An optimistic ode to peace
Back to the above-mentioned evening in 1808. Due to limited rehearsal time—apparently a large part of the repertoire was a sight-reading exercise for the orchestra—and the ambitious programme, the performance of the Choral Fantasy was a disaster. According to eye witnesses ‘the work just fell apart’, and the musicians stopped halfway and then started again from the beginning. The luke-warm response from the audience was therefore no surprise. Furthermore, Beethoven had excited expectations with the widely advertised title ‘Fantasy for piano, vocal soloists, choir and orchestra’.
Despite the unenthusiastic reception, Beethoven completed the composition. It is not entirely clear who was responsible for the text of the second part. Some sources mention the Viennese poet Christophe Kuffner, others talk of Georg Friedrich Treitschke, who also wrote the libretto for Beethoven’s opera Fidelio. Whatever the case, the message of both the text and the music is one of optimism: a powerful ode to peace. If that sounds familiar, it certainly is: in terms of content, music and orchestration, the Choral Fantasy foreshadows the choral finale of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Beethoven himself said as much in a letter from 1824: ‘The finale of my Ninth is a composition of the words of Schiller's immortal ‘Lied an die Freude’ [song to joy], in the same way as I did previously for the fantasy for pianoforte, but then on a much larger scale.’
In the spirit of Palestrina
Bruckner was as reticent as Beethoven was temperamental and resolute. He hesitated for a long time about whether to teach or compose, and when he finally decided on being a composer, the doubts continued to gnaw away at him: were his works even good enough? That insecurity also had a positive side effect: it drove him to educate himself continuously, whereby he built up an unprecedented musical knowledge base.
The seed of Bruckner’s musical language was planted in his early years, when he sang as a chorister during the celebrations in the Sankt Florian monastery. It was there that his faith and his passion for music were awakened. Bruckner composed a huge religious repertoire, with eight masses, two requiems and forty motets. In those small-scale sacred works he was looking for a way to reconcile his desire for innovation with the more conservative ideas of Caecilianism which was trending at that time. Under the supervision of composer and priest Franz Xaver Witt, this movement advocated a reassessment of Gregorian songs and the serene polyphonic style of Renaissance composer Palestrina. The motet Virga Jesse is a beautiful example of Bruckner’s quest for an equilibrium between clear counterpoint and more daring harmonies and chromatics.
The most daring
After a short career as a teacher, Bruckner began work as an organist in 1855 at Linz cathedral. In 1868 he was appointed professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory—a mecca for composers at that time. In Vienna Bruckner wanted to prove that he was more than just a church musician: he dreamed of a career as a great symphonist. It was in Vienna that he composed the majority of his symphonies, nine of which are officially numbered and one of which remained unfinished.
The road to recognition was a difficult one: his symphonies were rarely performed, and when he did find an orchestra or conductor willing to play his compositions, the critics were often damning. As a result, Bruckner kept on tweaking his symphonies, sometimes several times. His Sixth Symphony is an exception: it is one of the few works that he no longer revised. He composed the work between 1879 and 1881 and felt confident about it from the start. ‘The Sixth is the most daring,’ as he himself said. That self-assurance is also evident in the music: with its compact length of one hour, the symphony is a striking contrast. It sounds fresher, with more flamboyance and rhythmic momentum.
Bruckner never heard his Sixth played live. In 1883 the Vienna Philharmonic only performed the two middle sections. Not until forty years after his death was the complete symphony premiered, under the baton of Gustav Mahler. The latter did, though, make a few minor adjustments to the instrumentation and shortened one or two passages.
text by Aurélie Walschaert
