Judge Dennis Davis
Anton Bruckner: Does it Matter that Hitler Loved his Music?

Judge Dennis Davis - Anton Bruckner: Does it Matter That Hitler Loved His Music?

- Well, good afternoon, good evening, good morning to all of you. I hope that people are dealing with the weather as best they can, quite extraordinary that in Cape Town on Saturday we probably had a higher degree of centigrade than people in the Northern Hemisphere had in Fahrenheit but there we are. I am going to talk tonight about Anton Bruckner, but in researching for this particular somewhat obscure musician, for some people, others not, I realised that it’ll probably be almost impossible to do justice to him in one lecture. And I’m not going to make the same mistake I did with Haydn where I tried to cram everything into one hour and probably didn’t do justice to it as much as I would’ve liked because there were one or two symphonies that should have been dealt with, perhaps the Mass and certainly the Cello Concerti but be that as it may. In the case of Bruckner, the question that I’ve posed is, does it matter that Hitler loved his music? And we are going to get to that in a moment. And what I then want to do is to basically try to answer as best I can, and then talk a little bit about Bruckner and I’m going to then play for you various clips from two of his nine symphonies, the Symphony No. 4, and the Symphony No. 5, and we’ll get there. Perhaps let me start by saying that many years ago when I suddenly realised that there was a world beyond Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven, I, of course, came across Mahler, as I indicated to some of you in an early lecture.

And for a long time I kind of thought that Mahler and Bruckner were pretty similar, partly because they wrote these very long symphonies for hour, hour and a half almost, and their output therefore was prodigious. And that there was something enormous about their symphonic works, which made me compare the one with the other. I’m not sure that’s entirely true. There are many reasons why they are very distinct after all. Bruckner was basically about 30 odd years apart from Mahler. He died in 1896, Mahler, of course, in 1911. But. as we know, Bruckner was born in 1824 so there was quite a long period between the two of them. Mahler, as I say, having been born in 1860, 36 years after Bruckner. Secondly, it seems to me that whilst the Mahler symphonies are intensely both personal and philosophical, the Bruckner symphonies are particularly religious for reasons I’ll come to in a moment. So I’m not entirely sure that they are the same, but there is a weight to both of their symphonies that pays significant research and significant listening. Now, there is no doubt that in many ways many would regard Anton Bruckner as one of the greatest German composers of the 19th century. And that he, yes, he did have an influence in Mahler as he had on Schoenberg, on Wilhelm Furtwängler, Paul Hindemith, and, in fact, even von Karajan, all of whom were particularly influenced by his symphonies. The real question was that he was integrated into the Nazi world, and Hitler certainly identified with Bruckner’s music, even though as I’ve indicated, Bruckner was long dead before that time. And, of course, the question therefore arose as to what relationship between Bruckner and the Nazis was.

Now, unlike Richard Wagner, the name Bruckner does not, as it were, connote anti-Semitism, there’s nothing that you can source in Bruckner, his writings of a kind that you could easily do in Wagner. And the myths about Bruckner was certainly not the same as they were about Mahler. But the fact of the matter was that for a long time, Bruckner’s music was inextricably linked to the Third Reich and therefore, even though his association wasn’t a direct one, there’s no doubt that his role was downplayed after the Second World War, particularly because of the way in which the Nazis had embraced Bruckner. And let me say a little bit about more that in a moment. But let me say something about Bruckner before we even get to the particular fundamental question that I’ve posed. No doubt about it, Bruckner was an odd fellow. He was born on the 4th of September, 1824 in the Austrian town of Ansfelden to a poor and religious family. He essentially was drawn to the organ from an early age and became the organist at the majestic baroque monastery or cathedral, it’s basically church, St. Florian’s Church which is regarded as one of the great baroque buildings in Europe. And he was the organist and he probably would’ve stayed there and been the organist for the rest of his life but it was clear that he was extremely talented and people who were running the St. Florian’s Church just said to him, “Well, Anton, why don’t you go off to to learn music properly?” And, as a result, he enrolled in the music academy, firstly by commuting between Linz, which was near to Ansfelden and Vienna, and then finally becoming a permanent resident of Vienna.

It’s extraordinary that he took a very long time. I mean, he was basically 31 when he arrived there, studied for almost seven years. His first symphony actually was completed when he was 44 years old so hardly a child prodigy in the way that many of the others that we’ve discussed was, and, in effect for a long time, he was fairly obscure. But by the 1880s, he’d had a breakthrough for reasons I will come to, and certainly true that he was then regarded as one of the major players in the Vienna musical world. He was, as I say, an odd man for all sorts of reasons. It was suggested, for example, that Bruckner was celibate. He was spoken to by the police because he had followed young children, whether there was evidence of any pedophilic activity known I can’t find, but he certainly wasn’t able to relate to adults. He was an utterly obsessive person. Apparently on any particular day without having an Apple watch, he was able to tell you how many steps he’d walked on that particular day. And, in a way, his music as well showed a certain contradiction because of a tremendous attraction to Austrian folk dancers and to religious music at the same time. So we’re not exactly talking about an ordinary person. And he was particularly diffident in a way in his music, which is why all these symphonies were revised over and over again. Now, back to the the Nazi period, the point about it was that what the Nazis did was to recreate his biography so they presented him to the world as a Austrian peasant who had found success, someone who had a great connection to the German soil and German blood, therefore a worthy Aryan musician. And they emphasised this, they emphasised that effectively his music reflected the kind of philosophical position that Hitler and the Nazis embraced. In the eyes of Nazi musicologists, he was the ultimate victim of the loathed Jewish bourgeoisie.

They argued that his lukewarm reception by the Viennese news critics was because of racial discrimination. “He was a brilliant composer,” they said, “a pure Aryan but it was the Jewish influence, the Jewish conspiracy in Vienna that had undermined him.: That was their line about Bruckner and therefore there was no question, not only did they embrace him, but they did more than that. They saw him as central to musical life in the Third Reich. And his works were seen as unproblematically and unapologetically German. Much of the music preceded speeches at the Nuremberg rallies. He was one of the most performed composers in Nazi Germany at the particular time, the Nazi party donated significant monies to the Bruckner Society, developed many Bruckner prizes, Bruckner Concert days. In fact, Hitler wanted to have a similar Bruckner festival to the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth at the particular point in time. To take the matter even further, in 1937, Joseph Goebbels addressed the assembled members of the International Bruckner Society and officials of the Reichsmusikkammer and high-ranking Nazis, including Hitler at part of what was called the Regensburg Bruckner Festival and what he advanced was an agenda for the appropriation of Bruckner’s music. Goebbels basically combined his biography with the politics of Nazi Germany at the time, to suggest that he was this Aryan composer of the highest pedigree.

He associated critical hostility to Bruckner with the influence of Judaism, Bruckner’s detractors, primary Eduard Hanslick and the Brahmsian faction in Vienna espoused ideologies he argued that were un-German and complicit with the opposition of international Jewry. They valued superficial urban intellectualism over true education, the parasitic practise, he argued, of art criticism, any kind, over genuine creativity. So Bruckner was therefore, in a sense, as it were embraced by the Nazis long after his death. And so the question is, if he was characterised in this way, how true is this all? And what I would like to argue as many music colleges have that actually, there was no real basis for Goebbel’s arguments. Bruckner’s contact with Wagner was true, but he never retreated from a profound Catholic belief. He was an extraordinary religious person. His music basically embraced all of the kind of religious elements which we’ll come to in a moment. And whilst there was a Wagnerian influence, there was even more religious influence, which, of course, the Nazis conveniently forgot about. And if you look at so many of the symphonies of Bruckner and Mass, you’ll see that they centrally presented an idea of Catholicism and a true belief in the precepts of Catholicism, which didn’t really, in terms of the way Bruckner presented them, have any significant source in Nazi ideology or any such similar view. In other words, really interesting thing about Bruckner is because someone appropriates him like Hitler did back in the day, is it now so that one has to, as it were, ignore his music? And whilst I’m prepared to have a long debate with people about Wagner, even I think Wagner’s music has to be played because it’s absolutely central to the whole Western music in that way.

One can certainly argue about that, and it’s a very interesting argument to have but that’s for another day. But for Bruckner, even though he was embraced in this way, there’s nothing there which would suggest in the way that you could with Wagner, that Bruckner had any particular view about Jews one way or the other, and if there is, there’s been no evidence to suggest that. It was a convenient appropriation of a particular form of music which ultimately suited the Nazis and therefore in this particular way, whilst he played a very important role in the musical life of the Nazis, I would want to suggest that if we are going to argue that Bruckner has to be seen in that way, I’m not entirely sure that Bach and Beethoven entirely escape the same form of criticism either. And now let’s look at his music because his music, his music is to a large degree reflective, it seems to me of much of which I’ve been arguing that in fact contrary to Nazi ideology, contrary to perhaps even the innermost kind of existential reflections of a Mahler, Bruckner’s music essentially never divorces itself from his history as a famous organist. It doesn’t divorce itself from a profound kind of searching for God, if you wish, and for a set of religious beliefs which can guide people through the world. So with that in mind, I want to play for you some of the Bruckner Symphonies, only the 4 and the 5 I think I’m going to have time for, as I say, I would love to talk about the 8, 9, and 10.

They’re all terrific, sorry, 7, 8 and 9 in particular. They’re all particularly interesting, but I don’t think I will have a chance to do that even though I’ve got a clip of the 7th here. I should tell you, there’s a fantastically interesting before I move on, a fantastically interesting recording of the Bruckner 5, from 1942 of Furtwangler, which was of course done with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in ‘42. I was desperately searching for it because I would’ve liked to have played some clips for you because it’s an extraordinary intense, basically presentation of the Bruckner 5, and, in fact, the intensity and almost the wildness that Furtwängler coaches out of the orchestra and the music, I would argue and many musicologists appointed as contradicts the monolithic vision, Hitler and Goebbels’s heard of the composer. It seems to be very different to their line almost in a way in which it was suggested that one of the Beethoven’s, the Beethoven 9 recording, which I think Patrick referred to some time ago in lockdown, who was played by Furtwangler with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, which was completely different to anything else, was in a sense a massive protest against Goebbels et cetera. Whether that’s true or not, we can debate. But it is interesting to listen to the '42 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra 'cause it doesn’t seem to me suggest that the line that they tried to appropriate Bruckner was not entirely accurate.

So what I’m going to do now with your permission, is to talk to you about two of his symphonies and try to, as it were, dissect the music as best I can in the time available to me 'cause they’re enormously complex pieces, all of these symphonies. So let’s turn to the 4th Symphony. This, by the way, was the only symphony which Bruckner added a subtitle so it’s called the "Romantic Symphony.” For those of you not into Bruckner, this is probably the best route into Bruckner that one can find. There are many magnificent recordings, both old and new. It is probably true that Furtwangler and Gunter Bunt, another famous German conductor, were perhaps the greatest of all Brucknerians. But there are many other wonderful recordings of this, including really a lovely series by Anders Nielsen, recently recorded, all of which are just fabulous. But anyway, the point was, it was a romantic symphony. And Bruckner’s Romantic Symphony really is about, it’s something cosmic, it’s something elemental about it. Again, perhaps like Mahler and perhaps, and this is true, it basically talks to nature. It starts particularly with a mystical call of the horn with its ancient hunting connotations. Bruckner himself did write a programme for the symphony in which he says, “It paints the picture of a mediaeval city at dawn, proud knights on horseback, woodland music, forest murmurs and bird songs.”

But I’m not sure that in fact that particular narrative is entirely true. What I think is true about the way in which Bruckner composed his symphonies is reflected in the passage by the musicologist, Deryck Cooke, who says the following: “Sonata form is a dynamic humanistic process, always going somewhere, constantly trying to arrive but with Bruckner, firm in his religious faith, the music has no need to go anywhere, no need to find a point of arrival 'cause it’s already there. The various stages of the formal process not offered as dynamic phases of a drama, but as so many different viewpoints from which to absorb basic material. Experiencing Bruckner’s symphonic music,” he writes, “is more like walking around a cathedral and taking in every aspect of it than like setting out on a journey to some hoped-for goal.” And in relation to the 5th Symphony, there is an analysis by Zander, which takes this idea of the cathedral particularly seriously. I’m unconvinced that it works, but nonetheless you may be interested in it. So to the 4th Symphony then, and the way in which this magic of nature comes out, now, any studies for the seven years where by the way, Bruckner was not allowed to write one note, one note for any composition of his during that period. He had spent an incredible amount of time studying both Beethoven and Bach and particularly Beethoven’s 9th Symphony so it’s unsurprising that when he writes perhaps the first really great symphony of his, although the 3rd is not bad either, that’s the 4th, the opening of Beethoven’s 9th, in which that sort of, as I’ve lectured this already, this kind of incohert sound emerges from silence that is not entirely untrue here where what occurs is that we listen and we’ll listen to this as it were, that the opening of this symphony of more than an hour is the plaintiff call of a horn, the horn voice, which sort of returns throughout the symphony, no question about it, but it opens it, it’s almost a mystical call out of the silence to the rest of the music.

And then the music begins. And you’ll see that as it starts to develop, as the horn theme develops, you will notice that because there’s the typical Bruckner recourse to brass chorales, almost the reflection of the organ of which he was such a successful exponent. There are a series of themes that move thereafter, but I wanted just to play for you those first three minutes of the opening of the 4th Symphony. They’re quite remarkable and this idea of this lone horn, you can see how the influence of Beethoven’s 9th played on the mind of Bruckner as he composed this. You can start seeing the build up of that. Herbert Blomstedt is the conductor, the great Swedish conductor, and does I think a rather good job, by the way, we’re going to hear him again now because we now move to the second movement where the inference of Schubert is particularly clear too again, Bruckner borrowing from Schubert. The second movement’s utterly beautiful, starts with a walking pizzicato baseline. The theme is introduced by the cellos. It seems to be a funeral march. And it’s a procession that leads us perhaps into that same stillness of a forest where Mahler drew his own inspiration as well. And we left the sort of bird songs and distant horn calls in the beautifully natural encapsulation of nature. Let’s listen to the first few minutes of the second movement. Sorry, Lauren, this is the wrong one. Lauren, it’s I think the next one 'cause this is the last movement. Yes, it’s that one, I’m sorry, yeah. All right, Lauren, we can end that there. We can end this second clip. Thank you. We come now obviously, because these are massive symphonies, I’m trying to give you some sense of the structure thereof, and you can go and listen to them at your leisure.

The sketch has an interesting and joyful celebration of a hunt. It’s quite famous in its own way, as I say, probably the most accessible of all of the Bruckner symphonies, and then we come to the final movement. Now there’s something about Bruckner which I want to emphasise, which is that these are long journeys that he takes. These journeys literally start as it were in the home key. The home key being E-flat major here. And then the symphony literally goes literally on a long journey. If you take the movement we just heard it’s in a C-minor. And of course the minor key is to basically give you that seriousness, that almost introspective quality. And therefore, when you get to the final movement of this enormous symphony, he’s created this incredible edifice. And so what he’s trying to do is resolve it in a particular way. He’s got to come back to the home key and he’s got to come back to some resolution of that which he had set out to conquer in the first place. And it’s irrelevant, perhaps, that Furtwangler in 1939 said about Bruckner, “Anton Bruckner did not work for the present in his art, he thought only of eternity. And he created for eternity.” And in a way, when you get to the final movement, it is that sense of resolution, a resolution of faith, which ultimately gets Bruckner home to the major key. And it’s an utterly remarkable coda, both in this symphony and the next one that I’m going to play for you, which essentially just reflects coming home in an E-flat major resolution to the problems that he set right at the beginning when he poses the questions with the horn.

Let us listen to the last three minutes, which are utterly quite remarkable. No, that was the clip before, the one before. Yeah, before that one. Yeah, that’s the one, at the Concertgebouw. You can move on, Lauren, thank you. I deliberately let that play on 'cause, I mean, listening to look, watching Blomstedt’s face and the reaction at the end of this very long symphony, which gets to this final resolution. And you can almost feel the resolution by seeing it in the face of the conductor. Now, if my argument about the religious quality of Bruckner and why in fact so different to Mahler, sorry to Wagner, that hasn’t persuaded you in the 4th, then let me turn to the 5th, which for many is a really remarkable symphony and probably is. It’s a symphony, which in many ways, 70 minutes long posing a whole lot of these same questions about belief and about the problems of life and how does one negotiate that without faith and faith, the ebbs and flows and ultimately triumphs. And I want to sort of take you through this journey in a few minutes, which is probably an impossibility but if you just bear with me, you’ll see why this has some purpose. So let’s start with the beginning of the symphony, the 5th symphony, you’ll notice it starts very, very quietly. It has cellos and basses, plucked cellos and basses. They go five notes up, five notes down, and above them there’s a kind of dissonance which is played by violas and violins. At this point we are in the home key, B-flat major, that’s the home key, that’s the key to which we have to return. Every composer has to return if there’s going to be a resolution to the problems that he faces. But then what occurs if you just notice in the first, I’m literally going to play four minutes. It’s extraordinary because this plucked theme, as it were, the plucked cellos and basses with the dissonance of the violas and violins then almost violently operated, sorry, interrupted by an orchestral outburst and that outburst is not in the home key. And then that’s interrupted in turn by the beginnings of a brass chorale.

And if you didn’t think of the influence of the organ in the 4th, by goodness, you will now, and this is in A major. Then there’s silence, then there’s strings come in. Then we have again the disruptive orchestra and back to the chorale. And it’s only then that, in fact, he starts the sonata form of the exposition, the development, and recapitulation. So in the first four minutes of the symphony, you get a playing through different from the home key to other keys. It creates a real process of destabilisation. And then, as soon as that’s over and we start, notice what you get, an almost questioning scene, almost posing a question two or three times until the whole orchestra takes it up. And it’s that particular question, which essentially seems to me that Bruckner’s asking us to answer, what is the purpose of life? How do I live without faith? So just listen to the first four minutes, the most remarkable the way in which, if you listen to it, the different keys, the different introductions, the dissonances, the destabilisation, and within that context, the posing of a fundamental question which has to be answered because we know we have to return to the home key even though it’s a long way away, the first four minutes. This is a recording back in Celibidache in Munich, I think it’s Celibidache No, it’s not, it’s the famous Eugen Jochum, I think, no, I’m not sure this is the right one. I think this is the last bit. No, no, no, no, it’s not this one. Just go back, is that it? That’s the one, yeah. Okay, Lauren, you can stop there. You can stop there. So you can see what I mean, before you get to those last question with the first, as it were, part of the exposition and the answer with the flute, and then it passes through the whole orchestra, literally you’re getting a whole variation of different keys and what what is going on here and what you know is that this is going to be a very long, vast canvas that he’s going to sketch and indeed he does.

And, of course, it’s that questioning theme which comes up over and over again throughout the symphony. Now I could take you through it, but obviously it’s a 70-minute symphony and we’re running out of time. So I wanted to therefore move if I may just to the last movement, because the last movement has equally interesting features to it, I’m going to play you two parts of that by way of conclusion. By way of conclusion. And these are they. The first part is the beginning. Now what is interesting, if you could just observe in general terms that the movement is an extraordinary exposition of counterpoint. In other words, he’s playing with a couple of melodies which are independent, but in a sense they achieve harmony, of course, he called it a fugue is what Bach was particularly brilliant at having composed many of them. But to have in the vast symphony like that it’s quite extraordinary. And the reason why the counterpoint is so, I think, important here is because what he’s really saying to answer the question that he’s posing is, “If you’re going to believe in God, it’s a complex issue. It’s not simple. It can’t be answered in a simple way, it’s complex. Faith is complex and I’m going to use counterpoint with running different melodies to basically try to harmonise them as best I can and using the fugue as a method to illustrate the level of complexity.” And it starts, just listen to the beginning with a really exquisite level of loneliness. But then the counterpoint is going to come in for he’s going to be able to end it with triumph. So it starts as you’d expect it to start, going back to the first theme, the very first opening notes. But now he uses a clarinet to do so, so let’s just watch, listen to the first couple of minutes and then I want to play you this unbelievable ending, one of the great endings of any symphony. So let’s start with the opening.

All right Lauren, I think we can stop there. What I wanted to show you is how he reintroduces the notes of the first movement, how he poses the same question that I illustrated in the first movement. And then he starts off with the fugue with the basses and the cellos and then moving through the strings kind of with a real degree of course march-like ferocity, quite extraordinary and that plays right through. But remember this. I indicated to you that the symphony began in B-flat major, that was the home key. And we haven’t heard that home key, literally save for a desperate attempt at the end of the first movement that I could have played for you where the chorale comes in, but it’s kind of somewhat unstable and for two-and-a-half minutes you’ve heard nothing. So how are we going to resolve this? Because it has to come back to the home key. And, of course, he does because in all of the complexity, Bruckner truly believed, and for him, the symphony must end in triumph, triumph in the belief that he has, that God will solve man’s problems, the human’s problems. And so what I want to play for you is the last three minutes of a 70-minute symphony where finally we come home, we come home to the home key, to the resolution of the question that he posed at the beginning and the effectively religious kind of almost experience that he’s had in order to resolve the question and come back to the home key right at the end of the symphony. Here are the last three minutes of a really remarkable ending. Some people, the musicologists, say this might be the greatest movement of symphonic music and who am I to argue, but here we are. Thanks, Lauren. What a way to come back to the home key and to end the symphony resolution, which has taken him 70 minutes to do. And having literally traversed almost a whole range of keys to get there is actually a remarkable symphony in its own way. And whilst I accept that Bruckner is an acquired taste, I would hope that you’d agree with me that he’s actually worth listening to and puzzling through all of his intricacies 'cause there’s something truly there. I’m sorry that I’m not able to do the 7th, 8th and 9th for you, hopefully we can find time to do that. But let me answer your questions to the extent that there are some here, there are.

Q&A and Comments:

“I find a dilemma,” says Romain, “that sensitivity to music does not transfer to human life.” Well, that’s true, I suppose, you know, I mean, you know, Hitler was a vegetarian. I mean, how do you figure that one out? The complexity of life is something way beyond us. But I do feel that if you, if that to some extent, if the music speaks to you, there is some hope for you. Maybe not for people like Hitler, but they used music for a particular way. In other words, what he did cynically, Hitler, was ultimately to use Bruckner as a kind of means for his own perverse ideologies. Goebbel’s noted in one of the books I read in preparation for this in his diary that in Hitler’s eyes, Bruckner was quote, “A farm boy who conquered the world with his music,” and therefore the Fuhrer felt a real sympathy with him in that he had done the same in politics. And Hitler, after listening to Bruckner’s 7th, which I was going to play, but unfortunately haven’t had the time, shouted out, “How can anyone say that Austria is not German? Is there anything more German than old Austria as you see from the symphony?” So it was a perverse use.

Q: Leon, “Could the best insights supposed to be that at the critical rate that Mahler was always searching for heaven, Bruckner found it?”

A: Ja, I think that’s right. I mean, Bruckner was this intensely religious man, who kind of as is indicated by my description of the 5th Symphony, did find it. If you go through the Mahlerian symphonies, there’s a far more complex existential discussion. You know, it’s interesting as we had lectures on Freud, there was of course a fascinating discussion between Freud and Mahler, particularly in relation to his problems with Alma, his wife and so Mahler is a very much more complex character, which is why for me his music is so much, much more interesting, not withstanding the fact that I think Bruckner’s is.

Q: Monty, “When Jewish musicians were thrown out of a Nazi or a German orchestra, did the quality of the music interpretation suffer?”

A: I’m sure it did, Monty, I’m absolutely sure it did because of the fact that Jewish musicians were very dominant in many of those orchestras. And we all know that numerous musicians, some Jewish, some not, who left and were chucked out, then went and enriched their life as American classical music in the most extraordinary way. But that of course is an entirely different, a different story for a different time.

Dennis, hello to you, this is interesting. In 1985, you write, you travelled from Salzburg to Linz to visit Bruckner’s tomb inside the Linz Cathedral. “Very moving, en route my non-Jewish friend and I listened to a live concert by the Vienna Philharmonic. During the thunderous applause, I asked them if that was Herbert conducting. He replied, 'Karajan would never have got that degree of applause from a Vienna audience,’ adding it must be Lenny. Sure enough, the announcement eventually confirmed was Bernstein.” He was very much loved by the Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna musical life. And, in fact, I have spoken at some considerable length about both Bernstein and Bernstein’s relationship with Mahler in this regard.“ Thank you for that comment.

Jennifer, thank you very much. You say, "It’s interesting that Bruckner was influenced by Schubert as well as Beethoven.” And since Schubert was so deeply influenced by Beethoven as well, of course everybody was, and Bruckner was most certainly influenced by him as I’ve indicated yet a long study of particularly of the Beethoven 9, which, of course, was the bridge for so many of these composers who came afterwards. It’s interesting, Jennifer, when you say, “Did he have or use a favourite interval in the way Beethoven used and developed the 3rd?”. Ja, in some ways he did and you’ll notice the way he did, you know, the pauses in the 5th Symphony are fascinating in that early stage, no doubt about that. And I think you’re right to say that both Bruckner and Bach’s perception religion influenced their literal structure of counterpoint. I think that’s true too. And it’s partly because it seems to me that they were using it because particularly in the case of Bruckner, counterpoint gave him the ability because of the nature thereof and the development of the fugue, to be able to kind of set a level of complexity which he required in order to articulate his belief.

Thank you very much, Mona. Thank you very much, Lynn. And thank you, James.

“Surely no composer, writer, artist can or should be held responsible for the views and actions of their future admirers. Hitler loved music including Bruckner and Wagner, ‘cause many humans, including evil ones, love music.” And James, I couldn’t but say amen to that. Absolutely right. I’ve tried to indicate, Abigail, already to answers to what the music meant to Hitler by my earlier quotes, I think. Yes, of course the cathedral is St. Florians and he’s buried under the organ there. It’s amazing that had not been for the one of the priests at St. Florians, he would’ve never have actually made it into music school and we would never had these symphonies.

Yes, Abigail, Hitler did watch movies and “King Kong” was, which was prohibited, was apparently favourite.

Thank you very much, Arlene, that’s very kind of you. And a couple of the others. I do think, Gabor, that Mahler unquestionably was influenced by Bruckner, by virtue of the very nature of the largeness of the canvas and the nature of what Bruckner was trying to achieve. But Mahler, as I’ve tried to indicate, was very different and I think the earlier observation made by one of us that Mahler struggled with belief meant that his music took on a slightly different form in its own way.

Yes, it’s true, Peter, very good point. “When Hitler’s suicide was announced, it was followed by a recording of Bruckner’s 8th.” I actually wanted to talk about that, but I didn’t have time. Thank you very much for the comment. And yes, when Schubert died, he asked to be buried next to Beethoven and indeed he was. Thank you very much for all your comments and your kind remarks and I hope that we’ll find some time to be able to discuss the 7th, 8th and the 9th 'cause I hope that this lecture gave you sufficient enthusiasm to perhaps revisit or to visit for the first time the music of Anton Bruckner.

Goodnight to everybody and thank you very much, Lauren, for your unbelievable support, really mean that.