Bruckner 071450145X, 9780714501451

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HANS-HUBERT SCHONZELER

LIBRARY OF COMPOSERS / 3

Bruckner

Anton Bruckner. Bust by Franz S. Forster

Bruckner HANS-HUBERT SCHONZELER

VIENNA HOUSE 342 MADISON AVENUE • NEW YORK

Copyright © Hans-Hubert Schonzeler Published by Grossman Publishers, Inc. 125A East 19th Street, New York, N.Y. 10003 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number: 78-114931 Manufactured in Great Britain First Printing

Bruckner by HANS-HUBERT SCHONZELER

Contents 7 His Life 109 His Character 138 His Music Appendices

170 The Problem of the Versions 179 Recommended Reading and Listening 183 Chronological List of Compositions 186 Illustrations 187 Acknowledgements 188 Index of Persons and Places

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As will be seen from the foregoing, Bruckner had a fair number of performances to his credit by October 1896, although of course many of these date from the last twelve years of his life, commencing with the memorable Leipzig performance under Nikisch of the 7th Symphony. The same reasoning applies to a certain extent to the treatment which he received from the press. It must be admitted that Hanslick and his followers were consistently and openly hostile to Bruckner right up to the end and must have inflicted incalculable hurt on him by their vicious attacks, especially since they were the most powerful clique in Vienna’s musical life in those days. On the other hand, however, there was a band of writers who were frankly pro-Bruckner, foremost amongst them Ludwig Speidel who was Bruckner’s constant supporter from 1858 onwards, and later Hugo Wolf There is an amusing letter which Bruckner wrote to Dr. van Meurs in Holland in February 1885, in which he first com¬ plains about the bad treatment given him by the press and then lists those papers which view his music in a favourable light—and quite an imposing list it is: ‘. . . but in Vienna the entire musical clique considers me an outcast (with the exception of the Deutsche Zeitung, the Fremdetiblatt, the Tageshlatt, the Morgenpost and the musical periodicals).’ This is not to minimise Bruckner’s suffering, for suffer he undoubtedly did, but it does show' that the cause did not lie solely in the situation as such, but derived to some extent from Bruckner’s temperament.

Another topic which must be discussed in connection with Bruckner’s character is his relations with women. There is no other aspect of Bruckner’s personality about which more has been written. All kinds of theses have been advanced, and Freudian terminology has been liberally applied. Yet the matter does not appear to be so very complex. It seems quite certain that out of his deep religious belief Bruckner lived a life of self-imposed celibacy, and that any form of physical contact with a woman was repellent to him unless sanctioned by holy matrimony. Naturally it is impossible to prove this point. 130

Karl Muck {1859-1940) who gave frequent performances of Bruckner’s symphonies

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