This September marked the bicentenary of the birth of Anton Brucker (1824-1895).

Bruckner was not just a composer who happened to be Catholic but one whose faith permeates his music deeply. Like several other of the great composers active in Vienna during the classical and Romantic periods—Haydn, Mozart, Haydn, Beethoven, and Schubert —he was a cradle Catholic. Like them, he composed masterful Masses and liturgical motets. However, Bruckner’s faith figured far more prominently in his daily life than it did in theirs. Many would argue that it features more prominently in his music too.

This is second of two articles on Bruckner. Whereas the first article covered his life and sacred music, this one surveys his symphonies and will recommend five recordings of them.

Complete Symphonies
Rundfunk-Symponieorchester Saarbrücken, conducted by Stanisław Skrowaczewski
Symphony No. 4
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Günther Wand
Symphony No. 7
Vienne Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Karl Böhm
Symphony No. 8
Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, conducted by Marek Janowski
Symphony No. 9
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini

Five Books for Catholics may receive a commission from qualifyng purchases made using the affliate links in this post.

“Bruckner is one of the few geniuses in the whole history of music whose appointed task was to express the transcendental in human terms, to weave the power of God into the fabric of human life. Be it in struggles against the forces of the underworld, or in music of blissful transfiguration, his whole mind and spirit were infused with thoughts of the divine, of God above and God on earth. He was, in fact, not a musician but a mystic, in the line of men like Meister Eckart and Jakob Böhme.”

That was the verdict of Wilhelm Furtwängler, one of the most influential conductors of the twentieth-century. Moreover, Furtwängler was referring to Bruckner’s music in general: to his symphonies just as much as his Masses and sacred motets.

Many concur that Bruckner’s deeply lived Catholicism permeates the ethos of his instrumental works just as much as it does his sacred music. For this reason, his symphonies have been described as “Masses without text.”

Bruckner’s final symphony is his unfinished Ninth. However, the numbering is misleading. Though he published nine symphonies, he composed eleven. The two unpublished ones are numbered 00 and 0 and are the first and third ones that he wrote. The former, the “Study” Symphony in F minor, was written to round off his instruction in musical form and orchestration under Otto Kitzler. The latter, the “Nullified” (Die Nullte) in D-minor, takes its title from the annotation Bruckner made at the beginning of the manuscript to indicate that, in his view, it was not fit for publication.

The numbering of Bruckner’s symphonies is not their only confusing feature. So is the proliferation of editions in which they exist.

One reason for this proliferation is that Bruckner revised some of his symphonies several times.

The other reason is that scholars have been divided over the authenticity of the editions published by Bruckner and his associates. This has prompted some to produce alternative editions that are purportedly more faithful to the original manuscripts and Bruckner’s actual intentions.

Bruckner’s symphonies had been prepared for publication by a circle of his collaborators, above all Josef and Franz Schalk. In the 1930s, however, Robert Haas, the curator of the music manuscripts collection of the Austrian National Library and the editor-in-chief of a critical edition of Bruckner’s works, pointed out that there were differences between the manuscripts and the previously published editions of the symphonies. The implication was that Bruckner’s close collaborators had persuaded the impressionable composer against his better instincts to make changes that they had come up with. They may have even interpolated unauthorised revisions of their own.

Unfortunately, Haas engaged in a bit of gaslighting. He interpolated a couple of passages composed by himself into his editions of No. 2 and No. 8.

Haas was also a member of the Nazi Party and supported its promotion and unwarranted appropriation of Bruckner. True to form, he even made anti-Semitic charges about the Jewish members of the composer’s circle and their influence on the earlier published editions of the scores.

A new edition was undertaken in the 1950s by Leopold Nowak but was not well accepted because, while faithful to the documentary evidence, the reliability of the original manuscripts was disputed.

That is not to say that Bruckner did not occasionally succumb to the insistence of his associates. It simply occurred less frequently than Haas supposed. Rather, Bruckner revised his symphonies mainly because he believed they were in need of revision. Moreover, his own revisions consistently shorten the movements, simplify the orchestration, intensify the contrasts. In other words, he improved the works with his revisions.

Picking recordings by the edition the conductor follows is better left for cognoscenti and not something that those working their way into Bruckner’s symphonies need worry about. They are more likely to wonder which symphony they should listen to first and which recording will unlock the work’s beauties to them.

Therein lies a challenge.

First, there is the question of which of the eleven symphonies should make the list. One way of getting around that is to pick a recording of the complete symphonies and then individual recordings of four of his mature symphonies. The four selected here are Bruckner’s Fourth—arguably the first to exhibit his full mastery of the genre and his distinctive voice—and his last three.

Then there is the question of which recording from the extensive and ever-growing discography should be picked in each case. The recordings selected here are widely recognised to be among the finest available, if not the finest.

"As the background to all his music, lie a piety and a mystical personal relationship to God known otherwise in European music only to Bach."
Eugen Jochum