Bruckner symphonies how many

Later, Bruckner had supported her financially whenever possible, and he kept her deathbed photograph with him for the rest of his life. Marriage was on his mind throughout much of the time spent in Linz, yet he was as unhappy there in affairs of the heart as he had been at St Florian. The most serious crisis occurred in spring ; from May 8 until August 8 he was confined to the sanatorium at Bad Kreuzen as a result of a nervous breakdown.

One of the symptoms was a number mania: he is reported to have counted such things as beads on necklaces, dots on clothes, windows in the town, leaves on trees, and even stars. The specific cause of his collapse is not known, although overwork was certainly a factor. The stress of years of study followed by a period of intense compositional activity as well as the performances of the D minor Mass must have contributed to it.

It is clear that by that time he had become as uncomfortable in the provincial capital as he had been during his final days at St Florian. He began to look for a position elsewhere, though his ambivalence about actually making a move was reminiscent of the months immediately before going to Linz. Strangely, he did not apply at first for the post of professor of harmony and counterpoint at the Vienna Conservatory left vacant by the death of Simon Sechter on September 10, Herbeck intervened again to sweeten the Viennese offer by adding organ teaching to the responsibilities at the conservatory and arranging for Bruckner to enter the Hofkapelle as an unpaid organist.

Bruckner assumed his duties at the conservatory in October at a starting annual salary of gulden and remained on the faculty until he retired in January Student reminiscences report consistently that his subject matter was textbook harmony and counterpoint, not musical composition.

Despite dogged opposition from the critic Eduard Hanslick — , who was also on the faculty, Bruckner was appointed to the university in October after three unsuccessful applications. He began as instructor at the school in autumn and was cited for disciplinary action in September after a complaint that he had improperly addressed some of the students.

As well as teaching, Bruckner was one of three organists in the Hofkapelle, where he performed until , and was second singing instructor and vice-archivist between and Despite his unquestioned mastery of the organ his reputation as an international virtuoso was established by highly acclaimed tours to Nancy and Paris in spring and London in July and August there are indications that he did not always perform the service music in a manner acceptable to his superiors.

Perhaps he was more interested in improvising than in playing the prescribed pieces. The chapel afforded an occasional performance outlet for his compositions. In fact, given the obligations of his various posts and the numerous private students, it is surprising that he found any time to compose.

After a hiatus during and much of , he returned to the genre with renewed vigour and completed a remarkable series of four symphonies in little over four years: no. A rehearsal of the Second Symphony originally entitled no. Reaction to this first Viennese performance of a Bruckner symphony was mixed. In Linz Bruckner had had a powerful ally in the critic Eduard Hanslick, who thought he had found the contemporary symphonist so long absent from the Austrian scene.

Herbeck, who had arranged for the performance of the Third Symphony after the Philharmonic had rejected the work three times, was scheduled to conduct. He died on October 28, , and Bruckner, never a successful orchestral conductor, was forced to take the podium. The orchestra was rebellious; the audience streamed out of the hall during the finale; and Hanslick wrote a blistering review. Mahler possibly with Rudolf Kryzanowsky made the four-hand piano arrangement.

His letters from the middle of the decade contain the refrain familiar from his days at St Florian and Linz: he was alone in the face of adversity and misunderstanding. One mitigating factor was his promotion to paid membership in the Hofkapelle in January In he entered a period in which he became preoccupied with revising earlier scores.

The Second, Third, and Fourth were subject to more sweeping changes. In and again in Bruckner revised the Second in preparation for and probably as a consequence of the February performance. A series of rejections in Vienna and Berlin combined with the December disaster in the Musikvereinssaal prompted a dramatic series of alterations to Symphonies nos.

He made further changes in the Third in preparation for the publication and continued reworking the Fourth during and In December Bruckner began his only mature chamber music composition: the String Quintet commissioned by Joseph Hellmesberger, who requested that its original scherzo be replaced by the Intermezzo wab The Quintet was the first of another remarkable series of works including the Sixth Symphony September — September , the Seventh September — September , the Eighth first version, July — August , and the Te Deum , which he began in and, after an extended diversion for work on the Seventh Symphony, completed in March He made his final tour as an organ virtuoso in spring , this time to Prague.

The middle s began to bring Bruckner some of the renown as a composer which had so long eluded him. Hermann Levi — led a highly successful repeat performance in Munich on March 10, In large part through their efforts, more of his music appeared in print: the String Quintet in , the Seventh Symphony and Te Deum in , and the third and fourth symphonies in and respectively.

With increased fame came honours: in July Bruckner was appointed a member of the Order of Franz Joseph and in November a lifelong objective was achieved when he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Vienna. Professor Anton Bruckner revised the First Symphony between March and April and dedicated it to the university as a token of his gratitude.

One major disappointment was the rejection of the Eighth Symphony by Hermann Levi in There is no truth in the story that Levi did not have the courage to tell the composer and asked Josef Schalk to inform Bruckner of his decision. Levi conveyed the news himself in what must have been a difficult letter to write on October 7, Bruckner went into a depressive tailspin with a return of some of the symptoms of his illness of He nevertheless undertook a tortuous series of revisions of the symphony between and Levi remained a supporter of the composer throughout the remainder of his career.

He broke off in to compose his last motet, Vexilla regis wab 51 , Der deutsche Gesang wab 63 , and Psalm cl wab 38 , and completed Helgoland wab 71 in August He finished the first movement of the Ninth on October 14, , the Scherzo on February 15, , and the Adagio in November the same year.

In he was given a small apartment in the Belvedere Palace, where he spent his remaining days wrestling with the finale. His maid reported that he was still trying to complete it on the day he died October 11, In he suffered the first in a series of debilitating attacks which, with few respites, rendered the last years of his life a constant struggle.

Modern cardiologists have diagnosed the symptoms as acute heart disease related to alchoholism and have concluded that the disease had probably been in his body for some time. By it was almost impossible for him to play the organ; in April that year he was too ill to travel to Graz to hear the long-awaited first performance of the Fifth Symphony conducted by his pupil Franz Schalk.

His funeral took place in the Karlskirche, Vienna, on October 14, and the following day, in accordance with his will, his remains were placed in the crypt under the great organ in St Florian. Thousands attended the procession to the Westbahnhof, among them Brahms, himself extremely ill, with whom something of a reconciliation had been effected after years of rivalry. At the entombment ceremony the organist Josef Gruber improvised on themes from Parsifal.

After Bruckner died, the large number of obituaries reflected, not surprisingly, the polemics of the cultural wars of late 19th-century Vienna with an extraordinary range of assessments of his personality and accomplishment.

To the outside world, both his and ours, Bruckner was and remains an enigma; many of his actions were confusing and even contradictory. He was a solitary person more at home in rural Upper Austria than in the urban environments of Linz and Vienna.

His provincial manners and dress were a source of bewilderment and amusement to his Viennese colleagues, and he often found himself the subject of caricatures and humorous anecdotes testifying to his lack of polish. The caricatures belie the fact that he was a relatively tall and, in his early years, handsome young man. His repeated thoughts of marriage, even relatively late in life, reflect his disquiet at being alone. His few close friendships, as with Rudolf Weinwurm whom he met in , were sincere and lasting, although interrupted by career moves from one locale to another.

Contemporary reports from his early piano students and his days in the Upper Austrian schoolroom describe him as a compassionate, well-organized, though at times acerbic and pedantic teacher.

There is no question about the admiration of his Viennese students, many of whom went on to have distinguished careers of their own. Throughout his life ample confidence in his musical abilities was counterbalanced by a nervous, introverted, and often obsequious disposition.

During the s, when recognition had been slow in coming, he was extremely jealous of Brahms and willing to make just about any compromise to obtain a performance. Perhaps his strongest endorsement of his own creative accomplishment was the will that he signed on November 10, bequeathing the autograph manuscripts of his most important compositions to the imperial library. Up to that time he had pursued his career with a professional caution which often demonstrated his insecurity.

The ambivalence with which he approached the moves to both Linz and Vienna was part of a lifelong behavioural pattern. His propensity for revising his own scores and his willingness to allow others to influence their content have also been interpreted as illustrative of his indecision and lack of confidence. It must be said that, however negative were the events to which he may have been reacting, his revisions demonstrate an inner logic and musicality which only a great composer could apply.

When he was involved in the preparation of his scores for publication, he often accepted the musical suggestions of others. To the best of our knowledge, he never did so without careful scrutiny.

Their frustration with his interference eventually led them to proceed without him, as with the first printed scores of the fifth and eighth symphonies and Mass in F Minor. Their duplicitous behavior in these cases led him in turn during the s to mistrust them, except for Franz Schalk in whose musical judgement he had great confidence. Throughout his life Bruckner was preoccupied with financial security and the social stature which a doctorate or professorship would convey.

His constant expressions of consternation over his financial position exceeded reasonable anxiety and, especially towards the end of his career, were not justified by his circumstances; he was not poor. Financial concerns pushed him to the limits of his physical and mental endurance: he held three positions simultaneously in Vienna and taught an untold number of private students. In some ways he was remarkably skilful at managing his career; twice, for example, he was able to persuade his former employers the prior Mayer and Bishop Rudigier to hold a position for him while he tried out a new one.

As a public figure in Vienna Bruckner was able to accomplish a difficult balance between the roles of devoted imperial employee textbook representative of the status quo and avant-garde Wagnerian composer resident symbol of a new world order.

Many of the Wagnerites from whom he received the critical acclaim he craved participated in a reactionary, pro-German, often anti-Semitic political fringe which was an embarrassment to the palace.

So far as is known he never commented publicly on these issues beyond the selection of a number of patriotic German texts for his settings for male chorus, and his letters are remarkably non-committal.

The frequently expressed view that he had no political awareness or that he did not know what was happening cannot be substantiated. Bruckner left few clues as to his private thoughts and motivations. His surviving correspondence is not large by 19th-century standards, and most of the letters are either terse and businesslike or replete with obeisant, not always diplomatic, gestures towards people of influence.

They seldom offer a point of view on any subject other than to lament his financial circumstances, complain about persecution from his critics, or express his gratitude to those who helped him. The problem is twofold. He revised a number of his compositions, sometimes more than once, so that many are preserved in two or more manuscript versions. The masses and symphonies also appeared in printed scores, many of which differ yet again from any surviving manuscript.

The relationship with his student editors is difficult to explain. First it must be said there is no evidence they ever coerced him as the editor of the first collected works edition, Robert Haas , claimed. They spent long hours working on his behalf with no financial gain. In the mids, as the Seventh Symphony became more and more successful, largely as a result of the ministrations of his Wagnerite friends such as Levi and Nikisch, he was drawn further and further into the centre of an ever-expanding Wagnerian circle.

As Thomas Leibnitz pointed out, he must have felt pushed in this direction by his own despair at ever being accepted otherwise. The initial performances and publication of the Seventh underlined in his mind, and those of his supporters, his public position as a member of the international Wagnerian faction.

Bruckner was willing to accept their suggestions in part because, at the time, their advice was working with the public, and he was desperate for publications and performances. The 20th century saw the publication of of an extended collected works edition under the auspices of the Music Collection of the Austrian Library, which has the largest collection of extant Bruckner sources, and the International Bruckner Society.

Between and it was edited and left incomplete by Robert Haas — , Alfred Orel — , and Fritz Oeser — Leopold Nowak took over the editorship and, in , started what, in everything but name, amounted to a second collected works edition that continued to publish into the 21st century.

Nowak and Haas addressed the question of versions with different strategies. In his editions, Haas often spliced together different manuscript versions to produce an ideal reading.

Nowak identified, for example, three versions of the Third Symphony. In some cases, such as the Seventh Symphony, where information is relatively sparse because so many sources are lost, he also mistakenly mixed layers of change.

Scores published while Bruckner was alive were harder to discredit. A series of arguments, sometimes tenuous, were brought to bear to the effect that the composer, in some instances, had not known what was happening and, in others, had disavowed the work of his editors.

It is now clear that, by leaving his manuscripts to the library, Bruckner intended to cement his long-term legacy, not to dictate a hierarchy of readings. Alfred Orel, among others, and even Haas and Nowak came to realize that ignoring all the first prints was not prudent. After the —5 successes of the Seventh Symphony, Bruckner hoped that extensive publication would cement his reputation and bring financial rewards.

The students admired Bruckner as a highly gifted symphonist on paper, but whose music was marred by simplistic orchestration, too much influenced by organ registration and not sensitive enough to the performing problems of a large ensemble. He worked alongside them and corrected them extensively. It was finally published, edited by Benjamin Korstvedt in By the s, the students were conspiring to bypass Bruckner entirely.

By it had become clear that the piecemeal approach to correcting the old scores was no longer practical. The Austrian National Library and International Bruckner Society endorsed the publication of a new collected works edition. It has begun publication under an international panel of editors who have set aside the blanket policy of manuscripts first and will reassess all the sources for each work. The new edition will also identify versions on the basis of historical landmarks such as dates of composition or performance.

From to he paused to rework his music; there was a hiatus in the composition of symphonies while he revised nos.

Then he composed the String Quintet —9 and between and completed in unbroken succession the next three symphonies in the final group no. Symphonies nos. There are two distinct versions of the Eighth and but only one of the Ninth. Until the s the symphonies were mostly unperformed and unpublished. Also, Bruckner never heard the Fifth Symphony, except in a two-piano arrangement.

The Second Symphony exists in at least three versions. The first was completed in and Bruckner revised it in , , , and The editions of Haas and Nowak , which purportedly presented the version, actually conflated elements of the earlier and later versions. The main cuts indicated by Bruckner in , preserved in the first edition, concern the approach to the final cadence and the coda in the finale.

Bruckner cut the citation of the Kyrie of the Mass in F minor in bars —62, probably because he felt it was redundant after the citation in bars — The original coda twice completes a cycle through related material; Bruckner eliminated the first cycle as redundant. There are three distinct versions of the Third Symphony. Bruckner completed the first version in ed.

Nowak, The second version exists in no less than three phases. In Bruckner revised the symphony rhythmically and reworked the Adagio ed. Between May and April 25, Bruckner made substantial revisions to the entire symphony. He further revised the Adagio in October , and in January added two bars to the first movement and modified the Scherzo, including the addition of a new coda. In the autograph score of the first three movements of the —8 version including the October Adagio , which Bruckner had given to Mahler, was acquired by the Austrian National Library.

In the score was published by Nowak, who incorrectly identified it as the version. In fact, it is the version, which includes two additional bars in the First movement, slight modifications to the scherzo, and a coda for the scherzo. It contained the third and last stage of the second version of the symphony.

Another cut, in the development bars —96 , was indicated by Bruckner in his copy of the first print. These cuts, already suggested by Bruckner in , were later incorporated into the third version —9 , which served as the basis for the first printed edition ; the Stichvorlage was edited by Nowak and published in For this last revision, Bruckner used a score of the finale prepared by Franz Schalk. It is interesting that he rejected, early in the revision process, the single passage where Schalk had introduced a substantial recomposition of his own.

The Fourth Symphony, like the Third, exists in three distinct versions. The first was completed in November ed. Haas, , Nowak, and In Bruckner substantially recomposed the finale ed. Haas, and , Nowak, After this performance, Bruckner unsuccessfully attempted to get the symphony published. The new score — which contained further unauthorized revisions by the pupils — was eventually published by Gutmann in September Of the changes between the second and third versions, those concerning the structure of the scherzo and the finale, and the orchestration, are the most significant.

In the finale, the recapitulation of the first group was removed, necessitating a new transition from the development to the reprise of the second group. That Bruckner sanctioned this large cut is revealed by his metrical numbers at the affected place in the Stichvorlage.

The third version was first performed on January 22, again with Richter. The Fifth Symphony exists in essentially one version which is authentic ed. Haas, , and Nowak, Franz Schalk made an arrangement —3 , which formed the basis for the first printed edition It is likely that the kind of collaboration with Schalk that had taken place with the arrangements of the third and fourth symphonies did not occur in —3 because by that time Bruckner had become suspicious of his collaborators.

The Sixth Symphony exists in only one authentic version ed. It appears that Bruckner wanted the original manuscript to serve as the basis for the edition since he lent it to the publisher Eberle. Returned into my hands after typesetting. But in spite of its trip to the typesetter, the Sixth Symphony was not published until , in an arrangement by Hynais. The Seventh Symphony probably existed in three distinct versions.

The original version dates from —3. A second version resulted from changes apparently made in preparation for the first performance, conducted by Arthur Nikisch on December 30, The third version resulted from revisions made in January However, since these seem to have been relatively minor changes, and no cuts were involved, the revisions were entered directly into the manuscript with paste-overs and erasures rather than into a copy score.

The autograph A-Wn Mus. There are two authentic manuscript versions of the Eighth Symphony: the first from ed. Nowak, and the second from Nowak, Cooke was troubled because the version includes a reminiscence of the Seventh Symphony in the exposition Nowak, , bars 85—98 but not in the recapitulation bars —6. In the course of preparing the first edition, Josef Schalk asked Oberleithner to make a cut in the exposition so that the citation would be eliminated in both places.

The Ninth Symphony, like the Fifth and Sixth, has been published in only one authentic version ed. Orel, , and Nowak, To what extent did Bruckner complete the finale of the Ninth Symphony? Mahler drafted almost all of his last symphony in one continuous short score which could be orchestrated by others.

Bruckner, on the other hand, especially in his late period, tended to work in a more piecemeal way, sometimes drafting sections of music directly into full score several times before continuing with composition. Marianna Sonntag has observed H iii that, in composing the first movement of the Ninth Symphony, in general, [Bruckner] evidently did not establish an over-all structure for the piece, at least not on paper, but composed one section at a time, systematically completing one before moving on to the subsequent passage.

The sketches for the last motet, Vexilla Regis , show a similar process of drafting the piece phrase by phrase. Research has suggested that in spite of this sectional approach Bruckner had progressed considerably further with the composition of the finale than Orel, in the early s, recognized; indeed, it has been shown that the incompletely preserved sources contain a rough draft for the whole movement — though with unfortunate lacunae — to the end of the coda.

Bruckner began composing the finale in May and, although gradually becoming weaker, he continued to work on it from January to May During the last three years of his life, distracted by illness and preoccupied with new projects, Bruckner realized that he had lost control of the publication of his music.

To summarize: the versions of the symphonies which Bruckner regarded as definitive at the time of his death are preserved in a combination of autographs and copy scores. When Bruckner accepted the suggestions of others, he made them his own. The last authentic versions of the symphonies are as follows: No.

For the Berliner Philharmoniker, this music has been part of their artistic identity for over a hundred years. It is precisely the changing perspectives of different conductors that make it possible to explore this diverse wealth. The high-quality hardcover edition presents the recordings on nine CDs as well as pure audio and video recordings on Blu-ray.

The extensive booklet contains an essay by the renowned musicologist Richard Taruskin plus portraits of the conductors, introductions to the individual symphonies and numerous photos. Returning from London, he devoted himself to a concentrated five-year period of composition, writing four symphonies in sequence Nos which, for the first time, unmistakably announced his novel approach to this most testing of musical forms.

Two years later it begrudgingly gave the premiere under the composer himself, to the sounds of jeers and catcalls from an audience which, by the end, amounted to a mere 25 Bruckner supporters including the teenage Mahler. Bruckner became more insecure about his work than ever. He had struggled long and hard to get this far, yet still it seemed his work appeared doomed to end up on the Viennese musical scrap-heap.

As a result, with the well-meaning help of friends and colleagues, Bruckner set about a number of often drastic revisions of his symphonies, which the majority of experts now consider to have been to the detriment of the originals. In Bruckner became lecturer in harmony and counterpoint at the University of Vienna and, after devoting much of the following four years to the obsessive revision of several earlier works, he began a final run of great masterpieces, including Symphonies Nos 7 and 8, the Te Deum and the String Quintet One can only surmise what Bruckner might have gone on to achieve had he been granted just a few more years of creativity.

See more Bruckner Album Reviews. See more Bruckner Guides. Anton Bruckner: A Life.