page_title: Max Bruch
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: Max Bruch / Works
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Figur des Max Bruch. Thema der Konsole unter der Statue des Max Bruch: „Antibabypille“. Bildhauer: Gerd Haas
context_page_description: Max Bruch was a German Romantic composer, teacher, and conductor who wrote over 200 works, including three violin concertos, the first of which has become a staple of the violin repertoire.
context_section_description: Bruch's complex and well-structured works in the German Romantic musical tradition placed him in the camp of Romantic classicism exemplified by Johannes Brahms, rather than the opposing "New Music" of Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. In his time he was known primarily as a choral composer, and to his chagrin was often overshadowed by his friend Brahms, who was more popular and widely regarded.
  Today, as it was during his life, Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1, in G minor, Op. 26 (1866) is one of the most popular Romantic violin concertos. It uses several techniques from Felix Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E minor, including the linking of movements, as well as omitting the Classical opening orchestral exposition and other conservative formal structural devices of earlier concertos. Despite these modifications to the conventional Romantic style, Bruch was often considered a conservative composer.
  The two other works of Bruch which are still widely played were also written for solo string instrument with orchestra: the Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra, which includes an arrangement of the tune "Hey Tuttie Tatie", best known for its use in the song "Scots Wha Hae" by Robert Burns; and the Kol Nidrei, Op. 47, for cello and orchestra (subtitled "Adagio on Hebrew Melodies for Violoncello and Orchestra"), which starts and ends with the solo cello's setting of the Kol Nidre ("All Vows ... ") incantation which begins the Jewish (Ashkenazic) Yom Kippur service. This work may well have inspired Ernest Bloch's Schelomo (subtitled "Hebrew Rhapsody") of 1916, an even more passionate and extended one-movement composition, also with a Jewish subject and also for solo cello and orchestra.
  The success of Kol Nidrei led to the assumption by many that Bruch was of Jewish ancestry, although the composer himself refuted this. Indeed, as long as the National Socialist Party was in power (1933-1945), performance of his music was restricted because he was considered a possible Jew for having written music with an openly Jewish theme, despite repeated denials by his surviving family. As a result, his music was largely forgotten in German-speaking countries. There is no evidence, however, that Bruch was Jewish. As far as can be ascertained, none of his ancestors was a Jew. Bruch himself was given the middle name Christian, and was raised Protestant.
  In the realm of chamber music, Bruch is not well known, although his "Eight Pieces for Clarinet, Viola and Piano" are occasionally revived, there being very little other music written for this rare combination of instruments. As with Brahms, who had produced his clarinet compositions with a particular clarinetist in mind, so did Bruch write these trios for his own son Max. These pieces do not stand alone, however, in Bruch's output. Nevertheless, he wrote many pieces in the chamber music tradition, of which his septet is noteworthy. His first major pieces, composed at the start of his career, are two string quartets that are similar in tone and intensity to Schumann's string quartets (Op. 41). The composition of his second piano quintet is intriguing, as he began while conductor of the Liverpool Philharmonic Society. Although written for amateurs, it is a fair composition and was completed only after Bruch was gently persuaded, after leaving Liverpool, to finish the last movement.
  In 1918, towards the end of his life, Bruch once more considered smaller ensembles with the composition of two string quintets, of which one served as the basis for a string octet, written in 1920 for four violins, two violas, cello and a double bass. This octet is somewhat at odds with the innovative style of the decade. While composers such as Schönberg and Stravinsky were part of the forward-looking modern trend, Bruch and others tried to keep composing within the Romantic tradition, effectively glorifying a form of Late Romanticism and avoiding the revolutionary spirit that was engulfing the then-defeated Germany. All three of these late chamber works exhibit a 'concertante' style in which the first violin part is
caption: Sculpture on the restored tower of the Cologne City Hall
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