Anton Bruckner

Symphony No. 4 in E-flat Major, “Romantic”

Anton Bruckner was born in Ansfelden, Austria in 1824 and died in Vienna in 1896. He composed the first version of his Fourth Symphony in 1874; this was unperformed and unpublished in his lifetime. Bruckner made drastic revisions to the work between 1878 and 1880; this version was premiered by the Vienna Philharmonic under Hans Richter in 1881. Bruckner made modest revisions to the score again in 1886. The work calls for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, and strings. Duration is approximately 70 minutes.

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When an unabashedly romantic composer like Bruckner names one of his symphonies “Romantic,” it makes you wonder: If this is the romantic one, what, then, to make of all the others? Actually, the subtitle was an afterthought. He gave it the name two years after it was finished—perhaps as a guide to the many listeners who couldn’t (or wouldn’t) come to grips with his music. To that end he also supplied an embarrassingly silly program, also invented long after the fact.

Bruckner first composed the work in 1874, but that version was never published. In 1878 he re-wrote much of the symphony and replaced the Scherzo with a new one. By 1880 he had re-cast the Finale as well, and Bruckner returned to the score twice more with minor changes. In addition to his own revisions, Bruckner allowed two pupils, Franz Schalk and Ferdinand Löwe, to revise the score, which they did—making it all but unrecognizable in the process. This spurious revision became the first published version of the symphony and for many years it was taken as authentic. It came as quite a shock when, years later, it was discovered that Bruckner’s own manuscript diverged wildly from the published version.

Upon comparison it became clear that Schalk and Löwe simply didn’t understand Bruckner’s peculiar genius—or (at best) felt that the public was just not ready for it. Armchair psychologists have often remarked on Bruckner’s fabled “insecurity,” but it turns out there is little direct evidence for it. But there is much evidence that his music, in its original form, was misunderstood by critics and audiences alike. It seems just as plausible that Bruckner allowed such radical surgery to be done to his works just to have them performed at all, secure (if you will) in the knowledge that his original scores would one day be understood. If so, he was correct: once his original intentions were discovered, the mutilated versions were seen for the travesties they are.

Bruckner begins the first movement with a magical, hushed string tremolo that doesn’t so much break the silence as replace it with sound—as if the music was there all along and we have only just noticed it. A series of soft, elemental horn calls open a view to a world that is both mysterious and certain at the same time. The movement will evolve and grow in myriad ways, but this opening is a microcosm of the movement’s musical argument, between “knowing” and “not-knowing.” The music takes place in “Bruckner time,” on a scale heretofore unimaginable but with a sense of architecture and pacing that is sublime. This sense of structure, tempo relationships, and sheer scope were the very things Schalk and Löwe’s version destroyed, but they are precisely the elements that make this music so compelling.

The symphony’s second movement has often been called a funeral march, but Bruckner’s tempo mark, Andante quasi allegretto, really doesn’t admit that interpretation. When played at Bruckner’s “walking tempo” the music seems melancholic at times, and wistful, too; it has a soft-focus air of recollection, as if it were a memory visible only through an expanse of time.

The scherzo is simply a gem: from its hunting horn beginnings to its stentorian brass interruptions to its ländler-like trio, we feel as though Bruckner has actually compressed time. We may not ordinarily use the words “Bruckner” and “concision” in the same sentence, but this scherzo gives contrast to the other movements primarily because its musical clock runs faster. This is economy, Bruckner-style.

As in his other symphonies, Bruckner brings back the principal themes of the first three movements in the Finale. Its episodic, even disjointed nature was considered a defect by his critics; Schalk and Löwe attempted to “repair” the lack of continuity by making drastic cuts and re-arrangements for the first published edition. But their work missed the point entirely. The many episodes are the infinite human aspects of the “knowing” and “not-knowing” conundrum, and Bruckner waits until the end of the entire symphony for his confident, expansive, “knowing” coda to bring a solution: we arrive at the affirmative destination that Bruckner had in mind all along.

Bruckner and his music stood apart—from his era, from the musical life of Vienna, from the immediate musical past, even from everyday life itself. His music can almost always be seen as a meditation on the spiritual, the transcendent, the absolute. His contemporaries simply didn’t know what to make of it. Even Mahler, who counted Bruckner as a principal influence, conducted his works only after severe revision. In truth, Bruckner didn’t compose for his contemporaries, or even his admirers. He composed for eternity. To explore a Bruckner symphony—especially when we have access to his own concept rather than a bowdlerized version—is to take a spiritual journey unlike any other and to glimpse, if only for a moment, the divine.

                                                                —Mark Rohr