Symphony No. 9 in D minor
Bruckner (1824 - 1896)
1. Feierlich, misterioso (Solemn, mysterious)
2. Scherzo : Bewegt, lebhaft (With movement, lively)
Trio : Schnell (Fast)
3. Adagio : Langsam, feierlich (Slow, solemn)
Anton Bruckner was born on 4th September in Ansfelden,
near Linz, in Austria. His father was the village
schoolmaster and organist and gave Anton his first
musical tuition at the age of four, teaching him to
play hymn tunes on a miniature violin and their harmonies
on the spinet. By the age of ten he was able to deputise
for his father playing the organ at church services
and was sometimes taken by his parents to the nearby
Augustinian monastery of St. Florian where he experienced
for the first time the magnificent sound of the great
organ. St. Florian was to become Bruckner’s spiritual
home for the rest of his life. At the age of eleven
he moved to the nearby village of Hörsching to
live and study music with his cousin Johann Baptist
Weiss. However, when Bruckner’s father died in
1837 his mother was fearful that Anton might have
to give up his studies and return home to work to
support the family. Instead she moved the family to
cheaper lodgings and persuaded Arneth, the Prior of
St. Florian, to admit Anton as a chorister. He stayed
there for three years during which time he took lessons
from Kattinger, St. Florian’s organist, and was
sometimes allowed to deputise for him at services.
Bruckner left St. Florian in 1840 to train in Linz
as a teacher. His early teaching appointments were
not particularly satisfactory - his superiors were
generally unsupportive of his musical interests and
while at Windhaag his duties even included farm labouring
and muck-spreading! Michael Arneth, the Prior from
St. Florian, managed to secure Bruckner a better post
but it was not until 1845 that the post of First Assistant
Teacher at St. Florian became vacant and he was able
to return ‘home’. He continued his musical
studies as his career at St. Florian developed - he
became Provisional Organist in 1848 when Kattinger
transferred to Kremsmünster, and was eventually
formally appointed as Organist in 1851. Bruckner had
begun composing - his first major composition was
the Requiem in D minor in 1849 - but it was the appointment
as Organist at St. Florian that marked the beginning
of his transition from teacher to musician. Bruckner
was never a self-confident man and it took the persuasion
of friends to even get him to apply for the post of
Cathedral Organist at Linz in 1855. He easily got
the post and remained in Linz for the next 15 years.
Between 1855 and 1861 he also undertook a correspondence
course in harmony and counterpoint with Sechter at
the Vienna Conservatoire which was followed in 1862
by a period of study of orchestration with Otto Kitzler
in Linz. It was after this that Bruckner really began
to compose - between 1863 and 1868 he composed 3 symphonies
and 3 masses. He moved to Vienna in 1868 to succeed
Sechter as Professor of Harmony and Counterpoint at
the Conservatoire, and was to spend the rest of his
life there.
As well as teaching and composing, Bruckner continued
to be in demand as an organist - in 1869 he was chosen
to represent Austria in a competition of European
organists at Nancy to inaugurate the new organ in
the church of St. Epvre. He made a great impression
and was subsequently invited to Paris to play the
new organ in Notre Dame. In 1871 he came to London
to play in a similar competition at the Royal Albert
Hall on the strength of which he was invited to stay
and give what was to be a very successful series of
recitals on the Crystal Palace organ. Bruckner first
met Wagner in 1865 in Munich at the premiere of the
latter’s opera “Tristan and Isolde”.
A friendship grew and Bruckner dedicated his third
symphony to Wagner. Wagner had been impressed by the
symphony and accepted the dedication, much to the
delight of Bruckner. Unfortunately, this dragged Bruckner
involuntarily into the conflict of the time between
two musical camps - the classical, traditional “Brahmsians”
and the “New German Wagnerians”. As one
commentator put it : “Bruckner strayed into the
battlefield and became the only casualty.” Like
Brahms, Bruckner himself did not get directly involved,
but it did ensure that his subsequent works would
be received with considerable hostility by Hanslick,
the most famous music critic of the day in Vienna.
It was not just Hanslick who caused problems - the
Vienna Philharmonic were reluctant to perform many
of his symphonies. They rejected his first and second
symphonies and the premiere of the third was a disaster.
The fourth was well-received but the fifth was not
performed until two years after Bruckner’s death
and only two movements of the sixth were performed
during his lifetime. It was his seventh symphony that
brought Bruckner his first international success with
performances in Leipzig and Munich, but his eighth
was again rejected and not performed until 1892 by
which time Bruckner had extensively revised it. For
the last five years of his life Bruckner gained wider
recognition and reward as a composer and received
several honours, including an honorary doctorate from
the University of Vienna. He began working on a ninth
symphony in 1887 and by 1894 had completed three movements
in full score. Work on the symphony was delayed by
Bruckner spending time revising earlier works rather
than focussing on completing the new symphony. In
the end, he spent the last two years of his life working
on the finale and completed about 200 pages of drafts
and sketches for it. However, he was still working
on it on the morning of the day he died, 11th October
1896, after a long illness. At his own request, stated
in his will, his body was embalmed and buried in the
crypt beneath the organ at St. Florian. He had returned
home for the final time.
Although the unfinished ninth was Bruckner’s
final symphony, he actually composed a total of eleven
- in addition to the numbered canon, he composed a
Symphony in D minor in 1863-4, which Bruckner himself
referred to as his “Symphony No. 0”. He
also composed a Symphony in F minor (referred to as
his “Study Symphony” or sometimes even “Symphony
No. 00”) in 1863 while studying with Kinzler.
However, the real confusion regarding Bruckner’s
symphonies is the number of versions in which most
of them exist. Bruckner revised many of his symphonies
himself, often at the behest of well-meaning friends
who encouraged him to cut or reorchestrate sections
in order to get the symphonies either performed or
published. However, in 1934, the International Bruckner
Society set itself the task of publishing ‘original’
versions of the symphonies. Between 1934 and 1944
nos. 1 - 2 and 4 - 8 were published in ‘original’
versions edited by Robert Haas and the 9th edited
by Alfred Orel. Fritz Oeser’s ‘original’
version of the 3rd was not commissioned or published
by the Society, but was accepted by them as conforming
to their ideals. Leopold Nowak took over from Haas
in 1945 and between 1951 and 1965 published new editions
of all nine of the numbered symphonies. In many of
the symphonies Nowak’s revisions are very minor,
but the second, third and eighth were based on revisions
by Bruckner himself rather than Bruckner’s ‘originals’
as the Haas editions had been. Suffice it to say the
debate about the definitive versions of Bruckner’s
symphonies continues to this day!
The ninth symphony may not have suffered to quite
the same extent as some of Bruckner’s earlier
symphonies, but still exists in more than one version.
On 2nd April 1932 a concert took place in Munich at
which Siegmund von Hausegger conducted two performances
of the symphony, first the then generally accepted
version by Ferdinand Löwe dating from 1903, and
then the original version (originally published in
1903) from the composer’s autograph using materials
provided by Robert Haas. The two virtually identical
International Bruckner Society editions (Orel’s
from 1934 and Nowak’s from 1951) were published
later - it is Orel’s edition that is performed
tonight.
In spite of the scale of the symphony, the orchestration
is relatively conventional. It features triple woodwind,
but the only unusual instrumentation is the quartet
of Wagner tubas which Bruckner had also used in his
seventh and eighth symphonies. The symphony opens, with
hushed tremolando strings above which fragments of themes
gradually appear before everything comes together with
a fortissimo D minor orchestral tutti. Throughout the
movement, the scale of the music is huge, even by Bruckner’s
standards. There are quiet moments, but the tension
never really abates and the movement closes with a coda
of sheer dramatic power. The second movement is a Scherzo
which opens with a rhythmic idea in the woodwind supported
by pizzicato strings which leads into a pounding, almost
angry rhythmic theme which establishes the character
of the movement. Normally the Trio section would be
where the music might be expected to relax a little,
but Bruckner turns convention on its head by increasing
the tempo and maintaining an edgy character to the music
before the Scherzo is repeated. The sweeping minor ninth
leap that opens the great Adagio sets the tone for what
Robert Haas described as “a song of yearning at
the end of which Heaven’s gates open”. There
is so much beauty in the music, yet it reaches a climax
with a chord of such jarring dissonance and power that
Löwe felt the need to change it into something
far less harsh in his 1903 edition. However, the coda
which follows is of such serene beauty - the horn melody
above pianissimo lower brass and the gently undulating
strings with their final pizzicato. When Bruckner realised
that he might never complete the symphony he suggested
that his Te Deum could perhaps be used as a finale,
but the Adagio, like the slow movement of Schubert’s
“Unfinished” symphony, makes a fitting finale
to the work and a ‘farewell to life’, as Bruckner
himself came to see it.
