GERD SCHALLER ON BRUCKNER'S FINALE TO HIS 9TH SYMPHONY

The performance of Anton Bruckner's 9th Symphony took place as part of the classical concerts of the Ebrach Summer Music Festival. The television broadcast of this concert is an opportunity for Gerd Schaller to reflect on the finale of Bruckner's Ninth:

BOLD DESIGNS

Anton Bruckner is known to have left his last symphony unfinished. He died while working on the last movement on October 11, 1896. However, the sketches and finished score pages are so musically bold that contemporaries could not make sense of them. Bruckner's drafts were even dismissed in some cases as the unfinished work of an elderly composer. This is how the myth, or rather the tale, arose that Bruckner's 9th Symphony was actually finished with the first three movements and that Bruckner had said everything essential with them. This myth has been spread since Bruckner's death and persists to this day. It is not surprising that contemporaries could not make sense of Bruckner's musically revolutionary sketches, since these drafts anticipated the musical avant-garde of the 20th century due to their harmonic daring. However, the music-loving and avant-garde-experienced person of the 21st century should not have any problem with this.

OPEN MESSAGE

Of course, you can look at the whole thing purely from a compositional point of view and perhaps you should hold back on speculation. However, that would mean ignoring the essential part of the Ninth and of Anton Bruckner's symphonies in general, because Bruckner did not write his works abstractly and for their own sake; rather, they contain a higher message that is involuntarily communicated to anyone who listens to his music with an open ear and an open heart. For Bruckner, there is always hope, which is also wonderfully expressed in the finale of his last symphony.

POWERFUL FINALE

The finale of the Ninth is not the serene work of an aged composer, but is characterized by a powerful, youthfully fresh and at the same time bold musical language that is reminiscent of Beethoven. It is only with this final movement that the symphony makes sense, because it is essentially only in the entire symphony that Bruckner shows the entire span of human life, from birth through struggle to death and promising hope.

ALMOST 90 PERCENT BY BRUCKNER

In my opinion, it is incomprehensible that people do not dare to perform Bruckner's Ninth with a finale more often. The sketches and finished score pages are so extensive and so strong in their musical statement that it is possible to create almost 90 percent of the final movement with this compositional material, which comes purely from Bruckner. Completing the final movement is therefore almost a necessity. If you only perform the first three movements, you are of course playing it safe and are not vulnerable. But you are also denying yourself and the audience Bruckner's wonderful music and thereby misunderstanding the real meaning of this monumental work, because Bruckner wanted his Ninth to have four movements.