Bruckner's Eighth Symphony: A Listener-Guided Analysis

179 Pages·2015·22.73 MB·English

by  David B. Greene

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sh BRUCKNER'S EIGHTH SYMPHONY
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he A Listener-Guided Analysis
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e David B. Greene
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ce With a Preface by
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g The Edwin Mellen Press
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© 2015. The Edwin Melleplicable copyright law.
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Account: s4392798
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xc J_,ibrary of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
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sh Greene, David B.
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ub Bruckner's Eighth symphony: a listener-guided analysis I David B. Greene;
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e with a preface by Jonathan C. Kramer.
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m p. em.
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fr Includes bibliographical references and index.

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io ISBN-13: 978 .. 1-4955-0322-1 (hardcover)
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is ISBN-1 0: 1-4955-0322-4 (hardcover)
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pe 1. Bruckner, Anton, 1824-1896. Symphonies, no. 8, C minor. I. Title.

ut ML410.B88G89 2015
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it 784.2'184--dc23
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m 2015010941
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an hors serie.

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ce A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
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re Copyright © 2015 David B. Greene

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no All rights reserved. For information contact

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d. The Edwin Mellen Press The Edwin Mellen Press, Ltd
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rv Box 450 Lampeter,
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es Lewiston, New York Ceredigion, Wales
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s USA 14092-0450 UNITED KINGDOM SA48 8LT
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ig Printed in the United States of America
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AN: 1163172 ; Greene, David B..; Bruckner's Eighth Symphony : A Listener-guided Analysis
Account: s4392798
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ed iii
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t CONTENTS
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ex Preface v

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he CHAPTER ONE. Some Kind Words for Subjects 1
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ub 1. Sounds-in-Relation and the Listening Subject 6
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th i. Sounding Relations 6

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o ii. The Listening Subject: Relating to Sounds-in-Relations 8
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n iii. Strategies for Describing Listeners' Relation to Sounds-in-Relation 10
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m 2. Describing Bruckner's Eighth Symphony/Describing the Symphony's
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p Listeners 16
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wi i. The First Movement 16

rm ii. The Scherzo 19
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iii. The Adagio 23
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du CHAPTER TWO. The First Movement. Tom Narrative Threads
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ep Mending One Another 35
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ot 1. The First Narrative 35
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Ma 2. The Second Narrative 43

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ve 3. The Third Narrative 45
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re 4. The Fourth Narrative 47

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gh 5. The Fifth Narrative 48
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ll 6. The Sixth Narrative 48
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ss 7. The Seventh Narrative 49
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n 8. The Eighth Narrative 53
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Account: s4392798
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er CHAPTER THREE. The Scherzo. Transmuting Futility 77
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se l. Scherzo: A Section 77
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ep 3. Scher.w: Reprise of A 93
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, 4. Trio 94
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is 5. The Movement as a Whole: Scherzo-Trio-Scherzo 97
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f 1. Processes 99
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ss i. Apt Succession and Culmination 10 0
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erm ii. Apt Succession, Culmination, and Becoming a Subject 102
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ho 2. Becoming a Musical Passage/ Becoming a Subject 104
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m i. A: The First Event 106
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fo ii. A 'B: The Second Event 113
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an iii. A" B 'A "': The Third Event 11 7

in iv. The Question of the Unity of the Movement 123

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r CHAPTER FIVE. The Finale. Along the Line ofNon-Linearity 133
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e l. Linear and Non-Linear Elements in the Finale 135
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ht at Once 157
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s. BIBLIOGRAPHY 163
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u PREFACE
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xc David Greene's careful, close, and imaginative description of Anton Bruck
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er ner's Symphony No. 8 in C minor makes for a rich examination of subjectivity in
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bl the musical experience of the individual listener. Few composers are heard more
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e differently among concertgoers; while for some, Bruckner stands with Mahler as
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o the last of the great romantic symphonists, for others his music is "inlaid with
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on gold and weighted with lead." Some listeners have had something akin to an
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mi epiphany; others have found the experience tedious. Thomas Beecham said of
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it and at least four miscarriages." Like much music of the late nineteenth century,
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or Bruckner's Eighth offers an experience of extremes. Listeners of a more Classi
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an cal, moderate persuasion would find its extremes, perhaps, off-putting, exaggerat

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od the deepest abyss and darkest despair expressible t'lrough music, as well as the
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t At a social gathering of colleagues some time ago, someone asked me, rather
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ay out of the blue, what I thought of Bruckner's Eighth Symphony. Without hesitat
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ed ing, I answered, "It's the greatest symphony ever written." I had come to this con
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es clusion fifty years before as a high school orchestral cellist-in-training. It indeed
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ht has a great ceHo part, its pallet suffuse with the richness of my instrument. But as
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l my life took other turns, I found in this great work at several of the more difficult
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s. turns a great consolation and hope. At any rate, 1 was delighted that my colleague
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AN: 1163172 ; Greene, David B..; Bruckner's Eighth Symphony : A Listener-guided Analysis
Account: s4392798
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er "musical object." While for each listening subject tl1e object can be the same, the
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ai and ceils differently related to one another, partly because of their own identities
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ep as radically particular subjects. What is more important, Greene argues, is that the
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is Hearing-relating to-the music literally changes who the listener is.
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p That happened to me. If the musical experience resides in the encounter not
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n oscilloscope, but between those musically interreiated sounds and a living, listen
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ss ing subject, then a humanistic analysis should at least attempt to account for
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ho the listener.
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m Greene, in this study, models four ways of using pre-gained knowledge and
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in to each of the symphony's four movements. Then, as if in a coda to his study, he

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ep whelming apotheosis listening backward to its haunted opening measures. Hi~
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d. scription of human experiencing, then describing Bruckner's Eighth is an effort to
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s erences to pre- and post-Bruckner literature, poetry, philosophy, theology, and
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ri musicology form the basis of the strategies for bringing home what is ultimately

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AN: 1163172 ; Greene, David B..; Bruckner's Eighth Symphony : A Listener-guided Analysis
Account: s4392798
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pt CHAPTER ONE
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e Some Kind Words for Subjects
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om It can be odd to read about a piece of music I know well. Music critics and
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presumably the writing is including the hearing of other people, perhaps even me,
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th in what it says about the piece. Yet even when I agree with every detail of the de
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rm scription or analysis, I, the radically particular listener I am, am left out. There are
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t ter. Reading what the objectified listener hears feels odd, for I, a listening subject,
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se heard music.1
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r 1 Such an objectified listener seems to be presupposed in the following passage: "Ambiguous to
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l nality characterizes the opening of the symphony. A violin tremolando on F forms the background
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. to the opening theme in the lower strings. It instantly conveys the impression of a first unit reach
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es ing out over what must surely be a mighty span" (Derek Watson, Bruckner [New York: Simon
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P Schuster, rev. ed. 1956], p. 113). The writing style implies (likely contrary to the writer's own
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AN: 1163172 ; Greene, David B..; Bruckner's Eighth Symphony : A Listener-guided Analysis
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ed 2
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pe Music criticism does not always come to this awkward and unwanted out

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us come, but when it does it apparently works from a model of hearing music that

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ce entities that are independent from the music.2 In this model, the critics' roie is to
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r, describe the musical object in the best possible way. While listeners can do with
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li the description what they will, response is most appropriate when it is based on
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n ject, for if it does, the risk is great that the particular subject's agenda will over
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is whelm the artistic object and miss what is objectively there to be heard or seen or
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th For the past three decades Stanley Fish, among others, has been addressing
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ny to music criticism. In contrast to the model of an object perceived by an inde
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i pendent, separate subject, he insists that the self is "constituted by the ways of
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re stitutes the work of art by the same ways of thinking and seeing." Consequently,

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there "can be no adversary relationship between text and self because they are the
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se the purity of a text from a reader's idiosyncrasies.''3
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AN: 1163172 ; Greene, David B..; Bruckner's Eighth Symphony : A Listener-guided Analysis
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