Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Few works in the nineteenth-century repertoire have aroused such extremes of hostility and admiration, or have generated so many scholarly problems, as Anton Bruckner's symphonies. In this 2004 book, Julian Horton seeks fresh ways of understanding the symphonies and the problems they have accrued by treating them as the focus for a variety of inter-disciplinary debates and methodological controversies. He isolates problematic areas in the works' analysis and reception, and approaches them from a range of analytical, historical, philosophical, literary, critical and psychoanalytical viewpoints. The symphonies are thus explored in the context of a number of crucial and sometimes provocative themes, including the political circumstances of the works' production, Bruckner and post-war musical analysis, issues of musical influence, the problem of editions, Bruckner and psychobiography, and the composer's controversial relationship to the Nazis.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• 1 Introduction: the critical problem
• 2 Bruckner and nineteenth-century Vienna: analysis and historical context
• 3 Right-wing cultural politics and the Nazi appropriation of Bruckner
• 4 Bruckner and musical analysis
• 5 Bruckner and the construction of musical influence
• 6 Analysis and the problem of the editions
• 7 Psychobiography and analysis
• 8 Epilogue: Bruckner and his contexts

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Anton Bruckner remains one of the most misunderstood composers to music scholars. His nine symphonies pose particularly difficult problems due both to their length and complexity and to their discrepancies of authoritative sources and uneven reception. Providing a critical review of scholarship on the symphonies, Horton (University College Dublin) proposes a new methodology for thinking about them based on historical, biographical, psychological, and analytical methods. Horton's work serves as a corrective of sorts to the misrepresentations of Bruckner and his music in the historical and biographical literature. Multidisciplinary approaches to placing the symphonies in a more adequate perspective for their proper analytical and textual rendition include analysis, biographical study, sociology, and psychology. Each chapter details an aspect of scholarship on the symphonies, recounting existing literature and proposing new avenues for research. For example, one chapter deals with the Nazi appropriation of Bruckner. Horton suggests that too much has been made of this when evaluating the validity of the editions of the symphonies. Horton encourages further research, giving a nod to flexibility and to looking outside traditional methodologies when analyzing Bruckner. ^BSumming Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals. B. Doherty Arizona State University