Notes for: August 9, 2005
During his lifetime, the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner was overshadowed by such contemporaries as Wagner, Brahms and Richard Strauss, and outside his small circle of students, disciples and colleagues, his music was dismissed as grandiose and long-winded. In the decades following his death, even less of his music was heard outside Vienna, where he spent most of his life. Only since World War II has his genius been more widely recognized, and today his music is heard with some regularity in the world’s concert halls.
A deeply religious man, Bruckner concentrated his efforts on large-scale works with a pronounced spiritual character – notably nine weighty symphonies and a dozen masses and other settings of the Roman Catholic liturgy. Chamber music was at most an incidental interest, his output consisting of one string quartet, one string quintet, an Intermezzo for five string instruments, and an early piece for three trombones. Now only the string quintet is heard with any frequency.
Bruckner was arguably the most indecisive of composers, writing and rewriting his music and releasing it for publication only after extensive and painful soul-searching. Moreover, less than favorable comments by performers and critics often sent the apprehensive composer back to the drawing board for further revisions. His third symphony, for example, exists in four versions and his second and fourth symphonies in three versions each, presenting challenging problems to conductors on which version to perform.
Reflecting the composer’s insecurity, the string quintet had a particularly long and troubling gestation from its initial impulse to its final publication and performance.
The process began in 1861 when Bruckner applied to the Vienna Conservatory for certification as a qualified teacher of harmony and counterpoint. The examination board included Joseph Hellmesberger, the director of the conservatory and the head of Vienna’s leading string quartet. Bruckner and the other candidates were required to improvise at the piano or organ, including the composition of a formal fugue, on a theme to be provided by the board. Bruckner made such an impression that he not only won certification but also was requested by Hellmesberger to write a string quartet for his ensemble.
With little experience or interest in quartet writing, Bruckner ducked the assignment for 17 years. Finally, prodded by Hellmesberger, who was, after all, his superior at the conservatory, he started work on the composition in December, 1878, and completed the first draft in the middle of the following year. Instead of a string quartet, however, Bruckner, presumably to achieve a richer sonority, produced a string quintet, adding a second viola to the usual complement of instruments.
Presumably, both Bruckner and Hellmesberger found the quintet worth the effort. In the 11 years remaining in his life, Hellmesberger was to perform it 22 more times.
The quintet is marked by many of the stylistic characteristics we associate with Bruckner’s symphonies – broad themes, unexpected shifts in harmony, abundant use of half-steps, modulations into remote keys, long pedal points (holds in the lower instruments) for emphasis, and an overall charged intensity. But surprisingly, considering the composer’s customary occupation with large orchestral and choral forces, the work for the most part has the character of true chamber music – that is, an intimate dialogue among five instrumental equals.
The adagio, in the remote key of G flat (six flats), is the emotional heart of the quintet. Again and again the musicians are instructed to play gezogen or lang gezogen (“sustained” or “slow and sustained.”) There is really only one theme – a prayerful strain presented at the start by the first violin and marked by a downward curve. The second theme is an inversion of the first – that is, ascending instead of descending – but against a more agitated rhythm. The two strains are alternated, culminating in an impassioned climax.