This is a revised and expanded edition of Robert Simpson's study, first published in 1967, of Bruckner's music. It includes additional material on the 3rd, 4th and 8th symphonies, whose original versions have only recently become available, and a new chapter on the String Quintet. Dr Simpson, himself a composer, is also the author of "Carl Nielsen, Symphonist" and the BBC music guide, "Beethoven Symphonies".
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Clarifies this Enigmatic symphonist,
By
This review is from: The Essence of Bruckner: An Essay Towards the Understanding of His Music (A Gollancz paperback) (Paperback)
Shame this is out of print. Simpson was annotator,promoter at The BBC. He is a composer himself of large scale symphonies. Bruckner has long been an enigmatic creator, a late bloomer,spending years in pedagogical subjection of counterpoint.And his oefish,awkward demeanor gave a false impression to those who surrounded him,usually less talented unclairvoyant scholars who sought the necessity to revise his symphonies. Simpson here scours these giant symphonic boulders one by one,revealing where a great rupture takes place,where Bruckner's symphonic vision begins to look outward,beginning with the Fifth Symphony. Although the D-minor Third begins this transmogrification of vision. Bruckner looked well beyond the shadow of Beethoven,not utilizing that aesthetic pallette of pent up momentums,and overwrought festering movements that get resolved. Instead the Bruckner movement in fact doesn't move,there is no forward moving implication, we must simply withstand the overbearing presence of each movement in its own right,within its own oceanic spaces. Simpson is a good writer and brings some literary image to the outside gestural features, as his machine-like repetitive conconctions, its moments which simply begin and end mindlessly at times,as the various variegated Scherzi. You need the score I found to read Simpson for he does drag us through these symphonies as a callable narrative,moment to moment,step by step,(not quite note for note) inch by inch. This can get tedious,but that is what was the usual fare of musical analysis. Now hopefully there are those essays which introduce more social and political dimensions to the creation of art.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Still the Encyclical on Bruckner,
By Bernard Michael O'Hanlon (Wilsons Prom, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Essence of Bruckner: An Essay Towards the Understanding of His Music (A Gollancz paperback) (Paperback)
Robert Simpson may not have been the most gifted composer to have walked the earth but he knew something about the creation of large-scale symphonic structures and that gave him great insight into Anton Bruckner. His study is still seminal.I can barely read a stave. Be warned: there is a considerable slab here that requires a deeper musical knowledge than mine. Even so, Simpson also caters for the illiterate. Not infrequently he uses metaphor - Hans Keller rightly described all musicology as rubbish in the last analysis. Anyone who evokes Milton to encompass the coda of the first movement in the Ninth has my lifelong respect. Simpson also avoids the mistake of making such a study too topical; there are once off references to Karajan, Celibidache and Horenstein and that's about it. Additionally, he simplifies the textual morass - as much as it can be simplified. Simpson's judgements are usually infallible: the Vienna version of the First was a waste of time and used up twelve months that could have been expended on the Ninth; the re-writes of Four and Eighty were necessary and inspired; he is also a Haas man. His insistence that the String Quintet warrants inclusion into the canon - as we will call it - is apt. Where can one disagree with the author? Bruckner had a very precise process to composition. Having identified its sequence, scholars have pieced together some five-sixths of the last movement of the Ninth. Since this book was last revised, more flotsam and jetsam have washed upon the beach, not least, twenty four bars from the coda itself. Mind you, they fall short of a complete first draft - and Bruckner was never going to stop there. Even so, the stupendous reconstructions that are now in circulation have nullified Simpson's view that any such attempts were futile Bruckner: Symphony No. 9. Simpson also champions the first version of the Third Symphony that was presented to Wagner, arguing that it was progressively ruined by the composer and his infamous friends. Since 1980 (please note, the first edition of this book came out in the 1960s), various conductors have heeded this call and committed the Wagner version to disc (in the hands of Tintner, it sounds interminable Bruckner: Symphony No. 3 (1873 Original Version, ed. Nowak)). Simpson contends that a Haas-like amalgam should be attempted, conflating the 1873 with the obvious improvements as found in the 1876. The 1887 version attracts his scorn but it works well in the concert hall. Orchestras usually prefer it because it is `foolproof' - whatever that really means (the comment originates from Richard Osborne of Gramophone fame). To my mind, '87 looks worse on paper than what it sounds on the ear. Above all, Simpson writes with affection and acumen. It is a heady mix. If you love Bruckner, this erudite study should be on your shelf.
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