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7/14/2025, 5:20:05 PM
>. . . and that leads me to ramble on to another problem which is much discussed both here and in Europe: this is the question of the versions of the Bruckner Symphonies. It is incontestable that the Ninth Symphony by Bruckner first came to us in a version which was very different from the one Bruckner himself composed, and yet I am heretic enough to say I don't think every correction Ferdinand Loewe makes - and I happened to know Ferdinand Loewe quite well; he was a very good musician - I don't happen to think that all his corrections are very wrong. He went much too far, according to present day thinking and standards, in trying to help the composer, but in many of the other symphonies a great deal of mischief is being wrought by the musicologists (who unfortunately are not musicians), and I am quite sure I'll cause a great deal of enmity in these statements [with a laugh], but I can't help it. It is too obvious, and I can say only that I have on my side all those musicologists who are at the same time musicians, or shall we say the musicians who are musicologically educated. For instance, take the case of the Bruckner Third. We know exactly what Bruckner's last will was, if we can put it this way, as far as his Third Symphony is concerned. This is the version with which we have grown up, and if I say 'we', I mean my generation and those of my generation who grew up where I did, in Vienna, among and surrounded by the people, by the musicians who were very close to Bruckner - a whole lot closer than the young gentlemen who, both in England and in America, pretend to know so much about it and were born thirty and forty years later and actually have no idea what they are talking about! To forbid a composer self-correction, to forbid a composer to have second thoughts, and to forbid a composer to accept well-meant and justified advice, consciously and without pressure, is simply preposterous.
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