Lachner Symphony No.6

[eschiss1]

There is also the Andante in D that seems to have been Lachner's first try at a slow movement for this symphony and which exists only in ms. at present.
No idea about Mr White, sorry!

[gprengel]

So, finally it is done - the 6th symphony is finshed! The last movement was the Andante - a wonderful movement starting somewhat sparing with only strings and bassoon, but then it unfolds an haunting beauty as the other instruments join in ...

All movements together:

www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-1.mp3  Allegro non troppo
www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-2.mp3  Andante
www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-3.mp3  Scherzo
www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-4.mp3  Finale Allegro con brio

What a mighty symphony ! Thank you, forum, thank you John  - without you I never would have got to know this treasure !!
I wish I could celebrate this with John, but I can't reach him ...


Gerd

[Alan Howe]

..and at 42 minutes, not too long!

[Gareth Vaughan]

Dear Gerd, what magnificent work you have done in revealing what a truly grand symphony this is. Thank you very much for your commitment. I do hope the symphony gets played (and recorded) by a professional orchestra - it is certainly worth it.

[semloh]

Seconded, Gareth. Surely, someone will take up the baton...

[Gareth Vaughan]

Well, the first thing to do is to get a score out to some conductors and record companies, with a few soundbites. I would suggest CPO for a start. Any company is going to be much more interested if they know score and parts are readily available (especially in a good clean modern print-out).

[gprengel]

By now I got the Information that a study score is available which I have ordered and received now :
https://www.bodensee-musikversand.de/Noten/Orchester/Lachner-Franz-1803-1890-Sinfonie-D-Dur-Nr6-op56-fuer-Orchester-Studienpartitur-453799.html

I which I had known this at the beginning of my work....!

I will create now the parts for the instruments and the whole score as PDF files...

[Gareth Vaughan]

Well done, Gerd. You are indefatigable.

And now - dare I ask? - did you ever finish Symphony No. 2?

[gprengel]

Well, regarding the 2nd symphony I could ignite the enthusiasm of a friend for this work and he is now working on the Finale and should finish it in 2 weeks or so ...😊😊

[Alan Howe]

Here's the preface to the MPH score:

Franz Lachner
(b. Rain am Lech, 2 April 1803 — d. Munich, 2 January 1890)

Symphony No. 6 in D major, op.56 (1837)

I Allegro non troppo – Fugue à 2 sujets - p. 1
II Andante - p. 61
III Scherzo – Trio. Allegro assai - p. 88
IV Finale. Allegro con brio - p. 131

Preface
The critical assessment of Franz Lachner as a composer has varied remarkably over the years down to the present day. Especially after 1868, the year in which he retired as general music director in Munich (his application had been submitted three years earlier after his rebuff by Wagner), and still more so today, the positive views have been eclipsed by derogatory opinions, culminating in the claim that he was "a talented but failed symphonist who sought salvation in the [...] suite, only to be harried there by the same things that thwarted him in the symphony. At least he [...] realized, to his great credit, that his talents lay elsewhere." (1) Given his decades-long success and his influential position as a virtually uncontested musical authority in mid-nineteenth-century Bavaria, judgments of this sort cannot account for the excitement that Lachner's symphonies once engendered, especially from 1834 to roughly 1855. On the other hand, the patent aesthetic and political motives behind the personal antagonism, deliberate disregard, and artistic disparagement that this traditionalist composer was made to suffer, especially from adherents of the New German School from the mid-nineteenth century on, and the change of taste that Lachner was unwilling to join, suggest that the reasons for his descent into oblivion are not to be found in his scores. Moreover, unless we are willing to deny wholesale the existence of a typically southern German musical tradition with its own aesthetic outlook and, especially, its points in common with the music of Schubert, a fresh historical assessment of its most successful and by no means only composer is not only necessary but unavoidable. Not only did this fail to happen in the scholarly congresses held in honor of his bicentennial, even contexts long obvious were ignored.

To understand the unfamiliar music of a forgotten composer, we would be well-advised not to take the most obvious step and play him off against such well-known luminaries as Beethoven and Schumann. Any such approach is doomed to failure, just as it is meaningless and unfruitful to grasp Bruckner's symphonies with the aid of Hanslick and Brahms. Like any musical culture, the music of the Biedermeier period – indeed the early and high romantic music in the entire region of southern Germany and Austria – must be viewed in its historical context. There we discover a more or less vague North-South rift, aggravated by increasing tensions within the German Federation, which, as we all know, culminated in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866. Many critics were at pains to turn this rift into a cliché and to propound an adherence to the Schubert style, and to naturalness in music, as being typically "southern German" qualities.

Lachner was unquestionably the most prominent and successful representative of this "southern German style." His symphonies are characterized by compressed thematic-motivic workmanship combined with an increased emphasis on counterpoint. The cultivation of counterpoint to a degree "verging on an end in itself" (2) remained intact in Austrian art music throughout the whole of the nineteenth century. This "elegant type of counterpoint [was] rooted in sound" and frequently stood in "only seeming opposition" to the often deliberate simplicity of the chosen devices. In a certain sense it can be said that a synthesis of Baroque and Classical thought emerged on a new ground of Romantic lyricism. The frequently heard accusation of monotony in Lachner's thematic-motivic development is not to be found in a supposedly prima facie nonexistent opposition of musical themes so much as in the fact that his themes, though often enough motivically related, are presented as musical material of maximum contrast and combined and brought closer together with the aid of thematic-motivic variation, combination, and contrapuntal superposition, during which head motifs often assume a commanding position. A sense of monotony can soon arise, especially when this combinatorial game is maintained at great length, making it difficult or impossible to trace a line of evolution in the development. Yet it is precisely the abandonment of classical linear development in favor of a trend toward the "pendular prolongation of a single motif" (3) that leads to an "unbridled flow of thematic material" – an important element in the Schubert style that Lachner adopted for his own large-scale compositions. That said, the listener's interest in this reiteration and prolongation of motifs does not reside in a zealous search for their mere recurrence, but rather in retracing the manner in which they are manipulated, the way the components of the material are combined, in conjunction with the contrasting emotions conveyed by these devices. It was precisely here that a change of paradigms took place during the first half of the century, a change that led above all to the distinction between a "southern German style" that adhered to this taste, and a "northern German style" that added new impulses of its own. This fact is crucial for the study and assessment of Lachner's music.

This manner of dealing with musical material, a characteristic of the "southern German style" as a whole, accords essential importance to form. Not only are form and content – technique and expression – of equivalent importance, they are meant to unite in a Romantic afflatus. Lachner is frequently accused of having been so intent on satisfying the idealized, overblown aesthetic demands placed on the symphony from the late 1820s on that it kept him from surmounting and transcending his merely technical talent with the convincing creative urgency of true genius. Regarding this criticism there is, however, no overlooking the fact that it was precisely not his concern to unleash his creative genius to the extent that it ineluctably led him to burst the bounds of formal design. His rejection of musical subjectivity, rather than being grounded in a lack of talent, was deeply rooted in a Classical tradition of thought. Southern German composers were far less subjective than Beethoven; on the contrary, they remained beholden to an ideal of objectivity rooted in the Classical period and probed various strategies for its solution, up to and including Bruckner's symphonic mysticism.

To quote one reviewer: "The motifs from which [Lachner] created his symphony are original, characteristic, fresh, and noble. [...] True to his themes, he spurns any ingredient alien to them; nor does he need such ingredients. [...] And how manifold and rich, how unaffected and lucid are his contrapuntal combinations! How many gradations of passion and feeling he depicts with a single melody! How distinct and well-formed are his periods! And how elevated everything is by his splendid instrumentation! Only in this way is it possible for unity and clarity to reign supreme throughout an entire work, when the themes chosen for each individual piece are maintained and developed consistently and exhaustively, and when the same aesthetic idea informs every section of the tone-poem." (4) Remarkably, the focus of attention falls precisely on Lachner's insistent hold on his existing material, which is developed in changing affects and various combinations. Here clarity in the presentation of relationships is clearly preferred to an emphasis on complexity of devices. The listener takes delight in the variegated richness in his presentation of a fixed set of ideas, whose flexible manipulation is accorded greater value than their emotive content. Accordingly, in this view of music, the notion of formal unity is marked by extreme rigor.

Among the formative influences on Lachner – besides Schubert, with whom he formed a deep friendship – were Beethoven and Spohr. In contrast, traces of Mendelssohn or even Schumann can be dismissed, if only because Lachner came into contact with the Leipzig school too late for it to have a large impact on his musical thought. Asked whether he was a "Mendelssohnian" or a "Schumannian," he is said to have replied, with an amusing but untranslatable pun, "Let's just say I'm myself." (5)

Lachner was fond of stating a second theme in the winds for the sake of timbral contrast, and he does just this in the Sixth Symphony. Other formal features of his symphonic sonata-allegro movements are his frequently bold expansion of the exposition and recapitulation (which has repeatedly earned him the not entirely unjustified reproach that his movements are too long) and his fugal presentation of the themes in these sections. An especially striking example of this can be found in the opening movement of the present symphony, where the splendidly Handelian double-fugue of the two themes is specifically underscored in the recapitulation (pp. 42ff.). As in the Classical style, his development sections usually tend to be short. Particularly noticeable are the clear periodicity of his phrases and his flowing, logical escalations.

Lachner's most successful symphonies were his Fifth, Sixth, and Third, which he himself considered his best. (6) Even his final symphony, the Eighth, was greeted with great applause, especially in Vienna. The stunning success of its Vienna première in 1851 prompted an offer from the House of Habsburg to became court chapel-master in Vienna – an opening that Lachner turned down, however, when it was bettered by his promotion to general music director in Munich with a sizeable increase in salary.

The Sixth Symphony in D major, op. 56, was composed in 1837 and first performed, under Lachner's baton, in Vienna's Great Redouten Hall during a Concert Spirituel on 15 March 1838. A few weeks later it was published in full score by Tobias Haslinger in Vienna – a print that also served as the basis of our reproduction. At this time Lachner was at the zenith of his career as a composer. Even the usually critical Robert Schumann, who had ideas and ambitions of his own, found in this symphony "a masterly order and clarity, a lightness and euphony. In a word, it is so mature and well-wrought that we may safely accord the composer a place near his favorite model, Franz Schubert, compared to whom he falls short in variety of invention but at least equals in talent for instrumentation." (7)

Translation: Bradford Robinson

Notes
(1) Wolfram Steinbeck: "Franz Lachner und die Symphonie," Franz Lachner und seine Brüder: Hofkapellmeister zwischen Schubert und Wagner: Bericht über das musikwissenschaftliche Symposium anlässlich des 200. Geburtstages von Franz Lachner, veranstaltet von der Gesellschaft für Bayerische Musikgeschichte und dem Institut für Musikwissenschaft der Universität München, 24.-26. Oktober 2003, ed. Stephan Hörner and Hartmut Schick (Tutzing, 2006), p. 143. In this article, which almost consistently disparages Lachner as a composer, the author constructs his explanation of Lachner's change from the symphony to the suite from his alleged failure in the symphonic genre owing to lack of talent, but without elaborating any stylistic features of his music. He also ignores the general change in taste that took place around 1850, a change that the composer was unwilling to follow and which led him to proclaim that the symphony was dead.
(2) Theophil Antonicek: "Biedermeierzeit und Vormärz," Musikgeschichte Österreichs, ed. Rudolf Flotzinger and Gernot Gruber, vol. 2 (Vienna, 21995), p. 324.
(3) Ibid., p. 326.
(4) Allgemeiner Musikalischer Anzeiger 9 (Vienna, 1837), p. 4.
(5) "Lassens Ihnen sagen, ich bin selber aner." Quoted from Ludwig Karl Mayer: "Franz Lachner als Instrumentalkomponist" (Ph. diss., Munich University, 1922), p. 93.
(6) See Otto Kronseder: "Franz Lachner: Eine biographische Skizze zur Erinnerung an seinen 100sten Geburtstag," Altbayerische Monatsschrift 2- 3 (Munich, 1903), special issue, p. 28
(7) Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 11 (Leipzig, 1839), p. 18.

The present reproduction is based on a copy from the musical collection of the Austrian National Library (shelf mark: SA.83.D.15.. Mus 22), which has earned our warm gratitude by kindly placing the score at our disposal. For performance material, please ask Robert Lienau Musikverlag, Frankfurt am Main.
 
https://repertoire-explorer.musikmph.de/wp-content/uploads/vorworte_prefaces/1145.html

Please note that performance materials are available here:
https://en.schott-music.com/shop/sinfonie-nr-6-no353556.html

[gprengel]

Wow, Alan, this is really good news that the notes for the instrument parts are also available!! (The company Schott is 45 minutes away from my hometown Darmstadt :-)
It would have been a tremendous task to create all the files ...
So I will create only the score pdf file which we can present to conductors or CPC. If they are interested I get them the notes for a performance. Is this a reasonable procedure?

[Alan Howe]

Sounds very reasonable, Gerd. Thanks for all you wonderful work.

Might I suggest that conductor Gernot Schmalfuss be contacted via the Evergreen Symphony Orchestra of which he is Music Director and Chief Conductor here?>>>  eso@cyff.org.tw

[gprengel]

Yes, do you want to contact him or should I do it?
I want to contact another German conductor who performed so well some Kalliwoda symphonies...

[Alan Howe]

Would you mind taking on that responsibility, please? And do contact whomever you think is most appropriate.

[gprengel]

So, here now also the score files (with many, many notes ...):

www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-1.pdf
www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-2.pdf
www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-3.pdf
www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-4.pdf

mp3:

www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-1.mp3
www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-2.mp3
www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-3.mp3
www.gerdprengel.de/Lachner_6_symph-4.mp3

With these files any conductor should get a pretty good impression of the work...