6/16/2020 Symphony guide: Bruckner's 6th | Music | The Guardian

Symphony guide: Bruckner's 6th

Bruckner's "saucy" sixth is the symphony that disproves those lazy received
opinions about his music

Tom Service
Tue 3 Jun 2014 07.00 BST

“He wrote the same symphony nine times.” "His one-dimensional orchestration is all thanks to his
training as an organist.” They're "cathedrals of sound.” "They sound like Schenkerian middlegrounds” …
and other such clichés. (Full marks if you got the last one, by the way, but I promise that’s what some
musical analysts, especially those disciples of Heinrich Schenker, think of the symphonies. What it means
in essence is that Bruckner’s symphonies move like great undigested wodges of harmony rather than
being fully finished in proper compositional finery: it’s saying they’re great symphonic lumps, basically,
calling to mind Brahms’s hoary old gag that Bruckner’s symphonies sound like “symphonic boa-
constrictors”.

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