The Cambridge Companion
series is one of the most flourishing
projects in today’s music book market.
There are three sections across which
this prolific set of publications divides:
Instruments, Composers and Topics. And
in their various ways all these publications
add valuable insights to our knowledge
of their subjects.
The new Companion to
Bruckner is no exception. Expertly edited
by John Williamson, Professor at Liverpool
University, there are contributions
from various academics based on either
side of the Atlantic, and with a Liverpool-based
editor the linguistic style is firmly
British.
The book is well organised
across four sections: Background, Choral
Music, The Symphonist and Reception,
with various essays under each heading.
The opening section is particularly
interesting, perhaps the most rewarding
of all, beginning with Williamson himself
placing Bruckner in his time as ‘a Catholic
composer in the age of Bismarck’. Then
there are illuminating chapters on ‘Musical
life in Upper Austria’ and then ‘Bruckner
in Vienna’, the latter containing some
particularly interesting extracts from
contemporary criticism of the music,
including some reviews by Eduard Hanslick.
It is when it comes
to the music that one wonders about
the approach. Perhaps this caveat applies
to the whole series rather than to this
Bruckner book alone, but it remains
a point worth making. In order to gain
from reading the various chapters about
the music, both vocal and symphonic,
it is really necessary to know it –
or at least some of it – quite well.
This is decidedly not a book for the
beginner, not for the uninitiated.
Rather than take the
works one by one, it is ideas about
the music that drive the coverage and
analysis. Thus there are chapters on
such matters as ‘Between formlessness
and formality: aspects of Bruckner’s
approach to symphonic form’ and ‘Formal
process as spiritual process: the symphonic
slow movements’. Here and elsewhere
the ideas are developed with great rigour,
with reference hither and thither among
Bruckner’s compositions. All very interesting
and academically driven, to be sure,
but as a reader I longed for something
more straightforward in the manner of
a detailed programme note. In other
words, something that would treat the
music on the terms Bruckner surely intended,
with each symphony as an individual
work of art with compelling and profound
things to say.
Terry Barfoot
