Bruckner as theory teacher

[robcat2075]

Some contemporary comments by and about Bruckner as music theorist and teacher, quoted in a dissertation by Miguel Ramirez

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[robcat2075]

The dissertation also mentions his students Schalk and Lowe at points.

They are not highly regarded today, but I recall reading that they were going around Germany playing piano-four-hand versions of Bruckner's symphonies for conductors to try to drum up interest.

And somehow that worked!

Is there any composer today with students so sure of his value that they take it upon themselves to do something like that?

And I wonder what the Schalk and Lowe Tour T-shirt looked like.

[robcat2075]

Today I find on the internets that famous violinist and baroque music hoaxster Fritz Kreisler entered the Vienna Conservatory at age 7 where he studied with Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., Jakob Dont, and... Anton Bruckner!

I presume having a seven-year-old in your university theory class was unusual but i don't know.

[Kbiggs]

I think there’s a similarity between Bruckner’s and Schoenberg’s education, teaching and composition. Schoenberg wrote one of the model books on theory that’s still used today: Structural Functions of Harmony.

As a child, I remember reading a line from a fairy tale about fighting witches. While fighting a witch together, one protagonist says to another, “She only makes rules so she can break them.”

I think a similar rule applies to theory and composition: learn the rules so you can break them properly.

[LeTromboniste]

Today I find on the internets that famous violinist and baroque music hoaxster Fritz Kreisler entered the Vienna Conservatory at age 7 where he studied with Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., Jakob Dont, and... Anton Bruckner!

I presume having a seven-year-old in your university theory class was unusual but i don't know.

European conservatories are traditionally not universities, one could (and oftentimes still can) study there as children, through school (usually in parallel to regular studies, either evenings or weekends, or sometimes replacing some of the children's regular school classes on certain weekdays) and then into university level. For instance at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, where I did my masters, there are 7-year old sackbut players and elementary school kids learning medieval music theory!

[robcat2075]

European conservatories are traditionally not universities, one could (and oftentimes still can) study there as children...

I guess i should be unsurprised that the conservatories would wave in a seven-year-old boy but an 18-year-old woman set off panic alarms.

At 18, Ethyl Smith was wanting to further her musical studies but no British conservatory would admit a female student. So, she looked to Europe and eventually found one, Leipzig, that would consider her... but she would only be allowed to attend lecture classes if there were a screen in the room between her and the male students.

[Posaunus]

I guess i should be unsurprised that the conservatories would wave in a seven-year-old boy but an 18-year-old woman set off panic alarms.

At 18, Ethyl Smith was wanting to further her musical studies but no British conservatory would admit a female student. So, she looked to Europe and eventually found one, Leipzig, that would consider her... but she would only be allowed to attend lecture classes if there were a screen in the room between her and the male students.

A little context would be helpful here:

• You are referring to Ethel Smyth, who eventually became a reasonably well-known (but marginalized) English composer - and a rather radical women's suffragette, who was briefly imprisoned for her violent actions.
  [She eventually was granted a British damehood - the first female composer to be so recognized.]

• She attended the Leipzig Conservatory for one year - in 1876!
  I expect things are a bit different in the 21st century.

[robcat2075]

A little context would be helpful here:

You are referring to Ethel Smyth, who eventually became a reasonably well-known (but marginalized) English composer - and a rather radical women's suffragette, who was briefly imprisoned for her violent actions.
[She eventually was granted a British damehood - the first female composer to be so recognized.]

The one and only.

She attended the Leipzig Conservatory for one year - in 1876!
I expect things are a bit different in the 21st century.

That she left after a year hardly negates the unusual matriculation requirements they imposed.

I felt we had already established that we were talking about the 19th century... Bruckner and Kreisler prominently mentioned above and all that.

HAVE they stopped putting women behind a screen? Maybe after the Berlin Wall came down the practice came up for review.

[Cmillar]

Interesting to read about Bruckner and his thoughts. Thanks.

I think that composer Ernst Toch thought along those lines, as can be seen in his great book "The Shaping Forces in Music".

Know the "rules of theory", but don't get hung up on codified 'harmonic movement'.

To Toch, harmony was just the intersection of musical lines when they happen to occur at the same moment in time. The separate voices have a 'life of their own', and there is no such thing as 'consonance' or 'dissonance'.

'Consonance' or Dissonance' are totally determined by what happened before or after a point in musical time. There's no 'good or bad' consonance or dissonance...just notes and sounds playing together or separately on a journey through space and time.

Toch's book can be read a thousand times and there is always food for thought. Seems like he would have agreed with Bruckner on many aspects of music....except that Toch probably wouldn't have like the fact that Bruckner very often just threw together a lot of totally separate ideas that don't really develop or go anywhere in some of his symphonies (like the 8th, which is not his best work)

[robcat2075]

Interesting to read about Bruckner and his thoughts. Thanks.

I think that composer Ernst Toch thought along those lines, as can be seen in his great book "The Shaping Forces in Music".

Know the "rules of theory", but don't get hung up on codified 'harmonic movement'.

I get the sense that Bruckner was just teaching theory to snot-faced kids because that's what they hired him to teach.

To Toch, harmony was just the intersection of musical lines when they happen to occur at the same moment in time. The separate voices have a 'life of their own', and there is no such thing as 'consonance' or 'dissonance'.

I was not previously familiar with Toch so I listened to one of his symphonies. Ouch.
I agree that he seems not to know the difference between consonance and dissonance.

... Toch probably wouldn't have like the fact that Bruckner very often just threw together a lot of totally separate ideas that don't really develop or go anywhere in some of his symphonies (like the 8th, which is not his best work)

I can hear Bruckner crying all the way to the bank over that.

[Cmillar]

I can hear Bruckner crying all the way to the bank over that.

Maybe...but that doesn't mean all his music is great music (ie: 8th symphony)

Drake is laughing all the way to the bank too, but it's not exactly great music.

[Savio]

Yes, after Bach. Bruckner is the one to learn from. This chord progression is the most advanced in history. It start with the bass trombone on a high F. Then the bass line goes nearly chromatic from Bb to low Bb. It cannot be more advanced than this. Not even any jazz progression can end like this. The longest V to I cadence in the world! Enjoy

Leif

[robcat2075]

Yes, after Bach. Bruckner is the one to learn from. This chord progression is the most advanced in history. It start with the bass trombone on a high F....

Bass trombone realizing he still has another page to go...

[robcat2075]

Today I find on the internets that famous violinist and baroque music hoaxster Fritz Kreisler entered the Vienna Conservatory at age 7 where he studied with Joseph Hellmesberger Jr., Jakob Dont, and... Anton Bruckner!

I presume having a seven-year-old in your university theory class was unusual but i don't know.

European conservatories are traditionally not universities, one could (and oftentimes still can) study there as children...

While looking up other things i found this bit that it was indeed rare for a child to study at the Vienna Conservatory, and of course, i can not resist posting it...

[George Enescu] was the second person ever to be admitted to the Vienna Conservatory by a dispensation of age, and was the first non-Austrian (in 1882, Fritz Kreisler had also been admitted at the age of seven; according to the rules, nobody younger than 14 years could study there).

[LeTromboniste]

European conservatories are traditionally not universities, one could (and oftentimes still can) study there as children...

While looking up other things i found this bit that it was indeed rare for a child to study at the Vienna Conservatory, and of course, i can not resist posting it...

[George Enescu] was the second person ever to be admitted to the Vienna Conservatory by a dispensation of age, and was the first non-Austrian (in 1882, Fritz Kreisler had also been admitted at the age of seven; according to the rules, nobody younger than 14 years could study there).

I don't know, to me 14 years old is still very much a child (i.e. not an adult, or university-aged student)

[BGuttman]

...

I don't know, to me 14 years old is still very much a child (i.e. not an adult, or university-aged student)

In terms of physical development, yes. But prodigies have mental development that would allow study well beyond what is normal for the age. We had a television show about a fictional prodigy who gradated medical school. It was called "Doogie Howser, MD".

[robcat2075]

I don't know, to me 14 years old is still very much a child (i.e. not an adult, or university-aged student)

Ah... moving the goal line!

We were explicitly discussing a seven-year old. You and i both mentioned that age.

Anyone under 18 is legally a minor, but in everyday interactions it is uncommon to treat a 14-17 year old as "a child".

At the outset of this I said

I presume having a seven-year-old in your university theory class was unusual but i don't know.

And it turns out... I presumed correctly.

[Kbiggs]

....except that Toch probably wouldn't have like the fact that Bruckner very often just threw together a lot of totally separate ideas that don't really develop or go anywhere in some of his symphonies (like the 8th, which is not his best work)

I know that’s Toch’s perspective and not yours, but that’s an odd thing: to dislike a piece of art because the creator (Bruckner) didn’t follow the rules.

In late Romantic symphonic writing, one of the unwritten rules is that you use, develop, and re-use thematic material. That’s very different from what I’ve read about Bruckner—that he could be obsessive about his writing. He would publish a piece, then edit it, and re-publish some of his works. (That’s to say nothing of the many posthumous editions and reconstructions of some of his pieces.) Then there’s his Catholicism and devotion (obsession?) with tracking his prayers and devotions.

Who knows why Bruckner would introduce an idea and then not develop that idea? (Who knows why Klimt made that brush stroke there…?) Maybe it was Bruckner’s little way of rebelling against order, or perhaps thumbing his nose at the critics who dismissed his work as backwards, pedantic, or stodgy.

[Savio]

I'm not at all any Bruckner expert but enjoy his music. Only played no 4 and 5 of his symphonies and that's a long time ago. But it was exciting to play. First time I listened him was with Chicago Symphony in the beginning of the eighties. It made a deep impact on me. Especially the brass made it glorious. Intonation, power, balance, sound. And the soft chorale parts, it's just amazing.

I remember in a book about Bruckner that he was once asked why he made this long rests or silence in his symphonies. He answered it was because you need silence before saying something important or make a statement. And I think a lot about his music is to make statements. Not so much phrases like in a melody with a high point and then make the phrase die out. But he does it sometimes and what strikes me he often use the viola to do melodic phrases. Not always but often and it sounds so right and natural. And good. It's like he make and ending to a big statement.

I never forget the ending of the 5th symphony. It's an amazing cadenza that goes over 13 bars. And the bass voice has the high F and goes to Bb and chromatic down to the lower Bb. And he hammer that Bb major chord until the end. It's amazing, it's a statement. Maybe he his banging on the door to heaven? Not like "knocking on the heavens door" bye Bob Dylan.

Anyway I love Bruckner.

Leif

[Savio]

I just listen the whole symphony now. Its just amazing. But I took wrong, the chorale in the end is much longer. Bruckner wrote it is from about bar 580 in last movement. He write "Choral biz zum ende" fff.

Anyway, after listening the whole symphony I realise there is so much there. The instrumentation might be similar like Brahms, but more like an organ of course. Still there is some solo parts or delicate parts that Brahms could never write. He use a lot of chromatic, maybe learned from Mozart and even Haydn. The last movement has a fugue that Bach would envious. So it's obvious or of course he learned from the past. Still he is unique and its just glorious. The brass players in those days must have been better than we think. Or else those composers would not have been making all this fantastic symphonies? Even from Mozarts time?

Leif