[et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”3.22″][et_pb_fullwidth_slider admin_label=”Bruckner \u2013 die Neunte” _builder_version=”3.16″ parallax=”on” custom_padding=”|||” custom_padding_tablet=”|||” custom_padding_phone=”|||” box_shadow_style=”preset6″ box_shadow_blur=”10px” box_shadow_color=”rgba(0,0,0,0.1)” show_inner_shadow=”on” button_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_text_size__hover=”null” button_one_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_size__hover=”null” button_two_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_size__hover=”null” button_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_text_color__hover=”null” button_one_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_color__hover=”null” button_two_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_color__hover=”null” button_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_width__hover=”null” button_one_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_width__hover=”null” button_two_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_width__hover=”null” button_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_color__hover=”null” button_one_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_color__hover=”null” button_two_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_color__hover=”null” button_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_radius__hover=”null” button_one_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_radius__hover=”null” button_two_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_radius__hover=”null” button_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_letter_spacing__hover=”null” button_one_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_letter_spacing__hover=”null” button_two_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_letter_spacing__hover=”null” button_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_bg_color__hover=”null” button_one_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_bg_color__hover=”null” button_two_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_bg_color__hover=”null”][et_pb_slide heading=”BRUCKNER \u2013 THE NINTH” _builder_version=”3.16″ background_color=”#ffffff” background_image=”https:\/\/thilomuster.info\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Bruckner-Hintergrund-orig.jpg” button_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_size__hover_enabled=”off” button_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_text_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_width__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_border_radius__hover_enabled=”off” button_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_letter_spacing__hover_enabled=”off” button_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_one_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” button_two_bg_color__hover_enabled=”off” sticky_transition=”on”]<\/p>\n
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In the congenial\u00a0transcription for\u00a0organ solo by\u00a0<\/b>Eberhard Klotz<\/a>. Edited\u00a0by\u00a0<\/b>Merseburger<\/a>. Why nowadays make organ transcriptions of great symphonic works?\u00a0 Thoughts on my version for organ of Bruckner\u2019s Ninth Symphony.<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n Since my childhood I have devoted myself almost every day to the musical works of the Austrian composer Anton Bruckner.\u00a0 The ways in which a young person discovers music and perhaps later may even make a career of music are manifold and differentiated.\u00a0 Sometimes it is a slow and hesitant process and development, sometimes there is some accidental event behind it or an external push, something from parents or friends, but sometimes it is a unique and crucial experience which says in the young person, \u201cI must become a musician!\u201d.\u00a0 With me, this last was the case: after a performance of the 7th Symphony in E major by Anton Bruckner in the Garrison Church of Ludwigsburg I decided, at the age of 12, to devote myself unceasingly to music.\u00a0 Because Bruckner was an organist, I began to interest myself in the organ; because Bruckner concerned himself intensively with music theory, so I also sought to enter ever further into this subject; because Bruckner was a composer, so I began to compose.\u00a0 One thing led to another until during my organ studies in Basel with Guy Bovet I made the decision to arrange Bruckner symphonies for the organ.\u00a0 By doing this I wished to get as near as possible to Bruckner\u2019s epoch and to his musical thinking, and to create organ symphonies in the style of the late 19th century. \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n Currently organ versions of the Sixth Symphony in A major (2015) and the Ninth Symphony in D minor (2014) are available, published by Merseburger Verlag, Kassel.\u00a0 The Fifth Symphony in organ version is planned to appear in 2015.\u00a0 I am working at present on the organ version of the Fourth Symphony. The version of the Ninth Symphony has already been successfully performed in many organ recitals: Basel, Geneva, Z\u00fcrich, N\u00fcrtingen, Nagold, Magdeburg, Karlsruhe, Klosterkirche Einsiedeln are some of the places. The Basel concert organist, Thilo Muster, has especially excelled in this, performing the version at many European venues, and he has many further performances planned for the future in international organ concert series.\u00a0 He also wishes to record the present versions of symphonies 5, 6 and 9 for CD in the foreseeable future, for which I am extremely grateful. Just as the great Bruckner conductor G\u00fcnter Wand once said, Bruckner had changed his life, so can I without reservation say the same of my life.<\/em><\/p>\n Anton Bruckner is a sort of erratic boulder in the landscape of the 19th century.\u00a0 His symphonies came to being in the last three decades of his life.\u00a0 They combine old contrapuntal techniques with the achievements of the new harmony of the 19th century and the voluptuousness of late Romanticism. Especially in the Ninth Symphony the influence of Wagner\u2019s opera Tristan und Isolde is palpable.\u00a0 In their compositional and formal systems Bruckner\u2019s symphonies are like sounding Gothic cathedrals from the Middle Ages. His unfinished Ninth Symphony with its three movements remains a fragment, but attains in this form a completeness and mystical depth which is unparalleled in symphonic literature. The Bruckner biographer, Max Auer, designated the last movement – the Adagio – as \u201cmusic wafting out into the primal dissolution.\u201d [eine in die Uraufl\u00f6sung hinauswehende Musik]<\/em><\/p>\n In grandeur and consecration the Ninth surpasses all its predecessors.\u00a0 When Arthur Schopenhauer referred to art as the image of an idea, but music as the idea itself, so Bruckner\u2019s swan song – his Ninth Symphony – is the idea of the Beyond, of divinity itself.\u00a0 Right from the beginning of the richly structured first movement one feels oneself immersed in the dim light of a Gothic cathedral – a mood that transports us from the weight and weariness of the material world towards the Beyond. Max Auer<\/em><\/p>\n In the 19th century and well into the 20th century, organ transcriptions served in the first place to make a large (mostly new) orchestral work known to a broad musically-interested public.\u00a0 Sound recordings did not exist at first, and later they were rare, expensive and often of bad quality. As well as that, smaller towns did not have their own symphony concerts or orchestra.\u00a0 Here it was the town organist from one of the main churches who first gave the musically interested access to the works on the organ.\u00a0 Both in the French and English speaking world, including America, where the organ was traditionally seen less as part of the sacred and liturgical tradition than as a free concert instrument of the growing bourgeoisie, such performances had considerable\u00a0 popularity.<\/em><\/p>\n Today it could be objected that the orchestral works are present in their original versions by the best orchestras, and are easily available in good recordings; in addition there are today many orchestral performances even in the small towns – or the interested public can easily travel to the specified performance venue.\u00a0 Concerts of organ transcriptions of great orchestral works thus have today a totally different significance than they used. Above all they revive again the great tradition of the organ concerts of the 19th century in which transcriptions of orchestral works played an important part, and in this way do not allow an important European and American tradition to be lost, that risks disappearance due to the mechanisation and rationalisation of the world. In addition, organ transcriptions allow the hearers to have a new view, a new interpretation of the work and mediate to them a novel different perspective – an aspect which appears to me important above all with repertory works already repeated endlessly in their original form. The listener gains new avenues into the work, through only one interpreter the atmosphere is uniquely more intimate and more communicative than is the case in symphony concerts in full orchestration. Perhaps for this reason Arnold Schoenberg transcribed compositions of Gustav Mahler for much reduced scoring – to \u2018force\u2019 the listener, so to speak, to concentrate anew beyond the overwhelming large sound to the valuable thing, the pure musical substance.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n My organ version of Bruckner\u2019s Ninth Symphony is to be understood in this way: it is not intended to be a substitute for the orchestral version or a sort of piano reduction for organ, but rather an organ symphony in the style of the late 19th century, written for the organ and its tonal capabilities; it aims to convey the music, performed anew and alive for today\u2019s public.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n In addition such a performance is, of course, a pure virtuoso experience: how can one organist present a whole symphony, that otherwise would be played by over a hundred musicians, on the Queen of Instruments, the instrument that Bruckner especially loved and on which above all his symphonies were conceived?\u00a0 So Bruckner\u2019s music remains in the context in which it was composed and leads us closer to the original process of its creation, opens as it were a new visionary spiritual expanse.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n
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