7. Versions of the symphonies.

Bruckner's symphonies can be divided into three groups. To the first may be assigned the two early symphonies from the Linz years: the ‘Study’ Symphony, sometimes referred to as no.00 (1863), and Symphony no.1 (1865–6). The second group includes the five symphonies composed after Bruckner's move to Vienna in 1868: the ‘Nullified’ or ‘Nullte’ Symphony in D minor (1869) and Symphonies nos.2–5 (1871–6). Completion of the contrapuntal Fifth Symphony, which testified to Bruckner's consummate mastery of all the technical aspects of composition, marked a watershed in his creativity. From 1876 to 1879 he paused to rework his music; there was a hiatus in the composition of symphonies while he revised nos.2–4. Then he composed the String Quintet (1878–9) and between 1879 and 1887 completed in unbroken succession the next three symphonies in the final group (no.6, no.7 and the first version of no.8) and began the Ninth.

It is noteworthy that Bruckner had already embarked upon an overhaul of the Fourth Symphony before Hermann Levi's rejection of the first version of the Eighth in 1887; therefore, the significance of the Levi episode for the later revisions remains controversial. Another sequence of revisions, of the First, Third, Fourth and Eighth symphonies, in the late 1880s and early 1890s slowed down composition of the Ninth so that its finale was unfinished at Bruckner's death. Symphonies nos.2–4 underwent considerable revision, resulting in multiple versions; by contrast, nos.5–7 were comparatively little revised and exist in only one version. There are two distinct versions of the Eighth (1887 and 1890) but only one of the Ninth. It is notable that in the last three symphonies (1883–96) the orchestra is enlarged to include Wagner tubas and in the last two the scherzo is placed before the slow movement (as in Beethoven's Ninth).

It is important to bear in mind that international success and recognition came late in Bruckner's life. Until the 1880s the symphonies were mostly unperformed and unpublished. The extent to which they remained unknown in the 19th century is revealed by the lack of performances (especially of the first versions): the ‘Nullte’, the Sixth (not given complete until 1899), the Ninth and the first versions of the Third, Fourth and Eighth symphonies were never played during the composer's lifetime. Also, Bruckner never heard the Fifth Symphony, except in a two-piano arrangement. The second performance of the Seventh Symphony (Munich, 10 March 1885), conducted by Levi, was one of Bruckner's first unequivocal triumphs and important for the wider dissemination of his music. The Berliner Tageblatt critic summed up the general reception when he wrote (10 August 1885) that Bruckner ‘beguiled us all so that when the last chord of his creation died away, we asked with amazement: how is it possible that you remained unknown to us for so long?’

The two versions of the First Symphony elegantly straddle Bruckner's symphonic output. The first (‘Linz’) version was composed in 1865–6 (edited by Robert Haas in 1935 and by Leopold Nowak in 1953) and reworked and reorchestrated in 1890–91, during Bruckner's last creative period, to celebrate the granting of the honorary doctorate by the University of Vienna in 1891. It is notable that Bruckner confined his revisions to reworking the texture and orchestration in accordance with his own ideas concerning consecutives (see §8 below). The first printed edition (supervised by Cyrill Hynais) was published during Bruckner's lifetime (1893), but the Stichvorlage (engraver's copy) has disappeared and it is impossible to verify which of its variants from the ‘Vienna’ manuscript (A-Wn Mus.19473) originate directly from the composer.

The Second Symphony exists in at least three versions. The first was completed in 1872 and Bruckner revised it in 1873, 1876, 1877 and 1892. The editions of 1938 (Haas) and 1965 (Nowak), which purportedly presented the 1877 version, actually conflated elements of the earlier and later versions. The first edition, published by Doblinger in 1892, used the copyist's manuscript (A-Wn Mus.6035, one of the copy scores owned by Bruckner) as a Stichvorlage.

One of the many remarkable features of the Second Symphony is the extensive use of rests between main formal sections, for which the work was nicknamed (not entirely in a friendly manner) the ‘Symphony of Rests’ (Pausensymphonie). Using Bruckner's metrical grids (see §8 below), research has shown that the cuts and ‘tightening’, particularly of the rests in the later versions, were made by Bruckner (not by the conductor, Herbeck) to make the music fit the grid. The main cuts indicated by Bruckner in 1877, 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 540–62, probably because he felt it was redundant after the citation in bars 200–19. 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 1873 (ed. Nowak, 1977). The second version exists in no less than three phases. In 1876 Bruckner revised the symphony rhythmically and reworked the Adagio (ed. Nowak, 1980). Between May 1876 and 25 April 1877 Bruckner made substantial revisions to the entire symphony. He further revised the Adagio in October 1877, and in January 1878 added two bars to the first movement and modified the Scherzo, including the addition of a new coda. In 1948 the autograph score of the first three movements of the 1876–8 version (including the October 1877 Adagio), which Bruckner had given to Mahler, was acquired by the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek. In 1981 the 1878 score was published by Nowak, who incorrectly identified it as the 1877 version. In fact, it is the 1878 version, which includes two additional bars in the First movement, slight modifications to the scherzo and a coda for the scherzo. In 1950 Fritz Oeser's new edition of the first print was published as the ‘Second Version of 1878’. This also is misleading because the first print was not published by Theodor Rättig until 1879. It contained the third and last stage of the second version of the symphony. Perhaps the most important difference between the Mahler manuscript and the printed edition are the cuts indicated (with ‘Vi-de’ signs) in the recapitulation of the finale at bars 379–432, eliminating the first theme group, and bars 465–514, removing the second part of the second group and the first part of the third. Another cut, in the development (bars 283–96), was indicated by Bruckner in his copy of the first print. These cuts, already suggested by Bruckner in 1879, were later incorporated into the third version (1887–9), which served as the basis for the first printed edition (1890; the 1889 Stichvorlage was edited by Nowak and published in 1959). 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. Perhaps at Bruckner's request, Schalk tried to abbreviate the final appearance of the principal theme in the third group (Nowak, 1959, bars 393–441); but Bruckner was clearly unhappy with Schalk's rather tame and incoherent 27-bar version of this crucial climax, and on 15 March 1890 sketched his own 44-bar reading of the climax, which became the final version.

The Fourth Symphony, like the Third, exists in three distinct versions. The first was completed in November 1874 (ed. Nowak, 1974). In 1878, Bruckner ‘tightened up’ the first two movements, revised the finale (now entitled ‘Volksfest’) and replaced the original scherzo with a new movement designated ‘Jagd-Scherzo’ (ed. Haas, 1936, Nowak, 1953 and 1981). In 1880 Bruckner substantially recomposed the finale (ed. Haas, 1936 and 1944, Nowak, 1953). The ‘second’ version, comprising the first three movements of 1878 and the finale of 1880, was given its first performance by the Vienna PO, conducted by Hans Richter, on 20 February 1881. After this performance, Bruckner unsuccessfully attempted to get the symphony published. In undertaking the third and final revision, Bruckner was assisted by Ferdinand Löwe and probably by the Schalk brothers. The new score – which may have contained further unauthorized revisions by the pupils – was eventually published by Gutmann in September 1889. 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 22 January 1888 (again with Richter). Based on his experience of this performance and in accordance with his ideas concerning consecutive octaves, extensive revisions to the pupils’ reorchestration were made by Bruckner in February 1888. It is interesting that shortly afterwards, in March, Bruckner was already revising the Stichvorlage of Schalk's arrangement of the finale of the Third Symphony. A larger picture emerges: in 1887–8, Bruckner extensively ‘regulated’ (his word) the pupils' reorchestrations of the third versions of the Third and Fourth symphonies.

The Fifth Symphony exists in essentially one version which is authentic (ed. Haas, 1936, and Nowak, 1951). Bruckner's manuscript (A-Wn Mus.19477) contains both the first version (completed in 1876) and a slightly later revision (completed in 1878). Franz Schalk made an arrangement (1892–3), which formed the basis for the first printed edition (1896). Since Schalk's Stichvorlage is lost, there is no way of knowing whether Bruckner saw the Schalk manuscript and corrected it. 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 1892–3 because by that time Bruckner had become suspicious of his collaborators. The letters between Franz and Josef Schalk reveal that from 1892 they conspired to publish and perform Franz's arrangement while convincing Bruckner that it was his own version which was being reproduced.

The Sixth Symphony exists in only one authentic version (ed. Haas, 1935, and Nowak, 1951). It appears that Bruckner wanted the original manuscript to serve as the basis for the edition since he lent it to the publisher Eberle. An annotation on the wrapper in the hand of Cyrill Hynais – ‘Original [manuscript]. Returned into my hands after typesetting.’ – is signed by Bruckner and witnessed by Hynais. It seems that the manuscript had been sent to the printer under Hynais's supervision and returned safely to the composer. Since Bruckner's signature is shaky, presumably from illness and old age, one suspects that these events date from the last few years of his life, perhaps even from early 1896. But in spite of its trip to the typesetter, the Sixth Symphony was not published until 1899, in an arrangement by Hynais. Hynais's Stichvorlage for the edition surfaced during the 1940s before disappearing again; Alfred Orel, who had the opportunity to study it, reported that Bruckner's handwriting did not appear anywhere in the manuscript. This suggests that Hynais made his arrangement without any involvement by Bruckner, probably after the composer's death; it is therefore unauthentic.

The Seventh Symphony probably existed in three distinct versions. The original version dates from 1881–3. A second version resulted from changes apparently made in preparation for the first performance, conducted by Arthur Nikisch on 30 December 1884. In a letter written shortly before the première, Nikisch told Bruckner that ‘in certain places you will have to change the instrumentation, because it is written impractically and does not sound good’ (21 December 1884). The third version resulted from revisions made in January 1885. They were suggested by Josef Schalk and Löwe, who went through the score with Bruckner and discussed further improvements to the instrumentation. 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.19479), incorporating the changes, then served as the Stichvorlage for the printed edition, published by Gutmann in December 1885 (this is the only case where a Bruckner autograph was used as the Stichvorlage for the first edition). Haas, in the first collected edition (1944), tried to restore the piece to its ‘original’ state, presumably to the reading before the changes made for the first performance. Nowak, on the other hand (1954), incorporated the revisions suggested by Nikisch, Schalk and Löwe as sanctioned by Bruckner. Since the tempo indications were probably Bruckner's (conveyed to Nikisch in preparation for the première), Nowak included them in parentheses.

There are two authentic manuscript versions of the Eighth Symphony: the first from 1887 (ed. Nowak, 1972) and the second from 1890 (Nowak, 1955). The first printed edition (1892), based on Bruckner's 1890 version, was supervised by Max von Oberleithner working in consultation with Josef Schalk. The Stichvorlage for the first print is lost; it is therefore impossible to ascertain whether the variants between Bruckner's 1890 score and the first edition were authorized by him. Probably they were not, since by that time the Schalk brothers and Oberleithner had already distanced Bruckner from the publication process.

Like his edition of the Second Symphony (1938), Haas's version of the Eighth (1939) conflates two versions. For the most part, he followed the second (1890) score, but he restored passages from the first version where he felt that Josef Schalk had given Bruckner poor advice and the 1887 reading better reflected the composer's original intentions. Although Haas's method of splicing disparate sources now seems untenable, Deryck Cooke (G1969, pp.480–82) supported Haas's restorations and criticized Nowak for following Bruckner's 1890 treatment of the ‘Gesangsgruppe’ (see §9 below) in the exposition and recapitulation. Cooke was troubled because the 1890 version includes a reminiscence of the Seventh Symphony in the exposition (Nowak, 1955, bars 85–98) but not in the recapitulation (bars 563–6). 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. According to Cooke, in making the cut in the exposition [Schalk] did show that he cared about the ‘balance of motives’, whereas Nowak, by leaving out what Bruckner and Schalk had cut in the recapitulation and keeping in what Schalk had cut of his own accord in the exposition [in the first edition], achieved only a piece of musicological pedantry which makes no structural sense at all.But Nowak was fully justified in following Bruckner's 1890 cut: in 1877 Bruckner had made a similar cut in the finale of the Second Symphony, when he kept the first citation of the Kyrie, in the exposition, but removed the second (presumably redundant) from the recapitulation.

The Ninth Symphony, like the Fifth and Sixth, has been published in only one authentic version (ed. Orel, 1934, and Nowak, 1951). The first edition (1903), based on an arrangement by Löwe, was probably not sanctioned by Bruckner. In addition to making cuts and reorchestrating the work, Löwe toned down the dissonance of the original. For example, at the climax of the Adagio (bars 205–6), Bruckner's score presents a seven–note dominant 13th chord of C minor (G –B –D –F –A–C –E); Löwe apparently found it too harsh and in his version eliminated the dissonant 11th and 13th (C –E).

To what extent did Bruckner complete the finale of the Ninth Symphony? The answer to this question is much more problematic than in the case of Mahler's Tenth 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) 1987) 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.Dr Heller, Bruckner's physician during his last years, reported a similar kind of sectional approach: then [Bruckner] sat at the piano and played for me with trembling hands, but correctly and energetically, parts [of the Ninth Symphony's Finale] … Although he was really weak, I often begged him to write down the symphony in its main ideas, but he was not to be moved. Page by page, he composed the whole instrumental realization.The sketches for the last motet, Vexilla Regis (1892), 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 1930s, 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 1895 and, although gradually becoming weaker, he continued to work on it from January to May 1896. In drafts dated 19 and 23 May 1896, he set down the main outlines of the final cadence and then began to revise the movement's earlier sections. An article that appeared in the Steyrer Zeitung (10 May 1896) reported that he ‘has already completely sketched [vollständig skizziert] the final movement of his Ninth Symphony but, as he himself told [his friend, the choral conductor from Steyr,] Mr. Bayer, no longer believes that he will be able to work it out completely'. There are gaps in the draft because of lost pages and the sketch itself is ‘not completely worked out’ (as Bayer stated).

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. As a consequence, he became increasingly suspicious of the Schalk brothers and Löwe, and concerned – with good reason – that the published versions did not represent his final intentions. The making of his will (10 November 1893), in which he declared his intention to lend the original manuscripts (‘die Originalmanuskripte’) of his most important works to the imperial library and asked that they serve as the basis for publications by the firm of Eberle, may be taken as an indication of his lack of confidence in the published scores. Are we to assume from the stipulations in the will that in 1893 Bruckner reconsidered the 1889 version of the Fourth Symphony? Did he want the ‘original manuscript’ of the 1878–80 version (A-Wn Mus.19476), which he lent to the library, to be the definitive reading? Without more evidence, the question must remain.

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. His extensive involvement in the pre-publication revisions of the Third, Fourth and Seventh symphonies – his ‘regulation’ of their orchestration – suggests that the readings preserved in the Stichvorlagen when they left Bruckner's possession are his final readings. The last authentic versions of the symphonies are as follows:No.1: A-Wn Mus.19473, autograph of the ‘Vienna’ version completed in 1891 (ed. Nowak, 1980). No.2: A-Wn Mus.6015, copy score of the 1877 version. No.3: A-Wn Mus.6081, copy score of the version completed in 1889 (ed. Nowak, 1959). No.4: A-Wst M.H.9098/c, photograph of the 1889 copy score; or, because of Bruckner's instructions in his will, the 1878–80 autograph A-Wn Mus.19476. No.5: A-Wn Mus.19477, autograph of the version completed in 1878 (ed. Nowak, 1951). No.6: A-Wn Mus.19478, autograph, completed in 1881 (ed. Nowak, 1951). No.7: A-Wn Mus.19479, autograph, including the changes made for the 1885 publication (ed. Nowak, 1954). No.8: A-Wn Mus.19480, autograph of the version completed in 1890 (ed. Nowak, 1955). No.9: A-Wn Mus.19481, autograph of movements 1–3 and draft of finale, 1896 (ed. Nowak, 1951, excluding finale); finale reconstructed by J.A. Phillips (Vienna, 1994).

Bruckner, Anton