Death of a leading Brucknerist
RIPMessage from Christopher Stager:
William Carragan (1937-2024)
It is with a great deal of sadness that I announce the passing of William Carragan. He was an incredible scholar and musicologist and a dear friend. He died in Troy, New York on June 9th.
I will leave it to others to fill in the details of his remarkable life and his achievements as I would prefer to use this space to recollect a few of my collaborations with him over the years.
When I was able to successfully resurrect the Bruckner Society of America, one of my initial priorities was to present Will with the Society’s Julio Kilenyi Medal of Honor. It was an honor long overdue and I was proud to be the one to make that happen.
In 2012, Will and I travelled together to the Dominican Republic to attend a performance of the Bruckner Symphony No. 7 – the first performance of a Bruckner symphony in that country. Will was to coach the conductor on some of the intricacies of the score. During that trip, Will and I were recorded as we had a conversation about the performance. That conversation can still be seen here.
On another trip to visit a mutual friend, I pressed Will on the idea of preparing a booklet that would describe (with audio examples) some of the differences in the various versions and editions of Bruckner’s symphonies. With the assistance of Benjamin Korstvedt, Will tackled the project but quickly expanded the project from a booklet to a full sized book, “ANTON BRUCKNER: Eleven Symphonies” subsequently published and distributed by the Bruckner Society of America.
I know many of my friends and musical colleagues will have stories to tell and I promise to publish any of their recollections that they send to me.
I have lost a wonderful friend and the Bruckner community has lost one of its greatest scholars.
William Carragan was Professor of Physics at Hudson Valley Community College in Troy, New York, from 1965 to 2001, and is the author of a four-volume textbook of introductory university physics.
He created new performing editions of the first, second, eighth and ninth symphonies of Anton Bruckner.
This announcement was penned by John F Berky and appeared in a special single page edition of the Bruckner Journal yesterday.
The conversation referred to at the end of the fourth paragraph was with John Berky.
William Carragan was indeed a great Bruckner scholar and will be much missed by all who met him.
…and those who didn’t meet him too. It was he who painstakingly assembled all the sketches for the fourth movement of Bruckner’s Ninth Symphony into a credible reconstruction – a similar task to that accomplished by Anthony Payne with Elgar’s sketches for his Third Symphony. How poignant that Bruckner was working on his final symphony literally up to the day he died. He also managed to reconstruct various editions of other Bruckner symphonies and completions of works by Schubert
Such ‘completions’ have always raised questions of authenticity (probably reaching back at least to the Mozart Requiem!) but when the bulk of the material is the composer’s own work, they give us an opportunity to hear music that would otherwise be unknown; at least they give us some idea of what was in the composer’s mind.
Carragan was indeed a great scholar – may he rest in peace.
Just one person’s opinion, but I don’t feel this big array of versions and editions do the Bruckner cause any or much good. I also feel ‘completing’ Schubert’s “Unfinished” Symphony is a fool’s errand. What’s wrong with just leaving it as it is? I’m also not convinced by any of the ‘completions’ of the finale to Bruckner’s 9th Symphony – especially since Bruckner himself did not get to the all critical conclusion or coda. To my ears, what there is of the finale from Bruckner’s own hand sounds more like the start of a 10th symphony, than a believable finale to the 9th. Again, just leave it as it is. What could possibly be more beautiful than how that Adagio ends, and especially after coming down from a nine-note, fortissimo climax.
I couldn’t agree with you more, B. Guerrero. In my experience, exactly none of the new editions brought out by various parties since the versions from Haas and Nowak, prepared by the likes of Carragan, Korstvedt, Cohrs, etc., have brought us any closer to any substantive truth about Bruckner’s music for a LISTENER (as opposed to academics). As one friend said to me, “New Bruckner editions serve an important purpose in the world – to give academics in the field something they can publish and then put on their CV as supposedly worthwhile.”
For the rest of us, not so much.
As I said earlier, Will Carragan was a gem of a person – truly exemplary. But as much as I was fond of him as a human being, I was not a fanboy of his Bruckner efforts. I often don’t agree with Dave Hurwitz, but his YouTube video “The Bruckner Cult Gets Its Bible” (look it up), which is a review of Will Carragan’s “Red Book” on the Bruckner symphonies, really nails it – and is incredibly funny to boot.
How can you praise Hurwitz on anything he says about Bruckner? Unbelievable!
Schadenfreude is not humour!
He was horrible to William and other Bruckner scholars. He should be ashamed of himself!
RIP, Dr. Carragan. I had the extreme privilege of playing one of his later completions of the 9th. He was present for the rehearsals and as I didn’t play the other music I got to speak to him at length and pick his brain about Bruckner recordings and more. Wonderful man. A life well-spent.
Actually that comment quote above is from John Berky, not Christopher Stager. Additionally, I think the appropriate word should be “Brucknerian” rather than “Brucknerist.”
Will Carragan was just a gem of a human being in my experience with him. He was highly intelligent although not someone who needed to tell you how brilliant he was, he was a wise person, very funny, a fascinating conversationalist, and had a joie de vivre about him that was the complete opposite of lots of (dry) academics I’ve known even while being not an iota less serious about his work. He was truly a citizen of the world and someone who deeply cared about others. He was also reasonably humble and truly a servant to the cause of music – not just Bruckner’s music (he extolled and was a strong proponent of early music, a category of music I can’t say I ever took seriously before we discussed it). I’m not personally enamored with his Bruckner academic work, but that’s a discussion for another time and place. But Will Carragan was a giant of a person, and I’m deeply, profoundly saddened by his passing. He deeply cared about music, people in general, the common good, and the world around us. He will be very fondly remembered by many, and greatly missed.
That’s correct. I merely forwarded John’s e-mail to Norman.
He was a one-man’s workshop that easily eclipsed the wrought multi-scholar’s efforts in re-editing Bruckner’s symphonies. Maybe as a non-professional, he felt free to publish a wonderful ‘imagination’ of Bruckner’s 8th symphony from 1888 that never existed.
But his performance editions of the first, second, third and eighth symphonies all classify as ‘nice to have’s’. The final touchstone is the ‘need to have’ performing version of the 9th finale, the one that Bruckner left unfinished. Unfortunately, I find Carragan’s version of that symphony too unimaginative and less compelling than that of Sébastien Letocart.