While it's possible to admire Bruckner's sacred music without grasping the composer's Austrian Roman Catholic faith, it's not right and it's not fair. Because while one can admire the composer's mastery of harmony and counterpoint and his genius for form and modulation, the meaning of the religious texts he sets determined not merely the music's technical aspects but its whole tone and spirit as well. Severe yet sentimental, mysterious yet luminous, highly controlled yet deeply personal, Bruckner's faith was the rock upon ...
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While it's possible to admire Bruckner's sacred music without grasping the composer's Austrian Roman Catholic faith, it's not right and it's not fair. Because while one can admire the composer's mastery of harmony and counterpoint and his genius for form and modulation, the meaning of the religious texts he sets determined not merely the music's technical aspects but its whole tone and spirit as well. Severe yet sentimental, mysterious yet luminous, highly controlled yet deeply personal, Bruckner's faith was the rock upon which his life and his music were built, and any listener or performer who misses this, misses the essence of his sacred music.Stephen Layton and the 22-voice choir called Polyphony miss nothing in this 2007 Hyperion disc coupling seven motets plus the Mass in E minor. Accompanied sparingly but superbly by the winds and brass of the Britten Sinfonia in the Mass, the Cambridge-based chorus sings every work as if on bended knee with eyes cast upward to eternity. As filtered through...
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