8. Metrical and part-writing theories, composition and revision processes.

Bruckner is one of the few front-rank composers to have adopted an analyst's perspective vis-à-vis his own and other composers' music. Although the literature has focussed on his ‘obscurantist’ side – his religiosity and mysticism – there was a profoundly rational and analytical aspect to his thinking, intimately connected with his composition and revision processes. From 1875, when he initiated his campaign to make music theory a university subject and undertook the first thorough overhaul of his symphonies and masses, Bruckner became increasingly concerned with demonstrating the ‘scientific’ aspects of harmony, part-writing and metre, and with testing or ‘regulating’ (his term) the correctness of his own and other composers' music from a theoretical perspective. From about 1876 or 1877, with regard to pitch, Bruckner became interested in the problem of doubling; namely, when does momentary doubling constitute parallel octaves? About the same time, he began to use the ‘metrical grid’, which systematically analyses the phrase structure of a whole piece, and he continued to employ it to the end of his career, while both composing and revising his music.

One can distinguish two different types of metrical analysis: the first concerns the composition's large-scale durational proportions, while the second tracks the lengths of phrases and the emphases of given bars within phrases. The sketches for the Mass in F minor, dating from 1867–8, bear witness to the first type of durational analysis; these comparatively early sources reveal Bruckner counting the number of bars in large sections of music (fig.6). Many later manuscripts contain the so-called metrical numbers, which represent the number of bars in phrases. By 1872, Bruckner was already employing the numbers in a few places while composing. These early analyses tend to be mechanical and even at odds with the music, but by 1876 his use of the grid had become systematic. By the time of his first revision period he had become deeply concerned with rhythmic problems and with achieving an absolutely accurate conception of the rhythmic structure of his works.

From about 1888 Bruckner was prepared to go to great lengths in the pursuit of ‘correct’ part-writing in an orchestral context; indeed, in order to ensure that his orchestrations met his stringent test for correctness, he was willing to delay still all-too-rare orchestral performances and to pay for expensive recopying of parts. After the first performance of the new arrangement of the Fourth Symphony on 22 January 1888, Bruckner's dissatisfaction with consecutives prompted him to revise the orchestration immediately (in February). As the score was ‘regulated’ and the unwanted consecutives were eliminated, Bruckner carefully kept note of the revisions in his pocket calendar. The issue of proper part-writing had become so important to him that, in preparation for the next performance (conducted by Levi), he paid for the recopying of the parts. Two years later, for the same reason, he took back the score of his First Symphony from Richter and the Vienna PO; its revival was delayed for a year to allow Bruckner to correct the part-writing. In the ‘Vienna’ version (1891) Bruckner dispensed with the services of his students and regulated the part-writing with the utmost care himself.

Some scholars have awarded the Schalk brothers and Löwe the title of ‘collaborators’, arguing that Bruckner asked them to help him reorchestrate the Third and Fourth symphonies because he lacked their practical experience. Without denigrating their musicianship (which was, by all accounts, formidable), it is unlikely that Bruckner considered them his superiors in the art of orchestration; on the contrary, in seeking their help with the revision of the Third and Fourth symphonies, he allowed them to assist in the preparation of the score and then carefully revised what they had done in light of his own theories of correct orchestral part-writing. Until Bruckner's theoretical concern with the issue of consecutives is fully understood it will not be possible to explain the rationale for his revisions of his assistants' reorchestrations of the Third and Fourth symphonies and his dissatisfaction with their work, so that he subsequently attempted to prevent any other unauthorized revisions. Furthermore, an understanding of the significance of Bruckner's concern with consecutive octaves will illuminate his late orchestral style and extensive use of part-writing diagrams in the post-1890 manuscripts.

Bruckner, Anton