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The Gaggle Music Club: Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 in C minor

This week's selection for The Gaggle Music Club is Anton Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 in C minor. Completed in 1887, and revised in 1890 after initial rejection by conductor Hermann Levi, this work is widely considered to be the crowning achievement of Bruckner's symphonic output and one of the most remarkable symphonies in Western music history.

Anton Bruckner (1824–1896) was an Austrian composer known for his massive symphonic structures, deeply spiritual outlook and distinctive harmonic language. A devout Catholic and a church organist by training, Bruckner developed a symphonic style that fused Beethovenian form and Wagnerian harmony with a cathedral-like symphonic structures. Bruckner’s symphonies often unfold in massive, symmetrical blocks of sound that bring to mind the recesses of a Gothic cathedral.

His movements build slowly, often with long crescendos, as if the music were reaching upward toward the divine. Bruckner's symphonies often seem to embody prayer, awe and contemplation—not in a literal liturgical sense, but in mood and scope.

Bruckner composed nine numbered symphonies (plus two unnumbered) and sacred choral works such as Te Deum. The Eighth was Bruckner's last completed symphony, thus making it his final full statement. Critics regard it as more expansive than the Seventh and more spiritually searching than the Fourth or Fifth. Bruckner himself called it “the most important of all” his works. It is a precursor to Mahler, Shostakovich and even Sibelius in its command of orchestral mass. Its climactic finale, uniting all previous themes, is a symphonic apotheosis rarely matched in any composer’s work.

The symphony consists of four movements:

I Allegro moderato (C minor): Three thematic groups: brooding first theme, a noble second theme and a lyrical third. Characterized by heroic struggle, with a coda that foreshadows triumph. The movement represents the soul’s confrontation with fate, in the Beethovenian tradition.

II. Scherzo: Allegro moderato: A dark, driving scherzo that stands in stark contrast to a pastoral, serene, almost celestial theme. The alternation captures Bruckner’s signature contrast between earthly turbulence and heavenly calm.

III. Adagio: One of the most sublime slow movements in the symphonic repertoire. Structured as a long, slow arch, building to an overwhelming climax with Wagner tubas, cymbals and harp. It combines romantic yearning with liturgical solemnity.

IV. Finale: Integrates themes from all previous movements in the final coda—a kind of musical Last Judgment. Bruckner unifies the symphony’s disparate materials in resounding affirmation. This finale is not just a summation but a transfiguration.

Bruckner incidentally was one of the most devoted Wagnerians of his time. His reverence for Wagner bordered on religious. Bruckner referred to Wagner as “the Master” and even kept a picture of him in his room. 1865, after hearing "Tristan und Isolde," Bruckner became a lifelong disciple of Wagner’s harmonic and orchestral innovations. He dedicated his Third Symphony (1873) to Wagner, even visiting him at Bayreuth to present it in person.

Bruckner's music, especially from the Third Symphony onward, shows Wagner’s influence in its lush orchestration and use of leitmotivic elements. Wagner respected Bruckner as a musician but did not champion Bruckner’s music in any public or significant way.

However, Bruckner, more than Mahler, is often seen as Wagner’s true heir. Bruckner fused Wagner’s chromaticism and orchestral power with the Beethovenian symphonic tradition.

Bruckner’s Symphony No. 8 is his greatest symphony—a visionary and spiritual epic. It combines Beethovenian rigor, Wagnerian color and deep Catholic mysticism. Without question, it stands as one of the greatest symphonic achievements in Western music.

In this performance from 1996, on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of Anton Bruckner, at the Stiftskirche St. Florian in Linz, Austria, Pierre Boulez conducts the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.

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More Leftie Than Thou
"Jacobin" Magazine Celebrates A Strike Against Ol' Blue Eyes

Here at "The Gaggle" we have very little time for the "more Leftie than thou" school of thought--that's the approach to life according to which the only thing that matters is whether you take the right position on every issue under the sun from Abortion to Zelensky. No one in the world meets the exacting standards of this school of thought; any Leftie leader anywhere is always selling out to the bankers and the capitalists. The perfect exemplar of this is the unreadable Jacobin magazine. 

The other day I came across this article from 2021. It's a celebration of trade union power. And not simply trade union power, but the use of trade union power to secure political goals. Of course (and this is always the case with the "more Leftie than thou" crowd), this glorious, never-to-be-forgotten moment on the history of organized labor took place many years ago--in the summer of 1974 to be exact. Yes, almost half a century has gone by since that thrilling moment when the working-class movement of Australia mobilized and prepared to seize the means of production, distribution and exchange. 

Well, not quite. Organized labor went into action against...Ol' Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the Voice; yes, Frank Sinatra. Why? What had Sinatra done? Sinatra was certainly very rich, and he owned a variety of properties and businesses. But if the Australian trade union movement were, understandably, searching for the bright, incandescent spark that would finally awaken the working class from its slumber there were surely richer, greedier, more dishonest, more decadent, above all more Australian individuals it could have discovered. Australia was never short of them. Rupert Murdoch immediately springs to mind. Why Sinatra?

 

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