rythms), Schubert(Austrian folklore style in a happy and laidback manner) and Wagner(use of instruments to build up the sound). It is hard to mention any composer that sound very much like Bruckner, perhaps because his style is very personal. Perhaps there are many that have little stenches of his style but none that reminds of him. In the late end of his century there was a conflict between the conservatives (the Brahms gang) and the modern ones (Wagner and Liszt), and Bruckner was very unfortunate ill treated in this conflict since he was a keen admirer of Wagner. But at the same time Bruckner was perhaps the most conservative of all but in his own way, since he used elements of renaisssance and baroque music but in his own way. Some of his sacral works could in fact have been written during the renaissance it is impossible to tell the difference. And still his symphonies was never fully understood by his contemporaries since many people thaught of them as modern and meaningless crash. This was just a percent of what can be said. Bruckner was a man whose personality and music was filled with both unity and contrasts in the same time, and he was a irrational catholic mysticist sometimes suffering from religious insanity.

Follow Ups:

Post a Followup