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Bruckner's Fourth: The Biography of a Symphony is a detailed account of the music and history of the most well-known symphony by the great Austrian composer Anton Bruckner (1824-1896). This book presents the first accurate, complete account of the history of this symphony based on extensive new research and critical analysis.
List of contents
- Genesis
- 1: Introduction: A Long View of the Fourth Symphony
- 2: The Creation of the Fourth Symphony, 1874
- 3: Rejecting, Sifting, Reshaping, and Ordering, 1875-1876
- 4: The Music of the First Version
- 5: Reinventing the Fourth, 1878-1881
- 6: The First Performances, 1881
- 7: Entering the Public Sphere, 1882-1886
- 8: The Third Version, 1887-1888
- 9: The Music of the Third Version
- Structure
- 10: The Fourth Symphony, Musically Considered
- 11: The Evolution of the Finale, 1874-1888
- Reception
- 12: Toward a Synoptic View: Bruckner's Pursuit of Effectiveness
- 13: The Fourth in Performance, a Historical Sketch
About the author
Benjamin M. Korstvedt is the George N. and Selma U. Jeppson Professor of Music in the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Clark University, where he is also affiliated with the university's programs in German Studies and Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He is President of the Bruckner Society of America and serves on the editorial board of the New Anton Bruckner Complete Edition and the advisory board of the Institute of Austrian and German Music Research. He has held fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, IFK Vienna, the Botstiber Institute for Austrian-American Studies and the American Musicological Society, among others.
Summary
Anton Bruckner's Fourth Symphony is one of the most beloved and frequently performed works in the orchestral repertoire. Despite this, a great deal about the work and its genesis has been either unknown, poorly understood, or starkly misrepresented. The work's extraordinary history is the source of much of this confusion. Bruckner worked on the Fourth over fifteen years before he finally published the score in 1889. During the process, he created several earlier versions of the work, which remained unknown until decades after his death. The first attempts to comprehend the work's compositional history were made by German scholars in the 1930s, but these not only proved partial but sowed the seeds of a long tradition of misunderstanding. This book offers the first complete and coherent account, which draws upon numerous previously overlooked sources, of the extraordinary compositional evolution of this magnificent symphony. What emerges is the story of Bruckner's remarkable efforts to produce a symphony that would, as he put it, be able to "make its effect" in performance.
The heart of the book is an exploration, based on comprehensive archival research and critical analysis, of the creative development of the Fourth Symphony. It explains the nature and significance of the different versions through which the work passed, considers the impact of early performances, delves into the complicated roles played by Bruckner's collaboration with other musicians in the later stages of the work's evolution, and situates all of this in Bruckner's biographical, social, and musical context. The book also critiques the conventional wisdom about the so-called problem posed by the versions of Bruckner's works by deconstructing long-established myths, developing new insights, and bringing the musical logic of Bruckner's approach into clear focus. The book offers a searching yet accessible account of the music of the Fourth and a critical survey of the varying ways the work has been interpreted in performance and, starting in the 1930s, on recordings.
Additional text
Benjamin Korstvedt's new book about Bruckner's Fourth Symphony is a marvelous achievement. I know Korstvedt's musicological work from previous experience, so I had no doubts about its quality and reliability. What is remarkable about this book, however, is not the author's indisputable erudition. Korstvedt does uncompromisingly pursue the musicological truth resulting from documents, detailed knowledge of every single note of the composer and everything he said about his work in his lifetime. Yet he does it with such love for Bruckner and with such an awareness of the relevance of his music that the result is a very non-dogmatic and honest book in the truest sense of the word-and a delight to read.
