This past week, composer, Bright Sheng was in residence at UCLA. He was indefatigable: he went from 10 to 7 with barely a break, going from master class, to lecture, to conducting his work for orchestra.
Afterwards, Paul Chihara tooks us out for a Japanese dinner in West LA. Bright sat across from me during dinner, so we were able to have a whole range of discussions, with a bottle of sake between us.
One topic of discussion was Anton Bruckner. I related my memories of my teacher, Leon Kirchner’s obsession with Bruckner; Bright shared Lenny’s late love of Bruckner. He then told me a remarkable story about this rather difficult-to-love composer.
It turns out that neither of Mr Bruckner testicles ever descended. He supposedly had a very high squeaky voice, and — now how would anyone really ever know this? — allegedly never had an orgasm. I had an “a ha” moment, realizing the correspondence between Bruckner’s sense of form, and his physical inability to have orgasms. Does his music ever have an orgasm? To be honest, I’ve never really asked myself that question — the answer is YES.
Anton Bruckner
{ 1 comment }
Comments on this entry are closed.