# Bruckner Editions... ugh



## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Ok, I understand all the weird junk about Bruckner symphonies being in 5,000 different editions etc. But why the heck do people care? It's like... ok, Haas edition of the 8th is better musically, but we'll play one of the structurally lesser Nowak editions just because we're absolutely sure Bruckner authorized them. What the heck??? It's as though Bruckner, one of the big pushovers (no offence, of course; he's one of my favorite composers) in music history, wouldn't have signed off on the Haas edition anyway, except that he happened to be dead at the time it was made.

Ok, rant over.

(Incidentally, does anyone know what edition of the 8th symphony Dover publications is using (in their 6 & 8 combined score)? I know their 4 & 7 score uses Haas... so I'll be keeping my hopes up, because I've been looking for a Haas edition, and the cheapest ones have been full-blown conducting scores for 100 bucks or so.)


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## handlebar (Mar 19, 2009)

I own pretty much all of the editions in either Haas or Novak as well as the original performing editions and profess I like the Haas most of the time. There are some subtle differences that I agree Novak has that are nice.But Haas for the most part.

Jim


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## Chi_townPhilly (Apr 21, 2007)

Hmmm... *Bruckner* stuff! My kind of stuff. Well, here goes...

The English Language 'Source Q' summary of the matter can be found in Deryck Cooke's essay "The Bruckner Problem Simplified," which is probably most readily found in the book _Vindications- Essays on Romantic Music_. In spite of its relative brevity, it's NOT an easy read- and I (at least) was sometimes left wondering "if this is 'simplified,' spare me from 'made complex!'

However, if looking to improve the state of your Bruckner-information-art, it's pretty much required reading.

Though I'm frequently enriched by the contributions of Cooke, candor impels me to admit that the essay has something of an agenda- and that is advocacy for many of the Haas editions- and it's not a viewpoint with which I unfailingly agree.

An even more 'Cliffs-notes' version of the situation can be found in the Bruckner section of Michael Steinberg's _The Symphony_- especially his treatment of Bruckner's 8th.


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## Jeremy Marchant (Mar 11, 2010)

Robert Simpson's book, _The essence of Bruckner_, is worth reading, particularly because it gives blow by blow descriptions of the symphonies. So he has to confront the issues surrounding the differing editions.

Personally I think the existence of multiple versions reminds us that very few pieces of music are really finished, or couldn't be changed if the composer chose to (or had the opportunity). The sadness, in Bruckner's case, is that he made changes under pressure from people who had a distorted view of his best interests.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

World Violist said:


> But why the heck do people care? It's like... ok, Haas edition of the 8th is better musically...,


Well, you posed a question, and then answered it with your very next sentence. People get annoyed when a musically inferior version is played.
People object to Nowak because Haas is more musically satisfying. Haas cops abuse because pedagogically he mixed sources in his version of the 8th, so people play Nowak, which has foolish adherence to process at the expense of musicality (Cooke demonstrates this clearly). Haas is also a target because, working in 1930s Germany, he hitched his star to the Nazi wagon (Godwin's law does not apply here) which makes him beyond the pale for some.
Incidentally, I believe Cooke's analysis skips over the original 3rd, so he and Simpson part company there.
And then you've got guys like Korstvedt who seem to want to argue in favour of the first published editions (see - there are even fans of the Schalks & Lowe among us today).
I'll go with Haas. If we can overlook Wagner's anti-semitism to enjoy his music, we can do the same with Haas' work.
cheers,
Graeme


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

GraemeG said:


> Well, you posed a question, and then answered it with your very next sentence. People get annoyed when a musically inferior version is played.
> People object to Nowak because Haas is more musically satisfying. Haas cops abuse because pedagogically he mixed sources in his version of the 8th, so people play Nowak, which has foolish adherence to process at the expense of musicality (Cooke demonstrates this clearly). Haas is also a target because, working in 1930s Germany, he hitched his star to the Nazi wagon (Godwin's law does not apply here) which makes him beyond the pale for some.
> Incidentally, I believe Cooke's analysis skips over the original 3rd, so he and Simpson part company there.
> And then you've got guys like Korstvedt who seem to want to argue in favour of the first published editions (see - there are even fans of the Schalks & Lowe among us today).
> ...


(This paragraph is entirely as regards the 8th symphony, by the way) My entire problem is with people who look at things absolutely purely historically. Haas completed his version after Bruckner's death, so Bruckner couldn't have approved it... but he approved everything that came his way, more or less. So why do so many people prefer Nowak 1890 to Haas? People insist on period instrumentation for Bach or Mozart because, well, it yields better quality and if one applies good musicality, it turns out largely better than modern instruments in a modern orchestral setting. But with the Bruckner none of their reasoning for using the Nowak 8th actually makes any sense... at least to me.

Thanks everyone for your responses! I'll try to find those books when I can.


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## GraemeG (Jun 30, 2009)

I think the argument of the 'Schalk-school' - to invent a perjorative term - is that the existing picture of Bruckner is wrong, and that he didn't simply approve anything that came his way. They generally argue that the focus on "historical accuracy" was the Nazi way to rid Bruckner of the Schalk-Lowe Jewish influences, and that this attitute persisted post-war, and well after that into the English-speaking world (Cooke, Simpson) who were unaware of the German sub-text that was going on.
Here's an extract from an NYT article by Bryan Gilliam in 1998 (full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/1996/10/20/arts/for-bruckner-a-vague-nazi-aura-persists.html?pagewanted=all )

_"Max Auer, the [Bruckner] society's president, who had decried the cultural corruption of the Weimar Republic, described Bruckner's music as a ''return to the pure sources,'' and the search for purity formed the ideological basis for the first Bruckner Edition, edited by Robert Haas. That purist legacy, which rejected early printed editions of Bruckner's works as inauthentic and deemed manuscript sources the only authentic texts for the composer's music, lingers even today. Only recently have young American and German scholars, like Benjamin Korstvedt and Christa Brustle, begun to challenge this simplistic principle.

THE NAZI PROPAGANDA campaign was also fought in German music journals, where a vast body of ideological literature on Bruckner was generated. This literature was all but ignored after World War II, and the code of silence extended even into the Bruckner bibliography in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, of 1980. During the years just after the war, articles in German-language journals changed drastically in tone. References to race and soil gave way to editorial problems, documentary studies and analytical issues. Such positivistic concerns offered a refuge for scholars who wished to forget the recent past, but this neglect only extended the Nazi shadow beyond the 12 years of actual dictatorship.

Can we now, a half-century later, edit, analyze, perform or listen to Bruckner ignoring the fact that terms like ''authenticity,'' ''purity'' and ''organicism'' were encoded with distinct political meanings? Could one argue that the Nazi-deified ''German'' Bruckner, removed from his Austrian heritage and placed alongside Wagner, became the model for a modern Bruckner performing tradition? Have postwar Bruckner interpretations, exemplified by slow tempos and lush sonorities, unwittingly carried over the phenomenon of Bruckner as Nazi religious icon into the contemporary concert hall and recording studio?

Moreover, given this legacy, shouldn't we re-evaluate the tired notions of Bruckner as ''peasant genius,'' ''visionary mystic,'' ''Wagner-symphonist,'' ''insecure neurotic'' prone to manipulation by zealous colleagues? Although each of these labels predated the 1930's, the political spin imparted by the Nazis continues to resonate. _

Haas is accused of combining versions, re-composing bits himself, and all kinds of nefarious actions in order to claim copyright for his editions. I've just read the wikipedia entry of the 4th symphony, of which Korstvedt has published (2004) his own edition. Nowak, it seems, is seen to be just a more "authentic" version of Haas, but still tainted by the pre-war ideology.
It's a murky field, and it's only going to get worse.
The cymbals and triangle in the 7th will never sound right to my ears, however much they are thought to be approved.
cheers,
Graeme


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## World Violist (May 31, 2007)

Thanks for posting that interesting article... I'll read it again when I am no longer groggy and stuff (hooray for late-night internet...).


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