Siehe: Programm
Dieser Kongress, der von der Bruckner Society of America und den St. Florianer Brucknertagen gemeinsam ausgeführt wird, bringt eine Gruppe von führende Bruckner-Wissenschaftler*innen und Experten*innen aus ganz Europa und Amerika zusammen, um die neuesten Erkenntnisse aus ihren Forschungen und Studien zu teilen. Die Themen reichen von Quellenstudien über Aufführungspraxis und Rezeptionsgeschichte bis hin zur musikalischen Analyse. Wir freuen uns darauf, alle, die Bruckners Musik lieben, ob Liebhaber*in oder Kenner*in, zu dieser faszinierenden und anregenden Vortragsreihe begrüßen zu dürfen.
Ben Korstvedt (Bruckner Society of America)
Wir freuen uns sehr, dass wir in diesem Jahr der Weltkongress der American Bruckner Society gemeinsam mit dem Symposion der jährlich stattfindenden Bruckner-Dimensionen abhalten können. Es ist uns eine große Ehre vom 20. bis 23. August 2024 die weltweit führenden Bruckner-Forscher im Stift St. Florian im Rahmen unseres Festivals zu Gast zu haben. In insgesamt 25 Vorträgen werden wir neueste Erkenntnisse der Bruckner-Forschung sowie Anregungen zu weiteren Ideen und Forschungsprojekten hautnah erleben dürfen. Es ist ein besonderes Zeichen, wenn diese Anregungen von St. Florian ausgehen können, jenem Ort, an dem Bruckner selbst entscheidende Anregungen für seinen musikalischen Werdegang bekommen hat. Der Kongress ist für jede*n zugänglich und steht allen Interessierten offen.
Matthias Giesen (St. Florianer Brucknertage)
Nicholas Attfield
An ‘Austrofascist’ Bruckner
Much has been written about the commemoration of Mahler in Austria during the so-called ‘Austrofascist’ period (1933-38). Less often discussed is the reception of Anton Bruckner in the same period. Scholarly attention has typically been trained on German National Socialist infiltration appropriation of Bruckner – including through the Internationale Bruckner-Gesellschaft – towards its own ideological ends.
This paper addresses this omission. Its principal focus is the tendency to interpret Bruckner’s life and work in and through the ‘Führer-Cult’ of Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, assassinated by National Socialists just before the 110th anniversary of Bruckner’s birth in 1934. Drawing on newspaper reports and articles from this time, the paper proposes that Bruckner became a public symbol for understanding what the Austrian national ‘character’ was, invoking already well-worn tropes – childlike good-naturedness, provenance in rural beauty beyond the city, simple faith in God – and identifying them mutually in the lives of both composer and murdered chancellor. This line of interpretation impacted on Bruckner performance practices, as well as on ways of hearing his works, including the tendency to hear their shining Austrian ‘idea’ as overcoming the rise of rampant materialism (as the Education Minister Hans Pernter put it, speaking before the Viennese Bruckner-Denkmal in 1936).
Thus the paper demonstrates how Bruckner’s biography and music became mapped, often clumsily, on to the Austrofascist history of post-war Austria: the long and difficult days of youth, the struggle for recognition both within and without, the belief in a ‘mission’ (Sendung) that had eventually yielded glory; and yet still the attacks from outside, the misunderstandings of enemies, that brought the glorious future into question. Much like Dollfuss, Bruckner was mobilized as a martyr, a means of cultivating Austrian national identity against the ever-shifting politics of its fascist neighbours.
Vita: Nicholas Attfield is Associate Professor in Music at the University of Birmingham. He is author of Challenging the Modern: Conservative Revolution in German Music, 1918-1933 (Oxford, 2017) and has published articles on late nineteenth- and twentieth-century European music and culture have appeared in the Journal of the Royal Musical Association, Opera Quarterly, and Oxford German Studies, as well as numerous collected volumes.
Christa Brüstle
In Bruckners Namen – Opfer der Bruckner-Forschung
Mit Beginn der musikwissenschaftlichen Bruckner-Forschung in den 1920er Jahren entstanden mehr oder weniger quellenbezogene Darstellungen des Komponisten. Damit war eine zunehmende Deutungshoheit der wissenschaftlichen Brucknerforscher verbunden. Es stellt sich die Frage, welche Auswirkungen diese Entwicklung hatte. Wurde damit zum Beispiel die musikalische Praxis in den Hintergrund verschoben? Welche Bruckner-Experten traten in den Vordergrund, welche Personen und deren Aktivitäten wurden abgedrängt?
Welche neuen Hierarchien der Bruckner-Deutung wurden ausgebildet? Welche Opfer forderte die wissenschaftliche Beschäftigung mit Bruckner in den 1930er und 1940er Jahren? Diese Fragen sollen entfaltet und diskutiert werden.
Vita: Senior Scientist für Musikwissenschaft am Institut 14 Musikästhetik und seit 2012 Leiterin des Zentrums für Genderforschung sowie 2016-2021 §99-Professorin für Musikwissenschaft, Frauen- und Genderforschung an der Kunstuniversität Graz. Sie promovierte 1996 über die Rezeptionsgeschichte Anton Bruckners. 1999-2005 und 2008 war sie Mitarbeiterin des Sonderforschungsbereichs „Kulturen des Performativen“ an der Freien Universität Berlin, wo sie sich 2007 mit der Arbeit Konzert-Szenen: Bewegung – Performance – Medien. Musik zwischen performativer Expansion und medialer Integration 1950 – 2000 habilitierte (Publikation 2013). Sie war Lehrbeauftragte an der Hochschule für Musik „Hanns Eisler“, an der TU Berlin sowie an der Universität Wien. 2008-2011 war sie Gastprofessorin an der Universität der Künste Berlin und 2014 Gastprofessorin für Musikwissenschaft an der Universität Heidelberg.
David Chapman
Bruckner and Historically Informed Performance Practices in the Twenty-First Century
Recent studies in the field of historically informed performance practices suggest that certain musical-historical contexts should be given weight in the performance of works from the nineteenth century. These studies indicate that valuable insights into the musical work can be gained not only through performance on period instruments and other tangible means, but also by consideration of the way in which the original sounds desired by the composer – as exemplified by his or her background, training, and contemporary influences – were produced.
Regarding the works of Anton Bruckner, the emphasis on his studies in thoroughbass and fundamental-bass practices and procedures is clearly a strong, if not crucial, force throughout his compositional career, affecting his works in a variety of genres.
This paper will seek to trace the thoroughbass and fundamental-bass training that the composer received early in his career through his later training with the German composer and conductor Otto Kitzler and, importantly, the Austrian theorist Simon Sechter. The focus will be on how Bruckner utilized these procedures as powerful semiotic vehicles for the presentation of an overall affect that can be lost in modern performance, and how historically informed practices, including the employment of continuo in many genres, would enhance the modern listener’s ability to grasp the full meaning of the musical utterance. A look at some approaches to historically informed performance practices in the works of Bruckner, as well as some of his contemporaries, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries will also be featured.
Vita: David Chapman received his Ph.D. in Historical Musicology from Rutgers University, where he teaches courses in music history, performance practice, and ethnomusicology. He is the author of the monograph Bruckner and the Generalbass Tradition (Vienna: MWV, 2010), and is currently preparing an edition of Bruckner’s Annulled Symphony (WAB 100) for the New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition series. He has contributed articles and reviews to various scholarly journals, including Eighteenth-Century Music, Ad Parnassum: A Journal of Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Instrumental Music, Notes: The Quarterly Journal of the Music Library Association, and the Galpin Society Journal.
Felix Diergarten
To Compose a Mockingbird: an Enigmatic Remark in the Seventh
Anyone looking through the manuscript of Bruckner’s Seventh Symphony will come across a little bird – a mockingbird to be precise: in bar 137 of the Scherzo there is Bruckner’s own indication „NB Spottvogel“. Only a few people are familiar with this little bird, as Leopold Nowak omitted it in his 1954 edition (following the first print), after Robert Haas had still included it in the 1944 edition (following the manuscript). What is this puzzling remark all about? Did Bruckner compose a mocking bird? What was the symbolic meaning of mockingbirds in Bruckner’s Vienna? This lecture explores this question from a cultural-historical and hobby-ornithological perspective.
Vita: Prof. Dr. Felix Diergarten teaches musicology and music theory at the Musikhochschule Luzern. Born in 1980, he initially studied conducting and music theory in Dresden. In 2009, he completed his doctorate in music theory with a thesis on Haydn’s symphonies, and in 2017 he completed his habilitation in musicology at the University of Würzburg with a thesis on late medieval song. From 2009 to 2016 Felix Diergarten was Professor of Music Theory at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis, from 2016 to 2023 Professor of Musicology and Music Theory at the Freiburg University of Music. Felix Diergarten was a scholarship holder of the Cusanuswerk, the Richard Wagner Association and winner of the MERKUR essay competition. He is the author of Anton Bruckner. Ein Leben mit Musik
Andrea Harrandt
„… legen Sie diesmal den Schwerpunkt auf Bruckner“. Das Musikfest 1886 in Sondershausen
Der 1861 gegründete Allgemeine Deutsche Musikverein (ADMV) setzte sich vor allem für die Aufführung von Werken der neudeutschen Schule ein. An wechselnden Orten fanden große Tonkünstlerversammlungen statt, die ein wichtiges Forum zeitgenössischer Musik wurden. Bruckner trat 1884 dem ADMV bei, in der Hoffnung, dass seine Werke bei den Musikfesten aufgeführt werden. Nach dem Adagio der Siebenten Symphonie 1885 in Karlsruhe unter Felix Mottl standen 1886 in Sondershausen zwei Sätze aus der Vierten Symphonie und das Streichquintett auf dem Programm. Franz Liszt, Ehrenpräsident des ADMV, scheint sich für Bruckner eingesetzt zu haben. Die Vorbereitung des Musikfestes, die Bemühungen um Bruckners Werke, die Aufführungen, die Mitwirkenden und Besucher sowie vor allem die Rezensionen über Bruckner stehen im Mittelpunkt der Ausführungen. Für Bruckner selbst war das nur eines von vielen anderen Ereignissen im Jahr 1886. Zu Bruckners Lebzeiten fanden nur noch zwei weitere Aufführungen seiner Werke im Rahmen der Tonkünstlerfeste statt.
Vita: Geboren 1960 in Wien. Studium der Musik- und Theaterwissenschaften an der Universität Wien. Ab 1980 Mitarbeit beim ABIL. 1988–2004 Mitarbeiterin der Kommission für Musikforschung der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, seit Februar 2004 der Musiksammlung der ÖNB. Seit 1987 Redakteurin des Mitteilungsblattes der IBG. Vorträge im In- und Ausland, Mitarbeit an Ausstellungen. 2014 Ehrenmitglied der Bruckner Society of America, 2021 Verleihung des Berufstitels Professorin. Publikationen: zahlreiche Aufsätze zu Bruckner. Herausgabe der Briefe Bruckners in Anton Bruckner, Sämtliche Werke XXIV/1-2. (Wien 1998, 2. Aufl. 2009; 2003), Anton Bruckner in Bayreuth (Anton Bruckner. Dokumente & Studien 19). Wien 2019; gem. mit Stefan Engl Hrsg. Ad fontem musicae. Thomas Leibnitz zum 65. Geburtstag. Wien 2020.
Paul Hawkshaw
The Intermediate Adagio of Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony
This paper will discuss what happened to the Eighth Symphony between Hermann Levi’s rejection of the first version in October 1887 and the earliest dates on revisions for the autograph scores of the second version, A-Wn Mus.Hs.19480/1, 3, 4 and Mus.Hs.40999. The focal point will be the copy manuscript Mus.Hs.34614b, the only score for the intermediate version of the movement and the only one to survive from the period between Levi’s rejection and the completion of the second version. Extensive sketches for the intermediate version tell us a great deal about Bruckner’s revision procedures. The paper will conclude with an illustration of how it compares to the two scores of the symphony we all know.
Vita: Professor of Music History Emeritus at the Yale University School of Music. Born 1950 Toronto, Canada. Studied at University of Toronto (trombone, history of music) and at Columbia University, New York (musicology). Ph. D. in 1984 with the dissertation The Manuscript Sources of Anton Bruckner’s Linz Works: A Study of his Working Methods from 1856 to 1868. Editor of ten volumes of the old Anton Bruckner Collected Works including extensive critical reports on the Mass in F Minor and Eighth Symphony and, along with Erich Partsch, the facsimile of the Kitzler Studienbuch. Author of the Bruckner biography in The New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians and numerous other publications on the composer. Since 2004 coeditor of the Wiener Bruckner-Studien for the Austrian Academy of Sciences and, since 2016, member of the Editorial Board of the new Anton Bruckner Complete Works. Recipient of the Bruckner Society of America’s Kilenyi Medal of Honor (May 2011).
Julian Horton
Bruckner and the ‘New Formenlehre’
One of the most welcome aspects of recent English-language research into musical form is a burgeoning interest in nineteenth-century music. Drawing on the twin pillars of the so-called ‘New Formenlehre’ – James Hepokoski and Warren Darcy’s sonata theory (2006) and William Caplin’s theory of formal functions (1998; 2013) – theorists have explored ways in which sonata form evolves across the nineteenth century and adapts to new harmonic, tonal, thematic and expressive paradigms. Following decades of neglect by English-language theorists, Bruckner’s music has of late played an increasingly prominent role in this research. Prefigured by contributions from Korstvedt (2004) and Horton (2004), recent work by Lai (2018), Pell (2018), Horton (2017) and Kim (2023) applies concepts in recent formal theory to dispel persisting cliches about Bruckner’s approach to sonata form, offering fresh insights into its depth and complexity.
This paper appraises Brucknerian contributions to the New Formenlehre, providing a conspectus of formal features in Bruckner’s symphonies that have attracted interpretation by formal theorists. I conclude with two analytical case studies – the first movements of Symphony No. 6 and Symphony No. 9 – which exemplify current debates with particular clarity. Symphony No. 6 discloses resonances with Caplin’s theory, whilst also employing a harmonic idiom that departs radically from Caplin’s classical syntax. Symphony No. 9 engages ongoing debates about nineteenth-century uses of Hepokoski and Darcy’s type-2 sonata, or the sonata without first-theme recapitulation.
Vita: Julian Horton is Professor of Music Theory and Analysis at Durham University. He is author of Bruckner’s Symphonies: Analysis, Reception and Cultural Politics (Cambridge 2004), Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 2, Op. 83: Analytical and Contextual Studies (Leuven 2017), and Schumann: Piano Concerto (Cambridge 2023), editor of The Cambridge Companion to the Symphony (2013), and co-editor, inter alia, of Schubert’s Late Style (Cambridge 2016), Rethinking Schubert (Oxford 2016) and British Musical Criticism and Intellectual Thought 1850–1950 (Boydell 2017). He has published on topics in the analysis of nineteenth-century music in Music Theory Spectrum, Music Analysis, Music Theory and Analysis and Music & Letters. A recipient of the Westrup Prize for his work on Field’s piano concerti, he has twice served as president of the Society for Music Analysis and is currently the Society’s Vice-President. He is now writing The Symphony: A History for Cambridge University Press and is engaged in research projects surveying nineteenth-century sonata practice with Steven Vande Moortele, Benedict Taylor and Peter H. Smith.
Young-Jin Hur
Who are the Bruckner Listeners and What do they Hear in Bruckner?
Despite the growing number of Bruckner recordings and performances, little is known about who the Bruckner listeners are and what they experience in his music. This talk explores these questions through a survey-based study involving approximately 400 participants from around the globe. Specifically, the talk will present data regarding the various demographic and personality characteristics of Bruckner listeners, the aesthetic emotions experienced during music listening reported by Bruckner listeners, and other Western classical music composers that Bruckner listeners appreciate. The study, thus, situates Bruckner’s music within the broader cultural and historical context of Western classical music, examining how contemporary listeners relate to his compositions compared to other composers. The talk will also examine how Bruckner listening is associated with day-to-day aesthetic experiences, including preferences for non-classical music and clothing. Additionally, interviews with prominent Bruckner conductors provide nuanced insights into interpretative variations of audience reception. As an exploratory study, the study provides a basic understanding of the perception of Bruckner’s music by audiences. In doing so, the study may provide blueprints as to the position the composer holds in the contemporary classical music scene.
Vita: Young-Jin Hur, PhD, is the Course Leader of the MSc Applied Psychology in Fashion at the London College of Fashion, University of the Arts London. His research interests include empirical aesthetics, with a focus on sublimity and beauty, fashion, music, and individual differences. Young-Jin also writes for his classical music blog, „Where Cherries Ripen,“ where he publishes interviews with musicians. Additionally, he is an avid collector of classical music recordings and has a particular fascination with the music of Anton Bruckner.
Sunbin Kim
Bruckner’s Approach to the Development Section in His Symphonic First Movements
Recent developments in theories of musical form have shed new light on the issue of explaining how the development section in sonata form is commonly constructed. Caplin’s theory of formal functions (1998, 2013) views the development as an expression of large-scale instability, typically comprising three formal phases such as pre-core, core and retransition. In contrast, Hepokoski and Darcy’s Sonata theory (2006) underscores the rotational nature of a developmental space, where expositional materials are reused in specific orders. Both approaches offer valuable insights into understanding Bruckner’s approach to constructing development sections – a topic that has received limited scholarly attention.
In light of these recent sonata models, this paper uncovers two central compositional attitudes evident in Brucknerian developments. The first attitude focuses on achieving the sense of moving forward with an emphasis on directionality in accordance with the development’s primary goals – expressing large-scale instability and devising a tonal return. The second attitude involves the composer’s desire to incorporate a full range of expositional thematic materials into the development, thereby maximising the development’s expressive potential as well as establishing organic connections between the sonata’s large sections. However, those two stances have a potential risk of conflicting with each other: given the overt contrast between the expositional themes, their full utilisation in the development might challenge the intended coherent flow. A survey of the developments in Bruckner’s symphonic first movements reveals the composer’s persistent efforts to reconcile these two stances in various ways.
Vita: Sunbin Kim is a lecturer in music theory at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. He recently received his PhD in Musicology from Durham University, where his research project on Bruckner’s symphonic sonata form was funded by a Durham Doctoral Studentship. His research areas encompass Anton Bruckner, nineteenth-century symphonic music, and analysis of musical form in general. His latest publication in Music Analysis explores Bruckner’s dynamic sonata conception in his Sixth Symphony. He has presented his research at several international conferences, including the European Music Analysis Conference, the Society for Music Analysis Annual Conference, and the Royal Musical Association Annual Conference. He holds both his BA and MM degrees from Yonsei University.
Benjamin Korstvedt
“Varieties of Sublime Experience in Bruckner’s Late Adagios”
Hans Zender put it plainly: “Probably no composer – except Beethoven – is so strongly filled with the character of the ‘sublime’ in Kant’s sense as Bruckner.” In this presentation, I consider how Bruckner’s music conveys the sublime by surveying archetypical instances of the musical sublime in the three last symphonies, the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth. In each case, the key moment occurs in the latter stages of the Adagio at the point of most extreme intensity, yet they are each quite different in character.
The presentation begins with a brief sketch of the essential attributes of the musical sublime as it is understood in contemporary aesthetic theory. Then I consider the music of these three „sublime“ passages, focusing on their immediate impact on the listener. Primary factors that contribute to the effect of these moments include: the duration and pacing of musical events; the character of the musical gestures that Bruckner employs; the sensory impact of the sonic material; and the exploitation of established formal paradigms and norms of musical syntax
The utter intensity of each of these climactic events is stunning. Musical sonority collapses into a moment of almost pure sound, even noise (sonic overload in the Seventh and Eight, unremitting dissonance in the Ninth), leaving normal musical syntax behind for a brief time. The listener is left overwhelmed sensorially and cognitively for a long instant, before being able to respond to the immediate sensation, to cogitate, or even reflect emotionally. Is this, then, the gateway to the experience of the sublime?
Vita: Benjamin M. Korstvedt is the George N. and Selma U. Jeppson Professor of Music at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is the author of Listening for Utopia in Ernst Bloch’s Musical Philosophy (Cambridge, 2010) as well as numerous publications on the symphonies of Bruckner and Mahler, symphonic aesthetics, compositional process, music criticism, reception history, and musical culture in late nineteenth-century Vienna, interwar Austria, and during the Nazi era. He is President of the Bruckner Society of America and a member of the Editorial Board of the New Anton Bruckner Collected Works Edition. The first volume of his three-volume critical edition of Bruckner’s Fourth Symphony was awarded the 2020 Claude V. Palisca Award by the American Musicological Society, with the second volume scheduled for publication in 2025. His most recent book, Bruckner’s Fourth: The Biography of a Symphony will be published by Oxford University Press in October.
Klaus Laczika
Bruckner’s Medical History: Risk Factors and their Consequences
The presentation is from the perspective of internal medicine and focuses exclusively on Bruckner’s physical illnesses. It deals with his predisposition, his risk factors, his lifestyle, the first manifestation of his heart disease in 1884, the therapies and the various phases of its further course until his death. It draws on the recollections of his doctors, especially Dr. Richard Heller, contemporary reports and material from the Institute for the History of Medicine at the University of Vienna. Finally, the infamous forgery of the Belvedere photo of Bruckner, his housekeeper and the two doctors Prof. Schrötter and Dr. Heller is discussed. Due to a university intrigue against Dr. Heller, he was subsequently retouched out of the picture on the initiative of his boss, Prof. Schrötter. The original and the forgery will be juxtaposed and compared.
Vita: Kindheit und Jugend in St. Florian. Erster Klavierunterricht bei Prof. Franz Wall. Medizinstudium an der Universität Wien. Musikstudium (Musiktheorie und Dirigieren) an der damaligen Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien. Wesentliche musikalische Impulse durch Sergiu Celibidache. Arbeitete bis 2022 als Intensivmediziner an der Universitätsklinik in Wien (Forschungsschwerpunkt Musikmedizin). Medizinische, wissenschaftliche und musikalische Kooperation mit den Wiener Philharmonikern. 1997 Gründer und seither künstlerischer Leiter des Festivals „St. Florianer Brucknertage.“
Thomas Leibnitz
Streit um den ‚originalen Bruckner‘: Zur Rezeption der Originalfassungen der 5. und der 9. Symphonie in den 1930er Jahren
Sowohl die Neunte als auch die Fünfte Symphonie Anton Bruckners wurden der Musikwelt nicht in ihrer Originalgestalt vorgestellt, sondern in Bearbeitungen (im Falle der Neunten durch Ferdinand Löwe, im Falle der Fünften durch Franz Schalk). Als in den 1930er Jahren im Zuge der Veröffentlichung der Originalfassungen in der Gesamtausgabe das Faktum bekannt wurde, dass sich die bisher bekannten Fassungen von Bruckners Manuskriptfassungen unterschieden, entbrannte in der Fachwelt eine Diskussion, in der nicht nur philologische, sondern auch ästhetische Argumente ins Treffen geführt wurde – mit charakteristischen Unterschieden, denn während im Falle der Bearbeitung der Neunten die Autorschaft Ferdinand Löwes von Beginn an feststand, war im Falle der Fünften die Frage der Autorschaft an der Bearbeitung umstritten, da Franz Schalk seine Beteiligung verschleierte. Da somit von einigen Diskussionsteilnehmern für möglich gehalten wurde, dass die Bearbeitung der Fünften mit Wissen und Beteiligung Bruckners erfolgt sei, wurde argumentiert, dass hier das ästhetisch überlegene Konzept vorliege.
Vita: Geboren 1955 in Wien. 1975-1980 Studium von Musikwissenschaft und Germanistik an der Universität Wien. Ab 1978 Mitarbeiter des Instituts für Österreichische Musikdokumentation, ab 1986 wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter der Musiksammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek. Von 2002 bis 2020 Direktor der Musiksammlung, seit 2005 Präsident der Internationalen Bruckner-Gesellschaft. Seit Dezember 2020 im Ruhestand. Zahlreiche Publikationen zur österreichischen Musik des späten 19. und des frühen 20. Jahrhunderts.
Elisabeth Maier
Anton Bruckner und das Konservatorium der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde in Wien
Meine diesmaligen Ausführungen werden einen ersten schlichten und nüchternen Einblick in meine aktuelle Arbeit geben (die in Buchform erscheinen wird). Erstmals werden alle Dokumente, Briefe, Musikalien und Erinnerungsgegenstände im Archiv der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde, die sich auf Bruckner beziehen, vollständig erfaßt. Bereits abgeschlossen ist die Erfassung aller Schüler-Inskriptionsbögen (Matrikeln) aus den Jahren 1868 bis 1891, die bisher noch nie in ihrer Gesamtheit durchgearbeitet worden sind; fertig ist auch die Durchsicht der Exhibitenprotokolle (Verzeichnisse der Korrespondenz der GdM) der betreffenden Jahre.
Meine Arbeit wird auch auf die gleichzeitig mit Bruckner unterrichtenden anderen Lehrkräfte eingehen, sowie auf das interessante und weitgehend unbekannt gebliebene Schicksal der Orgel, auf der Bruckner unterrichtet hat. Schon bisher haben die Arbeiten interessante Funde erbracht, so etwa eine bisher unbekannte Vorlesungsmitschrift.
Vita: Geboren 1947 in Wien. Ausbildung in Klavierstudium am Konservatorium (1969 Lehrbefähigungsprüfung, 1971 Künstlerische Reifeprüfung), Studium der Musik- und Theaterwissenschaften (1973 Promotion zum Dr.phil.) und der Katholischen Fachtheologie (2006 Sponsion zum Mag.theol.) an der Universität Wien. 1970-1980 wissenschaftliche Mitarbeit an der Musiksammlung der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek, ab 1981 an der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (seit 2006 bis heute ehrenamtlich). 1971-1993 Lehrkraft für Klavier an einer Musikschule, 1987-2005 Geschäftsführerin des „Anton Bruckner Institutes Linz“, 1993-2017 Leitung der Wiener Katholischen Akademie (zunächst als Generalsekretärin, dann als Präsidentin).
Miguel J. Ramirez
“Swelling like sand in the sea”: Reassessing the Viennese Reception of Bruckner’s Symphonies
The lowest point of Bruckner’s career was arguably the premiere of his Third Symphony in December 1877—and specifically the “unforgettable, heart-wrenching moment when, at the end of the performance Bruckner, standing all alone on the podium . . . picked up his score . . . and cast a painful look into the empty hall” (Josef Schalk, 1896). Fifteen years later, though, that moment may have seem to Bruckner like the blurred memory of a distant past when, following the premiere of his Eighth Symphony, the critic Albert Roncourt referred to him as “this most significant symphonist after Beethoven” and noted that support for the composer in Vienna had been “swelling like sand in the sea” (Neuigkeits Welt Blatt, 28.12.1892).
As is well known, it was not until the triumphant performances of the Seventh Symphony in Leipzig and Munich that Bruckner experienced the first indisputable success of his career as a symphonist. In the years leading up to that success, however, support for Bruckner had been steadily growing among Viennese journalists, musicians, and audiences, as shown by the enthusiastic responses to the premieres of the Fourth Symphony, the inner movements of the Sixth, and the String Quintet.
My paper questions the notion that Bruckner was a helpless victim of “the Viennese press”—a notion contradicted by the pugnacious exchange in which pro- and anti-Bruckner critics engaged after each of his works’ premieres. Drawing on this journalistic exchange, I argue that after the mid-1880s only a few of the city’s critics persisted in their opposition to the Brucknerian symphonic oeuvre. When the Viennese critical response to Bruckner is considered in its entirety, it is clear that admiration for his music was ever-growing throughout the 1880s and 1890s.
Vita: Independent scholar Miguel J. Ramirez holds a PhD in the History and Theory of Music from the University of Chicago, and he also holds advanced degrees in oboe performance from Boston University and from the Hochschule für Musik of Frankfurt. His book Anton Bruckner and the Reception of his Music: A History of Dichotomies and Controversies (University of Rochester Press: https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781648250996/anton-bruckner-and-the-reception-of-his-music/) is scheduled for publication in October 2024. He is also the author of For Later Times, a partly-fictional screenplay for a feature film about Bruckner and the reception of his music in Nazi Germany—a script that has earned accolades in several international screenwriting contests, including the prestigious Austin Film Festival Screenplay Competition.
Thomas Röder
Spurensuche in Bruckners Partituren: Berlioz, Liszt, Wagner
Unsere heutige Musikrezeption hat für gewöhnlich das performative akustische Ereignis – ob live oder als Konserve – zum Medium. Die These des vorliegenden Beitrags geht jedoch dahin, dass Bruckner zur Zeit seines musikalischen Lernens nicht so sehr über das Hören, sondern vor allem über die Schriftlichkeit sich den Zugang zur neueren Musik verschaffte. Es soll versucht werden, mit Hilfe dieser These einige „verdächtige“ musikalische Prägungen Bruckners aus der Linzer Zeit zu konkretisieren. Finden sich vom „Wagner-Erlebnis“ irgendwelche Spuren in Bruckners frühem sinfonischen Schaffen? Lassen sich auch solche Spuren finden, die auf Liszts und Berlioz‘ Musik verweisen?
Vita: Thomas Röder (geb. 1950 in Stuttgart) studierte Musik am Nürnberger Konservatorium und Musikwissenschaft an der Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. Bis 2015 unterrichtete er Tonsatz und Musikgeschichte am Institut für Musikforschung der Universität Würzburg. Seit den achziger Jahren widmet er sich immer wieder dem sinfonischen Werk Bruckners, seit 1991 wirkt er an der Bruckner-Gesamtausgabe mit. Zur Zeit arbeitet er an der Neuausgabe der Ersten Sinfonie (Wiener Fassung). Daneben befasste er sich unter anderem mit der Geschichte des Musikdrucks in Augsburg (1500-1650) sowie mit der Musikgeschichte Nürnbergs (Ausgabe einer Vespermusik im Rahmen der Denkmäler der Tonkunst in Bayern).
Franz Scheder
Anton Bruckner und Max Reger
Zwar hätten sich der 15-jährige Max Reger und der 63-jährige Anton Bruckner 1888 bei den Bayreuther Festspielen über den Weg laufen können, doch kennen wir dazu keinerlei Überlieferungen, geschweige denn Dokumente. Somit gibt es ziemlich sicher keine direkten Beziehungen zwischen Reger und Bruckner, jedoch es ist lohnend, beide Komponisten hinsichtlich ihrer Persönlichkeit, ihres Lebensweges und ihrer Musik zu vergleichen, Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten darzustellen. Das Hauptaugenmerk des Referates liegt aber in einer umfassenden Zusammenstellung der biographischen Ereignisse, die Regers Beziehung zu Bruckner erhellen. Untersucht werden dazu die Überlieferung von Äußerungen Regers über Bruckner, Regers Korrespondenz, die Beziehungen seines Freundeskreises zu Bruckner, die Programme von Konzerten, in denen Werke Bruckners und Regers aufgeführt wurden, und insbesondere die Rolle Max Regers als Bruckner-Dirigent, wobei auch untersucht wird, wie Regers Dirigententätigkeit im allgemeinen von seinen Zeitgenossen beurteilt wurde und welche Besonderheiten im speziellen bei seinen Bruckner-Dirigaten aufzuspüren sind, wobei das Hauptinteresse den Retuschen gelten wird, die Reger an Bruckners Partituren vornahm.
Vita: Die Nürnberger Aufführung der 9. Symphonie unter Eugen Jochum im Jahre 1961 bildete den Keim für Franz Scheders frühzeitiges Interesse an Anton Bruckner, das sich im Laufe der folgenden Jahrzehnte zu einer intensiven nebenberuflichen Tätigkeit weiterentwickelt hat. Die Beschäftigung mit Musik stellte neben dem Hauptberuf (Zahnarzt in Nürnberg) stets einen wesentlichen Lebensinhalt dar, praktisch ausgeübt als Geiger und Bratscher und Mitglied mehrerer Orchester, musikwissenschaftlich fast ausschließlich Anton Bruckner gewidmet. Neben der 1996 erschienenen Anton-Bruckner-Chronologie sind mehrere kleinere Aufsätze in den Mitteilungsblättern der IBG und umfangreichere Darstellungen bei Bruckner-Symposien und in Bruckner-Jahrbüchern als seine Beiträge zur Bruckner-Forschung zu nennen. Wichtigstes Projekt der letzten Jahre ist die Weiterentwicklung der Anton-Bruckner-Chronologie-Datenbank (ABCD) bei Bruckner-online.
Gabriel Venegas-Carro
From the Fourth on: The Impact of Bruckner’s Early Adagios on His Mature Approach to Slow-Movement Form
This paper evaluates the role that Bruckner’s early instrumental slow movements played in shaping his mature handling of symphonic slow-movement form. The paper is divided in two parts. In the first part I provide a brief chronological outline of Bruckner’s deployment of large-scale form in his instrumental slow movements composed between 1862 and 1873, that is, from the String Quartet in C minor, WAB 111 to the first version of the Symphony in D minor, WAB 103. In the second part I overview Bruckner’s handling of slow-movement form from his Fourth Symphony on (i.e., from the 1874 adagio of the Fourth up to the composition of the Ninth’s adagio in 1894), arguing that a thorough consideration of his early slow movements is crucial to the understanding of the formal plans deployed at this later stage. On a general note, I argue in this paper that lines of continuity between the different phases of development in his early approach to slow-movement form suggest that Bruckner’s symphonic slow-movement forms are internally coherent, original and ingenious reactions to an apprehensible preoccupation with 1) large-scale formal organization and 2) the tonal/thematic processes found in the dramatic plot of Enlightenment formal teleology (that of sonata form above all), important aspects of his slow movements often obscured by the custom of framing the topic with oversimplified and analytically uninformative formal labels such as ABABA or five-part song form.
Vita: Gabriel Venegas-Carro is fulltime assistant professor of music theory and analysis at the Music School of the University of Costa Rica (UCR). He holds undergraduate degrees in piano performance from the UCR (2006 and 2009) and graduate degrees in music theory from the University of Arizona (MM: 2013; Ph.D: 2017). He is member of the editorial boards of Indiana Theory Review (USA), Revista Escena (Costa Rica) and Musica Teorica (Brazil), as well as member of the advisory committee of Súmula (Spain) and founder of the Latin-American music-theory initiative Saberes Armónicos. His current research interests involve theoretical and analytical approaches to tonal harmony, Bruckner’s symphonies, 19th-century harmonic dualism and textual criticism.
Ken Ward
The Bruckner Journal: its Contents and Discontents.
The Bruckner Journal has been published continuously, three times a year, for more than a quarter of a century. It seemed appropriate on this Bruckner Jubilee that that achievement be marked. My paper covers a representative selection of the issues and controversies that featured in The Bruckner Journal over the years. I examine the origins of the Journal, its aspirations, its mission to counter ‘ill-informed twaddle’ that pervades much Bruckner commentary. I make some general comments on its contributors and subscribers. I note that the contributors and readers are predominantly male, but are inclusive of academics, musicians and lay enthusiasts, which gives rise to a juxtaposition of systematic analysis on the one hand, and listeners’ subjective responses and ‘mystical rumination’ on the other. One issue of the Journal published a discussion of the Schalk Fifth from opposing viewpoints, and several other issues devoted many pages to the various completions of the Ninth Symphony. I discuss the ’normalisation’ of Bruckner in the Journal, a trend that would emancipate him from the anecdotes and Böhler caricatures into a ‘normal’ composer and human being. The paper celebrates the warm relationship between The Bruckner Journal and the Florianer Brucknertage; and also the series of biennial readers conferences, of which this congress is the thirteenth, and I note recent developments with the present editor that will take the Journal into the future, merging with Bruckner Society of America, with modernised digital features, increased size, increased readership.
Vita: Having discovered Bruckner’s music in the early 1960s, Ken Ward’s enthusiasm for the music led him to become a founding subscriber to The Bruckner Journal. His career meanwhile covered a broad range of non-musical studies and employment. Neither a musician nor an academic, he was grateful and honoured to be accepted as editor of The Bruckner Journal to replace the founding editor, Peter Palmer, in 2005, a post which he occupied for 12 years. He remains on the editorial committee of the Journal.
Alex Wilfing
An Organicist “Aesthetics of the Theme”: Bruckner, Hanslick, and Viennese Music Criticism (1865–1902)
Eduard Hanslick, as the music editor of the liberal Neue Freie Presse, Austria’s largest privately owned newspaper in the latter half of the nineteenth century, is rightfully considered a central figure in Vienna’s music scene. His critical stance toward Anton Bruckner, who was catapulted onto the shield of the “progressive” music faction after Richard Wagner’s death in 1883, remains a significant yet somewhat biased topic in Bruckner scholarship. This paper aims to explore the early phase of Bruckner’s reception from two key perspectives rather than revisiting the well-trodden path of Hanslick’s personal relations with Bruckner. First, I analyze Hanslick’s views on Bruckner’s music, distinguishing between his high regard for Bruckner’s skill as an organist and his more critical responses to Bruckner’s compositions, primarily his masses and symphonies. Hanslick’s position, however, which varies by genre, is more nuanced than generally acknowledged. These views will be situated within the intricate web of cultural, political, and aesthetic attitudes that permeate Hanslick’s scholarly and journalistic writings. Finally, I contextualize Hanslick’s positions within the wider realm of Viennese musical criticism and its manifold newspapers, thus examining Bruckner’s reception in nineteenth-century Vienna from a more comprehensive perspective. Both steps are intended to show that although the debate about Bruckner was sparked by aesthetic conflicts, it was moreover anchored in political contexts, which often fade into the background when discussing the fault lines of “progressive” and “conservative” music in nineteenth-century German-language discourse.
Vita: Alexander Wilfing studied musicology and philosophy at the University of Vienna, earning his doctorate in 2016. From 2014 to 2021, he served as a doctoral and postdoctoral researcher on several projects exploring the contexts of Hanslick’s aesthetics at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Currently, he is P.I. of two research projects running from 2021 to 2026 and conducted in Brno, Frankfurt, Salzburg, Stanford, and, mainly, the Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities and Cultural Heritage in Vienna. Here, he focuses on the establishment of musicology as an academic discipline as well as the interplay between Hanslick’s criticism, aesthetics, and concept of musical research.
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Datum: Dienstag, 20. August bis Freitag, 23. August 2024
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