That's a surprise! No one I ever corresponded with recommended Bruckner or Mahler, especially the former! I know both these very long symphonies extremely well. You couldn't play a minute (literally) without my knowing what's on. The same goes for all of Mahler's and Bruckner's symphonies having long acquired multiple versions of their works, not just the symphonies. My love for Bruckner goes back to my early teens; Mahler took a little longer. I have a classical music collection of around 800 CD's going back to the crusades and Gregorian Chants.Angel Trismegistus wrote: ↑September 16th, 2020, 5:14 pmYou may be right. On the other hand you may be wrong. The plain fact of the matter is we just don't know. And that "we" includes you.Jklint wrote: ↑September 16th, 2020, 5:02 pm
What is god waiting for? The poles are rapidly melting! But as a conception it's a safe bet they will continue to melt until there's only a single ice cube left. Anyone who believes in an interventionist god when it had countless opportunities to intervene in our historical past hasn't quite grown up yet.
So are you or are you not acquainted with Mahler's 2nd and Bruckner's 8th? If you're inclined to experience "Divinity" in classical music, you should check out these two works.
Bruckner's sound world exists on an entirely different plane from anyone else. Unsophisticated with some very weird habits; a fanatical god believer with an inferiority complex, his music has a cosmic immanence to it like no other composer ever had. Bruno Walter described the difference between Mahler & Bruckner as the music of one searching for god and one who has found him. Not sure if that's completely accurate but it makes a good point. For me his music is the most unique in expressing a sound cosmology where even the scherzos, especially in the 8th symphony, resembles a monumental spiraling vortex of Sufi dances toward a coldly magisterial god realization.
If the universe were able to connote itself in sound I can imagine nothing more chromatically reflective of it than this, beginning with a very ghostly searching acoustic as if it were a precursor to a final journey traveling toward some final unknown destination.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=23cLITkT16k
For something more at home, one of the best (for me) tone poem descriptions of nature from the perspective of an alpine summit view of sunrises and sundowns nothing beats this, hard imagine anything more panoramic...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj3Tbca7XHo
There's a power and philosophy contained in ALL of this which no one ever discusses.