Bruckner's Symphonies

Analysis, Reception and Cultural Politics

Julian Horton author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:18th Sep '08

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Bruckner's Symphonies cover

An important 2004 study of Bruckner's symphonies from a comparative, inter-disciplinary perspective.

This important 2004 study of Bruckner's symphonies isolates problematic issues of interpretation, analysis, reception and historical location, and offers potential solutions through case studies of individual works.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.

Review of the hardback: 'Julian Horton has painstakingly explored Bruckner's symphonic output from assorted perspectives - historical, political and psychobiographical. The result is a fascinating reassessment of a unique musical universe. Horton's conclusions - that Bruckner's symphonies embody the conflicts between subjectivity and faith, artifice and innovation, bourgeois secularity and religious authority - are stimulatingly controversial. This is an important and provocative piece of scholarship.' Link
Review of the hardback: 'Horton's comprehensive grasp contrasts sharply with the dismissive, patronising or misguided comments of many previous writers' Classical Music
Review of the hardback: 'This is an impressive book and at times an inspiring one. The Bruckner Journal
Review of the hardback: ' … important and fascinating …Horton presents his evidence carefully and skilfully …the presentation of the books is immaculate and up to CUP's very high standards … Julian Horton has made a most impressive contribution to what he rightly describers as the 'considerable scholarly impetus that has built up behind Bruckner in recent transatlantic musicology.' Music and Letters
Review of the hardback: '… a highly valuable contribution to Bruckner scholarship …' Nineteenth-Century Music Review

ISBN: 9780521081856

Dimensions: 244mm x 170mm x 16mm

Weight: 480g

296 pages