Anton Bruckner

“ Smart man, Bruckner—he knew how to handle natives ... but they knew even better how to deal with smart terrestrials!
Bruckner was a man deeply imbued with a sense of his own worth. Now as he rested his broad beam on the joined arms of Sweets and Majesky, he winked to include them in a "this is necessary, but you and I see the humor of the thing" understanding. Like most thoroughly disliked men, he considered himself quite popular with "the boys." ”

“ She was no doubt a strong, lusty woman, and she bore her husband a dozen children. As for Bruckner being a peasant, poor, now rude in behavior and speech, and now almost cringing in his desire to be courteous, shabbily educated, very few of the greatest composers have been born in rooms of purple hangings, very few have been distinguished for the elegance of their manners or the depth and breadth of their general learning. ”

“ Hence in later works of Bruckner these strange episodes of borrowed romance, abruptly stopped by a firm counterpoint of excellent quality,—indeed far the best of his writing. For, if a man have little ideas, at least his good workmanship will count for something.
In truth, one of the strangest types is presented in Bruckner,—a pedant who by persistent ingenuity simulates a master-work almost to perfection. By so much as genius is not an infinite capacity for pains, by so much is Bruckner's Ninth not a true symphony. ”

“ Yet, if the weather held, it might go even now, and that would bring us to St Anton by the evening. I wonder'—and he looked me over with an appraising eye—'I wonder if you're up to it.'
My stiffness had gone and I burned to set my restlessness to physical toil.
'If you can do it, I can,' I said.
'No. There you're wrong. You're a hefty fellow, but you're no mountaineer, and the ice of the Colle delle Rondini needs knowledge. It would be insane to risk it with a novice, if there were any other way. But I'm damned if I see any, and I'm going to chance it. We can get a rope and axes in the inn. ”

“ Some of them resented the pretensions of another symphonist to comparison with their own idol, and by innuendo and neglect, rather than by direct attack, they contrived to diffuse a legend that has maintained itself almost down to our own day, that Bruckner was merely an amiable old gentleman with a passion for writing symphonies, but one who need not be taken too seriously. ”

“ Thus the familiar grouping, "Bach, Beethoven and Brahms" is at least not unnatural. Think of the absurdity of "Bach, Beethoven and Bruckner"! [51]
The truth is, the Bruckner cult is a striking symptom of a certain decadence in German music; an incapacity to tell the sincere quality of feeling in the dense, brilliant growth of technical virtuosity. In the worship at the Bayreuth shrine, somehow reinforced by a modern national self-importance, has been lost a heed for all but a certain vein of exotic romanticism, long ago run to riotous seed, a blending of hedonism and fatalism. ”

“ After all we have no business with aught but the music of Bruckner, whatever may have been his musical politics, his vanity, his ill judgment, or even his deliberate partisanship against his betters. But the ideas themselves are unsubstantial; on shadowy foundation they give an illusion by modern touches of harmony and rhythm that are not novel in themselves. The melodic idea is usually divided in two, as by a clever juggler. There is really no one thought, but a plenty of small ones to hide the greater absence. ”

“ Bruckner's pristine polyphonic manner ever appears in the double strain of melodies, where each complements, though not completes the other. However multiple the plan, we cannot feel more than the quality of unusual in the motives themselves, of some interval of ascent or descent. Yet as the melody grows to larger utterance, the fulness of polyphonic art brings a beauty of tender sentiment, rising to a moving climax, where the horns lead the song in the heart of the madrigal chorus, and the strings alone sing the expressive answer. ”

“ Arnulf will have an easy task. He need but set the name of this new-born in Philip's place. What manner of child is he, Anton? Lusty, you say, and well-formed? I would my arms could have held him.... But I must be about my business of dying. I will take the news to Philip.”
Hope had risen again in the Cluniac's breast. It seemed that here was a penitent. He approached the bed with a raised crucifix, and stumbled over the whimpering monkey. The woman's eyes saw him and a last flicker woke in them.
“Begone, man,” she cried. “I have done with the world. Anton, rid me of both these apes. ”

“ The question of Bruckner's place can hardly be said to be settled, although he has left nine symphonies. He certainly shows a freedom, ease and mastery in the symphonic manner, a limpid flow of melody and a sure control in the interweaving of his themes, so that, in the final verdict, the stress may come mainly on the value of the subjects, in themselves. He is fond of dual themes, where the point lies in neither of two motives, but in the interplay of both; we see it somewhat extended in Richard Strauss, who uses it, however, in a very different spirit. ”

“ But I do not die yet, good father. There's life still in the old wolf.”
The monk in a bland voice spoke some Latin to the effect that mortal times and seasons were ordained of God. The other stretched out a skinny hand from the fur coverings and rang a silver bell. When Anton appeared she gave the order “Bring supper for the reverend father,” at which the Cluniac's face mellowed into complacence.
It was a Friday evening in a hard February. Out-of-doors the snow lay deep in the streets of Bruges, and every canal was frozen solid so that carts rumbled along them as on a street. ”

“ No other poetic message gets a hearing and the former may be rung in endless repetition and reminiscence, provided, to be sure, it be framed with brilliant cunning of workmanship.
Here we feel driven defiantly to enounce the truth: that the highest art, even in a narrow sense, comes only with a true poetic message. Of this Bruckner is a proof; for, if any man by pure knowledge could make a symphony, it was he. ”

“ Then in quicker pace it sounds again all about, big and little, and ends, after a touch of modern Gallic scale, in opposing runs, with a last light, saucy fling.
Mahler, we feel again, realizes all the craving that Bruckner breeds for a kernel of feeling in the shell of counterpoint. Though we cannot deny a rude breach of ancient rule and mode, there is in Mahler a genuine, original, individual quality of polyphonic art that marks a new stage since the first in Bach and a second in Beethoven. It is this bold revel in the neglected sanctuary of the art that is most inspiriting for the future. ”

“ A noisy party in Vienna wished, at the time, to acclaim this disciple of Wagner as a genius, to counteract the constantly growing admiration for Brahms, and more recently such eminent conductors as Mahler have tried to popularize Bruckner’s symphonies, but they have never gained a permanent hold on our public. Several years after my performance of his “Symphony in D,” I was in Berlin, and Siegfried Ochs, the conductor of the famous Philharmonic Choir, brought a little bald-headed man of over seventy years of age to my table at the Kaiserhof. ”

“ Sweets left Big Stupe and stumbled back to the ship.
Bruckner returned well pleased with his trip.
"I'd say we handled that exactly right," he said. "I don't know if the other expeditions contacted this particular tribe or not, but at least stories must have reached them of the potency of the Earthmen's weapons. When we showed them that we preferred peace, but were ready to fight if necessary, that was the end of the affair. And the presents we had for Faffin, and for the native that Majesky hit, didn't hurt any. The one thing to keep in mind is that we've got to make them respect us. ”

“ I gathered it was Blenkiron who had had him sent to St Anton, and in his time there, as a disgruntled Boer, he had mixed a good deal with Germans. They had pumped him about our air service, and Peter had told them many ingenious lies and heard curious things in return.
'They are working hard, Dick,' he said. 'Never forget that. The German is a stout enemy, and when we beat him with a machine he sweats till he has invented a new one. They have great pilots, but never so many good ones as we, and I do not think in ordinary fighting they can ever beat us. ”

“ In personal appearance Bruch is by no means as majestic as one would suppose from his works. He is small of stature, and his dark eyes peer through his spectacles with the sharp glance of a teacher rather than of a creator of heroic cantatas. He is quick and nervous in motion and, when directing an orchestra or chorus, his gestures are spontaneous and expressive. ”

“ Ten days later the porter Joseph Zimmer of Arosa, clad in the tough and shapeless trousers of his class, but sporting an old velveteen shooting-coat bequeathed to him by a former German master—speaking the guttural tongue of the Grisons, and with all his belongings in one massive rucksack, came out of the little station of St Anton and blinked in the frosty sunshine. He looked down upon the little old village beside its icebound lake, but his business was with the new village of hotels and villas which had sprung up in the last ten years south of the station. ”

“ They are like the fool in the Bible, fat and ugly in good fortune and proud and vicious when their luck goes. They are not a people to be happy with.'
Then he told me that to keep up his spirits he had amused himself with playing a game. He had prided himself on being a Boer, and spoken coldly of the British. He had also, I gathered, imparted many things calculated to deceive. So he left Germany with good marks, and in Switzerland had held himself aloof from the other British wounded, on the advice of Blenkiron, who had met him as soon as he crossed the frontier. ”

“ As I journeyed to St Anton I thought a lot about that talk. He was quite right about Mary, who would never have married him. A man with such an angular soul couldn't fit into another's. And then I thought that the chief thing about Mary was just her serene certainty. Her eyes had that settled happy look that I remembered to have seen only in one other human face, and that was Peter's . ”

“ Brackenburg. Dearest, for Heaven's sake, what wouldst thou do?
Clara. Come with me, Brackenburg! Thou canst not know the people, we are certain to rescue him; for what can equal their love for him? Each feels, I could swear it, the burning desire to deliver him, to avert danger from a life so precious, and to restore freedom to the most free. Come! A voice only is wanting to call them together. In their souls the memory is still fresh of all they owe him, and well they know that his mighty arm alone shields them from destruction. For his sake, for their own sake, they must peril everything. ”

“ The sky turns a soft lilac. Looking at this gorgeous, enchanted sky, at first the ocean scowls, but soon it, too, takes tender, joyous, passionate colours for which it is hard to find a name in human speech. ”

“ The valley was shut in on the east by a great mass of rocks and glaciers, belonging to a mountain whose top could not be seen. But on the south, above the snowy fir-woods, there was a most delicate lace-like peak with a point like a needle. I looked at it with interest, for beyond it lay the valley which led to the Staub pass, and beyond that was Italy—and Mary.
The old village of St Anton had one long, narrow street which bent at right angles to a bridge which spanned the river flowing from the lake. ”

“ Bruckner was thoughtful. "I'm for the men," he said finally. "One hundred per cent. Let's say we wait until tomorrow evening, though. We'll have the hold just about filled by that time. Then it won't matter too much if the natives change their minds about letting us take the ores. How does that sound to you?"
"Fair enough," Sweets agreed.
The next evening, a full-fledged party was held. Permission had been obtained from Chief Faffin for the crew to visit the village and the tribesmen were waiting for them when they arrived.
Sweets stayed close to Majesky. ”

“ Slowly the door opens, and BROCKTON enters with coat and hat on. As he turns to close the door after him, LAURA, pitifully and terribly afraid, retreats two or three steps, and lays coat, bag, purse and umbrella down in armchair, standing dazed. BROCKTON enters leisurely, paying no attention to anyone, while JOHN becomes as rigid as a statue, and follows with his eyes every move BROCKTON makes. The latter walks leisurely across the stage, and afterwards into the rooms through the portières. There is a wait of a second. No one moves. ”

“ Le Marchant strikes in quickly—
"We cannot help what Mr. Burgoyne thinks," says she, with a constrained laugh; "but you are not dead, are you, Elizabeth? We are neither of us dead; on the contrary, we are very much alive. Who can help being alive in this heavenly place? And you? When did you come? What hotel are you at? Have you been here long? Do you make a long stay?"
She pours out her questions with such torrent-force and rapidity, as gives to her auditor the conviction that it is her aim to have a monopoly of them. ”

“ And from what I have seen of this planet, admittedly very little, I would say that Kerk ordered you to keep me here. Is that right?"
"He was only doing it for your own sake," Brucco explained, "trying to keep you alive."
"The truth is out," Jason said, "so let us now forget about it. I didn't come here to shoot robots with your offspring. So please show me the street door. Or is there a graduating ceremony first? Speeches, handing out school pins, sabers overhead—"
"Nothing like that," Brucco snapped. "I don't see how a grown man like you can talk such nonsense all the time. ”