From New Haven to Austria, musical organizations this month will mark the 100th anniversary of the death of the controversial composer Anton Bruckner.
Exactly one century after the day Bruckner died -- Oct. 11, 1896 -- the composer will be remembered on campus with a performance of his Sixth Symphony by the Philharmonia Orchestra of Yale.
Meanwhile, Paul Hawkshaw, associate dean at the School of Music, will be marking the Bruckner centennial at the very heart of the celebration in Vienna, where he will present the keynote address for the city's commemoration. "It is like a non-American giving the talk on the anniversary of the death of Davy Crockett. I'm very honored," remarks Professor Hawkshaw, an internationally recognized Bruckner scholar.
It was while he was a doctoral student at Columbia University that Professor Hawkshaw first gained access into the tight-knit world of Bruckner scholarship -- an unusual feat for any non-Austrian, let alone a Canadian trombonist seeking a degree in music history. Although the Austrian National Library in Vienna had not responded to his requests for access to its collection of Bruckner's papers and manuscripts -- and was, in fact, notorious for denying access to non- Austrians -- the young Mr. Hawkshaw decided to go to Vienna to do research for his dissertation in the city's other libraries.
While studying in the Library of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde -- Society of the Friends of Music -- Professor Hawkshaw discovered an original set of parts to the "0" Symphony, a work that Bruckner wrote as a student and later discounted. No one had previously believed there were any such documents in Bruckner's hand in existence. As luck would have it, these orchestral parts were also critical to the scholarly work of the retired director of the Austrian National Library, Leopold Nowak, who at the time was editing the critical edition of that symphony as well as serving as editor-in-chief for the complete collected works of Bruckner. The savvy young Mr. Hawkshaw was then careful to concentrate his studies on Bruckner's early pieces so as not to tread on Herr Nowak's terrain, and doors opened for him which had never before been opened to non-Austrian scholars.
Today Professor Hawkshaw plays a principal role in the work being done by the Austrian National Library, which has been publishing critical editions of Bruckner's oeuvre since the 1930s. The project is expected to eventually encompass 30 volumes. Professor Hawkshaw is responsible for five volumes on Bruckner's choral music, some of which have already been published. Each of these volumes will be followed by a critical report. The latter, says Professor Hawkshaw, will be "exceedingly complicated" and perhaps more important than the scores themselves, as the composer was constantly revising his own material -- as were his students and others of "questionable motive."
In addition, Professor Hawkshaw and Timothy Jackson of Connecticut College are coeditors of the Bruckner article for the next edition of the "New Groves Dictionary of Music and Musicians," a 20- volume reference tome. "This may be the most important of any of my Bruckner work," says Professor Hawkshaw, who is writing the biographical portion of the entry. In fact, it is his ambition to write the definitive Bruckner biography. "The complete biographies of the 1920s and 1930s are very out of date, and they are written from an extremely Austrian point of view," he explains. Political machinations
"Probably no composer's music has been involved in so many political machinations as Bruckner's," explains Dean Hawkshaw, who also professor adjunct of music history at Yale. In fact, the musician's works have been used in support of often diametrically opposed artistic, religious, political and personal agendas, he says.
Although Bruckner was the son of a musician, he came to music as a vocation late in life and was largely self-taught. A virtual virtuoso on the organ, he nevertheless needed conservatory credentials to gain entry into his chosen profession and had to persuade the heads of the conservatory in Vienna, where he had been studying informally, to let him take the required examination. Bruckner's examiners were so impressed by the musician's skill, one reportedly said, "He ought to have examined us!"
After working as an organist in Linz, Bruckner returned to Vienna to become court organist to Emperor Franz Josef. There, Bruckner's status in the court provided ample opportunity for performance of his own compositions -- especially his sacred vocal music.
For its time, Bruckner's music was extremely avant-garde, both structurally and harmonically, explains Professor Hawkshaw. In fact, in Vienna there was a social and cultural split between those that favored Brahms and those who favored Bruckner. Ironically, says the Yale scholar, Brahms was the more musically conservative of the two, yet attracted the liberals and socially progressive; on the other hand, Bruckner, who wrote highly innovative music, attracted the reactionary conservatives and the political fringe associated with anti-Semitic causes. This political, cultural and social split in Vienna did little to help in the acceptance of Bruckner's music, notes Professor Hawkshaw.
"In the beginning of this century," he says, "Bruckner was an isolated Viennese composer, not known at all in the English speaking countries. Yet, in Vienna, he was so big that he was pictured in political cartoons of the day."
During World War II, American orchestras generally boycotted the works of German composers; yet, through the efforts of German expatriates, Bruckner's work became widely known in the United States. In fact, one of these expatriates -- Paul Hindemith, composer, theorist and professor at the School of Music -- first conducted the composer's Third Symphony in January of 1948 with the New Haven Symphony Orchestra.
At the same time, across the Atlantic, the Nazis had latched onto Bruckner's work as well. The composer became "the Austrian equivalent of Wagner" to them, says Professor Hawkshaw, and the composer's Fifth Symphony became a "veritable theme song" for the Third Reich. Oddly enough, Bruckner was either apolitical or very carefully kept his political leanings very quiet, explains the Yale scholar, for there are no known quotes or writings that would illuminate any of the composer's political or social opinions. In the decades since World War II, Bruckner's music has become standard repertoire for virtually all of major orchestras in this country.
Music director Lawrence Leighton Smith, who will conduct the Yale Philharmonia's Oct. 11 performance of the composer's work, says, "Bruckner is like the Michelangelo of symphonic music. He paints big pictures with harmonies moving slowly through time." The Sixth Symphony, he adds, is "a little lighter and a little shorter than the others, and it is beautiful!"
The Yale concert, which will also feature the Ginastera Harp Concerto with harpist Andrea Steckermeier, will be held at 8 p.m. in Woolsey Hall, corner of Grove and College streets. There will also be a pre-concert conversation with Mr. Smith at 7 p.m. in the Morse Recital Hall of Sprague Memorial Hall, 470 College St. Admission to both the concert and the pre-show talk is free. For further information, call 432-4158.
-- By Denise Meyer