I remember horribly well the summer of 1976.
During my third year at university, I’d experienced my first manic episode. After two weeks in hospital I was sent home for a long rest. The mania was frightening enough, but the depression that followed was torture, haunted by hideous waking dreams.
For a while, reading was too difficult, but I could listen to music, so long as it was sufficiently consoling or calming. But then, I listened to Anton Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony, and I found myself playing it over and over again.
This may surprise a few readers, as the Eighth contains some of the darkest, most troubled music Bruckner ever composed. The fearfully probing first movement culminates in a vision Bruckner aptly called the ‘Annunciation of Death’, followed by the desolate, slowly ebbing coda that he compared to a clock ticking in the room of a dying man.
The Adagio slow movement contains music of heart-rending longing and loneliness. This music is perhaps the most personal confession of this lifelong bachelor, constantly prone to bizarre infatuations with much younger women and girls – apparently never consummated.
The Adagio’s nobly aspiring cello, viola and solo violin theme seemed to speak directly to my loneliness, but in a way that felt strangely affirming. As a Russian musician I met years later put it, ‘There’s something about hearing your most painful emotions transformed into something beautiful…’
'He does something which drives people mad'
But there was something else – something rooted in those very formal principles that cause such problems for Bruckner-sceptics. The Eighth Symphony’s first movement is actually one of the most seamless, structurally self-explanatory arguments Bruckner ever created. But as that long Adagio approaches its thrilling, cymbal-crowned climax, Bruckner starts doing something which drives some people mad.
He’ll build up a beautifully engineered long crescendo then, just as we seem to be reaching the moment when the wave ought to break spectacularly, he stops … pauses … then seems to start somewhere else. The themes may be recognisable, but it’s as though we’ve suddenly side-stepped into a parallel universe. In the long approach to the Adagio’s climax this happens three times – which means that, for some, when we do get to that truly visionary moment, it just doesn’t work. Perplexity and irritation have spoilt the Big Reveal.
If that is how you feel, then you really do have my sympathy. There have been times when I’ve been getting to know some of the symphonies when I’ve felt the same. In fact, I’m not even sure that, despite his notorious frequent revisions, Bruckner ever got the Finale of the Fourth Symphony right, let alone any of the movements – barring the Scherzo – in the Third. In the wrong kind of performance, the huge first movement of the Ninth Symphony can leave the listener structurally punch drunk with its sudden cut-offs, reversals, switches in theme, tempo and character.
Does he have any idea what he's doing?
Bruckner’s symphonies have been famously described as ‘cathedrals in sound’, but in this case the cathedral seems to have been designed by a kind of deranged MC Escher. It is as though you’re strolling up the spacious nave one moment, candle-lit altar clearly in view, only to find yourself suddenly peering down vertiginously from the top of the rood screen the next. What is Bruckner doing? Does he actually have any idea what he’s doing?
My answer to that, it won’t surprise you to learn, is an emphatic ‘yes’. But it’s something so extraordinary that I’m having difficulty thinking of direct parallels in the works of any other composers. Haydn, and more spectacularly Beethoven, can set up tension in their symphonic works, tease us with false, thwarted resolutions, then thrillingly provide the rabbit-out-of-the-hat release at the very end.
Schubert can do something similar, but on a more expansive scale, often with pauses for breath instead of the expected transition into something new – a device which led to George Bernard Shaw dismissing him as ‘brainless’. And, for those who buy into his thinking, Wagner can create huge expectations which may only be fulfilled after several hours waiting – think of the Liebestod in Tristan und Isolde, all the more overwhelming after three acts of exquisitely agonising foreplay.
A slower metabolic rate
No question, Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert and Wagner are important influences on Bruckner’s symphonic thinking. But firstly – with the exception of Wagner – he slows them down. The metabolic rate is different, and even when the music seems animated on the surface, the background pulse is slower, like the movement of an ocean liner.
There are moments when this background pulse stands revealed, and if we can identify with it, accept it, then what Bruckner does superficially becomes less frustrating because we know not to be fooled into false expectations. As composer Robert Simpson put it, Bruckner doesn’t simply demand patience, he actually expresses it. This is harder to grasp at first because – unless the performance is of the regrettable kind which monumentalises everything – we can also hear his anxiety, his yearning, his sadness and terrifying instability.
Bruckner 'explains everything'
I can recall taking a Bruckner-sceptic friend to a performance of the Fourth Symphony while at university. I well remember the look of delighted surprise he gave me about five minutes into the first movement – he was actually enjoying it!
But what stayed with me most of all was his comment about the slow movement, that strange nocturnal procession through a vast forestscape which at times seems to come to a complete standstill. He pointed to a passage, just after the brassy climax, where sombre string harmonies rise slowly above quietly throbbing timpani. ‘That passage’, he said, eyes burning, ‘explains everything!’
The whole journey makes sense
In such moments – and the final crescendo of the Eighth Symphony is perhaps the greatest of all – the threads left hanging in the air earlier on are suddenly drawn together, and the whole journey makes sense. It reminds me of the ending of John Milton’s 1671 drama Samson Agonistes:
‘All is best, though we oft doubt, What th’ unsearchable dispose Of highest wisdom brings about, And ever best found in the close. Oft he seems to hide his face, But unexpectedly returns And to his faithful Champion hath in place Bore witness gloriously’.
For Bruckner, that ‘highest wisdom’ was his God, to whom he dedicated his choral-orchestral Te Deum ‘for having brought me through so much suffering in Vienna’. But one doesn’t need to believe in a personal God to share St Augustine’s intuition that ‘There is one within me who is more myself than my self’ – that sense many have that there’s someone within us who knows better than our limited, ‘rational’ egos what we need to think and do.
Bruckner: helping you find your way home
And if that all sounds impossibly high-flown, think of Pooh and Piglet, lost in the fog at the top of the forest in The House at Pooh Corner. ‘Do you know the way home?’, asks Piglet anxiously. ‘No,' said Pooh. 'But there are 12 pots of honey in my cupboard, and they have been calling me for hours. I couldn’t hear them properly before, because Rabbit would talk, but if nobody says anything except those 12 pots, I, Piglet, I shall know where they are calling from. Come on.'
Don’t let the fog and the unfamiliarity of everything scare you, Bruckner seems to say. Be patient – wait for Rabbit to stop talking, and you too might hear that call and find your way home.
That’s what he said to me, in 1976, and has continued to say, at varying intervals, ever since. If he hasn’t said that to you yet, then perhaps you’ve never needed it, in which case I genuinely envy you. But don’t dismiss him utterly – there may come a day when you need him too.
Where to start with Bruckner? Five gateway moments
1. Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major, 'Romantic' – 1st Movement
Majestic and atmospheric, this movement opens with a hushed horn call and builds into sweeping vistas. It’s one of Bruckner’s most immediately engaging openings — cinematic, noble, and full of forested wonder.
2. Symphony No. 7 in E major – 2nd Movement (Adagio)
Profoundly beautiful and deeply elegiac, this slow movement was written as Wagner lay dying. Its shimmering string lines and haunting Wagner tubas make it one of Bruckner’s most moving creations.
3. Te Deum in C major – opening section
This choral work bursts in with blazing confidence. With organ, full orchestra, and huge choral forces, it’s Bruckner at his most triumphant — a bold expression of unwavering faith.
4. Symphony No. 6 in A major – 3rd Movement (Scherzo)
Rhythmic, driving, and full of swagger, this scherzo has an almost rustic vitality. It’s a great intro to Bruckner’s more playful side, with thunderous energy and sly charm.
5. Symphony No. 9 in D minor – 1st Movement
Started near the end of his life, this unfinished final symphony opens with cosmic drama. Mysterious and solemn, it captures Bruckner’s spiritual awe and architectural grandeur in every bar.
All pics: Getty Images
