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Music, Beans & Lunacy

199.179.162.80

Posted by SPL on June 8, 2000 at 22:29:39

I’ve been warned not to engage in personal “attacks” on board participants and I shall do what I can. However, the remarks of Kevin McDonald in his post “I’ve pretty much always thought…”, below raise
vital issues concerning late Bruckner specifically, 20th cent music generally, and listener reactions to both which I feel are important to address. To avoid the personal acrimony below, I’ve chosen to start a new thread.

McDonald wrote: “When listening to his #9 symphony, I've always thought I was peeking into the lunatic's mind. The strident brass followed by the helter-skelter of woodwinds and strings, followed by another climax (2nd movement). Then the odd opening of the 3rd movement. Just plain nuts!”.

Bruckner has been credited as an influence not only on Mahler & Schoenberg, as well as a host of major & minor Romantic composers, but on 20th cent composers (Uuno Klami, for example) to this very day. As we know from the Delos liner notes, Schoenberg called David Diamond a ‘young Bruckner’. Bruckner’s bold, individual use of harmony paved the way for many that followed him.

The ‘odd opening’ of the 3rd mvmt of the 9th is one of the landmarks of harmonic genius; it has been heralded as such since it was first heard over a century ago. As one scholar astutely put it, the opening
interval – the span of a 7th – is an astonishing musical idea, implying “I almost made it!”. ‘Almost’ is the key because it conveys the tragedy of the idea. A more stolid, conservative composer, one whom history would have forgotten would have simply chosen to use the non-dissonant octave. Sing it in your mind if you can – do you hear the difference? It would lack ---everything!

Yet it was that powerful bold 7th interval that makes the music so trenchant; that makes it speak DIRECTLY TO US, rather than AT US. I believe that the last 2 Bruckner symphonies are among the greatest music ever written. They capture the human condition against a cosmic backdrop, with humble, always present sincerity controlled by the sophistication of a powerful musical mind and an inquisitive
spirit. Mahler was to take Bruckner’s 7th interval and turn it into a 9th for the opening of the finale his 6th symphony with musically transcendent results.

Yet, even after the atonality of Schoenberg, the bizarre imagination of Varese, the incredible sheer craziness of 20th cent composers (like John Cage or Stockhausen, etc.), the assault upon the senses of electronic noise school of composition; even after stunts like the Concerto for Dog and Orchestra (no joke!) by some New York wannabe composer in the 1980s, there are listeners who are still scandalized by the mild dissonance of a 7th or 9th chord. One wonders whether these conservative, easily spooked listeners have ever heard of
Schoenberg.

Listeners, who like McDonald, if they honestly admit, find a little ‘strident brass’ and ‘helter-skelter’ wind writing, as well as dissonant tutti to be fundamentally frightening - terrifying. I’m using McDonald as an example, but this is not an attack on him – we all know people like this. People for whom Mahler represents
the outer limits, or perhaps Liszt, Bruckner or even Brahms. The very achievements that set great composers apart from the herd – the steadfast REFUSAL TO BE MEDIOCRE – terrify these listeners
fundamentally.

To reduce music of such magnitude of achievement as the Bruckner 9th to being a mere product of some ‘lunatic mind…just plain nuts’ is not only to diminish the composer, his lifelong effort, his individual
expression and his art, but to offend the listening audience which finds the music to be an experience quite different from just plain nuts lunacy. Like some errant child yelling out a vile obscenity in the middle of a solemn religious service, it’s a slap in the face that’s offensive on every possible level to the listener for
whom the music represents a deep personal involvement in a musical experience of sublime nature.

McDonald certainly has a right to whatever response he may have to any music he hears. But, should he make his ideas public, we have equal right to comment on them. Once again, let me stress that I have no
wish to personally attack him. He is representative of a type of listener that bears examination, and that is what I wish to address here.

“Just plain nuts”, is exactly how they see that which to others – and I would venture to guess, most of you – represents pure artistry. Without these ‘just plain nuts’ radical elements, Bruckner’s music would fall flat; commonplace, lacking the ESSENTIAL SPARK OF GENIUS. There’s plenty of music like that from composers that listeners and history have long since forgotten. A few like Raff, Rezniczek, and Magnard come to mind. All contemporaries of Bruckner or Mahler, and all lacking their special spark of creative
insight.

Far from being the product of a ‘lunatic mind’, the 9th is the creation of a genius at the height of his creative powers. It stands not only as one of the great pieces of music in the symphonic literature, a singular utterance of a highly original style, but a testament to the human spirit in the face of mortality, a flickering
but not extinguished light in the vastness of eternity.
--SPL

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