COMPOSER BIOGRAPHY

published by Schott NY and Project Schott New York and in 2021 he joined the composition faculty at Mannes School of Music. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Carrie Sun. To explore more, go to christophercerrone.com.

ANTON BRUCKNER

(1824 - 1896)

Austrian Romantic composer and organist

Anton Bruckner was born on September 4, 1824 in the Upper Austrian town of Ansfelden near Linz. His father, who was a schoolmaster and organist, was his first music teacher, but as a boy of 13, Bruckner began studies as a chorister at the monastery in St. Florian. At the age of 27, he assumed the position of organist for the monastery chapel and stayed there well into his forties. While there he became acquainted with Franz Liszt. Liszt and several other composers, including Wagner, founded the New German School of Music and counted Bruckner as one of their greatest admirers.

In 1868 Bruckner accepted a post as a teacher of music theory at the Vienna Conservatory. During this time, he concentrated most of his energy on writing symphonies. These symphonies, however, were poorly received and at times criticized as being "wild" and "nonsensical." He later accepted a post at the University of Vienna in 1875, where he attempted to make music theory a part of the curriculum. While Bruckner was residing in Vienna, the well-documented “feud” between two factions of musical styles began to wage. Bruckner’s devotion to the music of Wagner and the New German School put him at odds with influential Viennese musicians, conductors, and critics who were instead devotees of Brahms. This had an impact on performance opportunities for his symphonies and the critical reviews they received.

Bruckner did not gain prominence as a composer until he was in his 60s. He was, however, quite famous as an organist throughout his life. In 1871 he was invited to concertize in England performing six recitals on a new Henry Willis organ at Royal Albert Hall in London and five more at the Crystal Palace. It is interesting to note that this renowned organist composed no pieces for the organ. However, he is said to have discovered the melodic themes for many of his symphonies through improvisation on the “King of Instruments”.

In addition to his symphonies, Bruckner wrote Masses, motets, and other sacred choral works. In contrast to his Romantic symphonies, Bruckner's choral works are often conservative and contrapuntal in style.

Bruckner lived very simply. Numerous stories are recounted as to his determined pursuit of composition and his humble acceptance of the fame that eventually came his way. Once, after a performance of his Symphony No. 5, an enthusiastic young person approached him and said his work was the greatest creation since Beethoven. Bruckner, overcome with emotion, and not knowing how to respond, reached in his pocket and gave the young man a silver piece, and told him he had waited his whole life just to hear someone say that.

Brucker was a deeply religious man, a devout Catholic, and the early monastic influence in his life was to have a significant effect on the composer and his music. Like J.S. Bach, Bruckner believed that music’s ultimate purpose was to praise and glorify God. His compositions have been compared to the architecture and atmosphere of the cathedrals he so frequently visited and in which he performed (more on that in our program notes following). One of his biographers, Hans Redlich, stated that Bruckner may have been "the only great composer of his century whose entire musical output is determined by his religious faith." And like Beethoven, Bruckner’s works, and particularly his symphonic output, straddle the boundary between two distinct eras of music history — the style and forms used in the early Romantic period of the 19th century and those used in the early 20th century of Modern music.

Bruckner died in Vienna on February 11, 1903. Three movements of his incomplete Symphony No. 9 premiered on the same day in Vienna with the dedication "to the King of Kings, or Lord — and I hope that He will grant me enough time to complete it."

SYMPHONY No. 7 IN E MAJOR, WAB 107

Anton Bruckner

(1824 - 1896)

by Laurie Shulman ©2023 | First North American Serial Rights Only

A frequent metaphor used to describe Bruckner's music is the Gothic cathedral. One circles it on foot, observing its beauty from every angle, then enters. One visitor may be absorbed by the vaulting of the arches and the structural principles of the buttresses. Another may admire the decorative sculptures and the rose windows, remaining oblivious to the more practical aspects of construction. The cathedral is simply there, immutable, permanent. It does not go anywhere, but it exists with many facets, ready to be appreciated from every angle.

To those for whom all Gothic cathedrals look alike, all Bruckner may sound the same. Some critics hold that Anton Bruckner did not write nine symphonies, but rather composed the same symphony nine times. It is true that the Bruckner symphonies share certain traits, that some patterns prevail in all the scherzi, or in all the slow movements. But like Gothic cathedrals, Bruckner symphonies all have their own individual character and presence. Each Bruckner symphony is a space to be entered and savored. One can temporarily suspend the world around him in meditation or reverie in either place, cathedral or symphony.

Less than a decade older than Johannes Brahms, Anton Bruckner was the unheralded heir to the Viennese symphonic tradition, particularly after Robert Schumann's death. There is really no other composer "like" Bruckner. An accomplished organist, he grew up in the shadow of the Austrian Catholic church, and his early compositions were heavily concentrated in sacred choral works. Indeed, he was intensely religious, a devout Catholic whose love of God had significant bearing on everything he composed.

But symphonies dominated his mature years, and that devoted love manifested itself in a remarkable collection of absolute music in the purest sense. Bruckner became the first major nineteenth-century symphonist after Schubert to achieve the magic number of nine symphonies, that awe-inspiring precedent set by Beethoven. In the process, as Derek Watson has noted, he evolved from symphonic mass to cosmic symphony.

By nature, Bruckner was modest, pious, and sadly lacking in self-confidence. His early symphonies were dismissed as the unplayable work of a wild man, and he thenceforth found it difficult to secure performances of his orchestral compositions. Worse, he fell into the habit of seeking out and accepting suggestions for "improvements" to his compositions, from friends, students, and professional colleagues. Because of his extreme humility, he was too willing to accept alterations to his music. This process resulted in performing cuts, re-orchestration, and even published versions that purported to promote Bruckner's music, but actually led to even greater confusion. Bruckner scholars have debated the composer's true intentions ever since, and critical editions of Bruckner's symphonies have become one of the thorniest projects in musicology.

The Seventh Symphony, which occupied Bruckner almost exclusively between September 1881 and September 1883, is remarkably free of such confusion, having been revised substantially less than its predecessors. It is one of only two Bruckner symphonies without major discrepancies in editions. Bruckner was perhaps more confident at this relatively late stage of his career (he was 60) and, with the Seventh Symphony, finally achieved the international acclaim that eluded him during his youth and middle age.

The general consensus about Bruckner tends to overemphasize the size of his orchestra. In his earlier works, he composed for an orchestra hardly larger than Beethoven's; the scoring expanded gradually and steadily as his own concept of the symphony continued the expansion that Beethoven had launched. Beginning with the Third Symphony, Bruckner called for more brass than Beethoven; however, the Seventh is actually the first of his symphonies to incorporate the expanded horn and Wagner tuba sections mistakenly associated with all of Bruckner's music.

In form, the Seventh Symphony adheres to the basic outlines of the Viennese classical symphony in the sense that it has four movements of varying tempo and character, with a slow movement and a scherzo flanked by two large sonata-like structures. But to approach Bruckner with the idea of listening for symphonic sonata form is to court misunderstanding. Deryck Cooke has written:

The KY Lottery has raised over $4.4 BILLION for college scholarships and grants.

He no doubt saw himself organizing his materials according to the sonata procedures he had studied so diligently with Kitzler...but with Bruckner so firm in his religious faith, the music has no need to go anywhere, no need to find a point of arrival, because it is already there.

Like all of Bruckner's symphonies, the Seventh opens quietly, with an ascending arpeggio that launches one of the longest themes he ever composed: 21 measures. The quietude of the beginning has been likened to Beethoven's Ninth Symphony; there are other instances of such parallels between the two works, most notably the A-B-A-B-A form of the slow movement, which is clearly indebted to that of Beethoven's Ninth. Though not in strict sonata form, Bruckner's first movement manipulates blocked theme groups that lend themselves to development and recur in a recognizable fashion.

Bruckner idolized Richard Wagner, to whom he regularly referred as "the Master." The Seventh Symphony's slow movement has its roots in Bruckner's reverence for the German composer. In a letter to the conductor Felix Mottl in January 1883, he wrote:

One day I came home and felt very sad. The thought had crossed my mind that before long the Master would die, and then the C-sharp minor theme of the Adagio came to me.

To learn more visit: KYLottery.com

One month later, still at work on the movement, he learned of Wagner's death in Venice. The sublime final pages of the Adagio are his memorial to the musician he revered above all others. (The Adagio was also played at Bruckner's own funeral in 1896.) An enormous cymbal crash marks the movement's climax. Of questionable authenticity, that outburst is the most infamous point of contention in the entire symphony!

Few composers can match Bruckner for excitement in the realm of the scherzo. This one is like an electrical storm, driven by rumbling energy from the strings and punctuated lightning flashes from the brass section. The contrast in the Trio section is enormously effective after the restless tension that precedes it. Its Ländler rhythm [an Austrian folk dance in triple meter, rather like a slow waltz] links it to Franz Schubert, another of Bruckner's predecessors in the realm of the enlarged symphony.

All the stops are pulled for the Finale. Perhaps most clearly in the Seventh Symphony, this movement reveals Bruckner the organist. At the instrument he knew best, he was famous for his improvisations. While the Finale is hardly improvisatory, it does share the grandeur and exultation of a large cathedral organ. Bruckner builds his sound in cumulative layers, gathering power as he increases volume. For all the expansive splendor and triumph, this Finale is among Bruckner's most compact conclusions.

Bruckner's Seventh is scored for a large orchestra of woodwinds in pairs, four horns, three trumpets, three trombones, four Wagner tubas, contrabass tuba, timpani, and strings.

The Wagner Tuba

The so-called Wagner tuba was developed for performance in Wagner’s operas, specifically the tetralogy of the is different from a horn: more elliptical. The bore is wide and conical, increasing gradually throughout the length of the tubing, with the bell flaring upward. The instrument has four rotary valves.

Ring cycle. Despite its name, however, the Wagner tuba is actually closer to a French horn than a bass tuba, and is intended to be played by members of the horn section.

Wagner sought an instrument that combined characteristics of various brasses: the brightness of trumpets, the sonorous qualities of trombones, the rich tone of bass tuba. He liked the timbre of French horns, but preferred more volume. Devising the Wagner tuba allowed him to fuse the lyricism and romance of the horn sound with the more solemn, heroic qualities of the lower brass.

Wagner tubas come in two sizes, tenor and bass. The tenor is pitched in unison with the B-flat horn; bass Wagner tubas match the horns in F. Because the mouthpiece is identical to the French horn mouthpiece, a player may switch between horn and Wagner tuba in performance. Although the instrument has never become part of the standard orchestral complement, it does appear in works by Anton Bruckner, Richard Strauss, and Igor Stravinsky, in addition to the four operas that comprise Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen

Bruckner scored for both horns and Wagner tubas in his Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth symphonies. The music is notoriously demanding for them, in part because some of the players switch between the two instruments. Shifting can be tricky, because the player does not hold the instruments the same way. Players describe the Wagner tuba as having a different feel, and say that going back and forth between the two in the Bruckner Seventh requires skill and flexibility. The instruments were devised not for additional volume, but rather for their beautiful timbre. The sound is uniquely mellow, lending a melancholy color that is only possible with the Wagner tuba.

Program Notes

THE YEAR OF SILENCE (WORLD PREMIERE)

Christopher Cerrone (b. 1984)

"The Year of Silence" by Kevin Brockmeier, © 2008 Kevin Brockmeier

I stumbled on Kevin Brockmeier’s “The Year of Silence” in a copy of The Best American Short Stories at a friend’s house in Brooklyn in 2010. The story — about a city that went mysteriously silent for a year — was told in the first person plural by a mysterious “we,” which made it feel ancient and disembodied, like a Greek chorus. Its combination of a fantastical world with a sense of inexorable architecture strongly appealed to my sensibilities. It reminded me of another of my favorite authors, Italo Calvino, whose novel Invisible Cities I adapted into my first opera.

But, after a bit of thought, I just couldn’t see what music would add to the story. It felt so complete in its structure and sweep that I discarded the idea of a musical adaptation.

Fast forward to April 2020, and I’m sitting in my Brooklyn apartment. It’s the earliest, most uncertain part of the Covid-19 pandemic. That time, for me, combined dread and boredom.

During the day, I would wander the silent streets of Flatbush, my neighborhood that is rarely, if ever, quiet, and at night I would scroll through my books and archives, the only noise being that of ambulances rushing through the streets.

In my scrolling, I found the file: the_ year_of_silence_all_pages.pdf. What read before as a foray into a whimsical world now felt prophetic. At that moment, I knew that I had to find a way to adapt it.

I emailed the story to my friend and collaborator Teddy Abrams. I was less soliciting a gig and more looking for confirmation from a friend whose opinion I trusted. He wrote me back a day later suggesting that we make it into a piece as soon as possible and premiere it in Louisville.

Reading the story again, I decided that the kind of draconian cuts required to make the piece into a song cycle were neither dramatically appropriate nor structurally sound, and so I chose a way to include a maximum amount of text: to use a narrator, who occasionally sings. For this part, I suggested an old friend, Dashon Burton, who has not only a beautiful baritone voice but a sonorous speaking one, too.

Instead, I let go of all my preconceived notions of what I wanted the piece to be and just wrote. I was guided entirely by the text of the story, which is so rich that it did not need any politicizing or historicizing. The story of humans becoming obsessed and fascinated and eventually bored with the mysteries of the world is a deeper and older story than any specific moment.

I used a prepared piano, strings scratching their strings, and brass players blowing air throughout their instruments to turn the orchestra into the noise of a construction site. I asked all the percussion to play freely and ignore the conductor to evoke the sound of Morse code in the distance. The hardest thing to evoke in the music was the silence, which I interpreted not as a literal lack of sound, but as a kind of warm, sustained world that envelops the listener the way the silence does in the story.

The Year of Silence was commissioned by the Louisville Symphony, Teddy Abrams, music director, and was created with the support of a residency from the Stiftung Laurenz-Haus in Basel, Switzerland.

I began writing the piece in December 2022, a few months after our American president declared the pandemic over. I wanted to capture a range of conflicting emotions: the desire to remember, the desire to forget, and the need to find meaning in a difficult time.