John Parker:

>I wasn't going to bother responding to this thread because if there is
>some great music I don't like, I figure it's my flaw, not the music's.

Yeah, me too.  I'd qualify that by equating "great music" with "music
that people have thought highly of through a number of years."

>I happen to love Bruckner, who seems to be one of the least favorite
>composers here, even though I admit to having trouble telling one symphony
>from another.  I guess, no matter how many times Bruckner repeats himself,
>I just like the way he does it.

I went through a period of active dislike of Bruckner, as I did with
most post-Wagnerian music, excepting Mahler: Hugo Wolf, the Wagner of
Tristan and Parsifal, and a bunch of second- and third-benchers (Foerster
and Pettersson-Berger, for example).  I then read Donald Tovey's essays
on some of the symphonies.  He condescends a lot, but overall he renders
a favorable verdict.  It's not that I slavishly follow Tovey, but that
the essays concentrated my listening and gave me things to listen for.

I still can't call myself a Brucknerian - that is, I don't fall into
ecstasy on hearing the ninth - but I certainly enjoy him and - because
I came to him intellectually, rather than emotionally - appreciate his
solution to the problems of melding the symphony to Wagnerian harmonic
language.  That language, incidentally, seems to me to make Bruckner's
lengths necessary.  That is, you need a certain amount of repetition and
"circling about" to establish the symphonic design.  Haydn could simply
change to the dominant key, and you knew where you were.  Bruckner,
however, has so many fabulous harmonic changes, mere tonic-dominant gets
lost in the welter.  Indeed, I don't think Bruckner at his best in
miniatures (most of the motets, for example).

Steve Schwartz, avid Mendelssohn fan (including the choral and chamber
music - thanks, Kevin and Mimi) as well