There is a pause. The melodious and religious second theme is sung in slower tempo. The accompanying voices for horn and violas might well be reckoned as thematic. The third theme, wood-wind and strings, is practically a double theme, and the lower voice has much importance later. The concluding section of this theme is developed in choral fashion, and it is then combined with the lower voice. After a pause comes the working-out section. As the introduction indicated, it gives the impression of a mighty struggle. A blend of the two just preceding themes leads to a new melody for violins. There is a powerful crescendo for full orchestra. The rhythm of the chief theme of the first movement is heard. The first measures of the finale are now played softly by the horns, then by the flutes. Preceding themes are again combined. The repetition section opens powerfully. The decisive rhythm of the chief theme spurs the full orchestra. The coda begins quietly, but it soon becomes intense. In the triumphant ending in C major, chief themes of the four movements are heard exulting.
I am indebted in a measure for the preceding sketch of the contents of this symphony to the analysis by Werner Wolff, published in the programme book of the Philharmonic Orchestra, Berlin, October 29, 1906; and to the analysis of Johannes Reichert which has already been mentioned. They that wish to study the symphony may consult with profit the analysis by Willibald Kähler (Musikführer No. 262). These analysts are by no means unanimous in their designation of the chief themes. I have followed chiefly in the footsteps of Mr. Wolff.
It may help to a better understanding of the music of Bruckner if light be thrown on the personal nature and prejudices not only of the composer but of his contemporaneous partisans and foes. This simple man, who had known the cruelest poverty and distress, and in Vienna lived the life of an ascetic, made enemies by the very writing of music.
There appeared in Vienna in 1901 a little pamphlet entitled Meine Erinnerung an Anton Bruckner. The writer was Carl Hruby, a pupil of Bruckner. The pamphlet is violent, malignant. In its rage there is at times the ridiculous fury of an excited child. There are pages that provoke laughter and then pity; yet there is much of interest about the composer himself, who now, away from strife and contention, is still unfortunate in his friends. We shall pass over Hruby’s ideas on music and the universe, nor are we inclined to dispute his proposition (p. 7) that Shakespeare, Goethe, Beethoven, Wagner, were truer heroes and supporters of civilization than Alexander, Cæsar, Napoleon, who, nevertheless, were, like Hannibal, very pretty fellows in those days. When Hruby begins to talk about Bruckner and his ways, then it is time to prick up ears.
As a teacher, Bruckner was amiable, patient, kind, but easily vexed by frolicsome pupils who did not know his sensitive nature. He gave each pupil a nickname, and his favorite phrase of contentment and disapproval was “Viechkerl!”—“You stupid beast!” There was a young fellow whose name began “Sachsen”; but Bruckner could never remember the rest of it, so he would go through the list of German princes, “Sachsen”—“Sachsen”—“Sachsen-Coburg-Gotha, Sachsen”—and at last the name would come. Another pupil, afterwards a harp virtuoso, was known to his teacher only as “Old Harp.” Bruckner had a rough, at the same time, sly, peasant humor. One of his pupils came into the class with bleached and jaded face. Bruckner asked what ailed him. The answer was: “I was at the Turnverein till two o’clock.” “Yes,” said Bruckner, “oh, yes, I know the Turnverein that lasts till 2 A.M.” The pupil on whom he built fond hope was Franz Nott, who died young and in the madhouse. When Bruckner was disturbed in his work, he was incredibly and gloriously rude.
Bruckner was furious against all writers who discovered “programmes” in his music. He was warmly attached to the ill-fated Hugo Wolf, and was never weary of praising the declamation in his songs: “The fellow does nothing all day but compose, while I must tire myself out by giving lessons,” for at sixty years Bruckner was teaching for three guldens a lesson. Beethoven was his idol, and after a performance of one of the greater symphonies he was as one insane. After a performance of the Eroica, he said to Hruby—would that it were possible to reproduce Bruckner’s dialect—“I think that if Beethoven were alive, and I should go to him with my Seventh symphony and say, ‘Here, Mr. Van Beethoven, this is not so bad, this Seventh, as certain gentlemen would make out’ ... I think he would take me by the hand and say, ‘My dear Bruckner, never mind, I had no better luck; and the same men who hold me up against you even now do not understand my last quartets, although they act as if they understood them.’ Then I’d say to him, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Van Beethoven, that I have gone beyond you in freedom of form, but I think a true artist should make his own forms for his own works, and stick by them.’” He once said of Hanslick, “I guess Hanslick understands as little about Brahms as about Wagner, me, and others. And the Doctor Hanslick knows as much about counterpoint as a chimney sweep about astronomy.”
Hanslick was to Bruckner as a pursuing demon. (We are giving Hruby’s statement, and Hanslick surely showed a strange perseverance and an unaccountable ferocity in criticism that was abuse.) Hruby likens this critic to the Phylloxera vastatrix in the vineyard. He really believes that Hanslick sat up at night to plot Bruckner’s destruction. He affirms that Hanslick tried to undermine him in the Conservatory and the Imperial Chapel, that he tried to influence conductors against the performance of his works. And he goes so far as to say that Hans Richter, thus influenced, had never performed a symphony by Bruckner in England. As a matter of fact, Richter produced Bruckner’s Seventh in London, May 23, 1887. There is a story that when the Emperor Franz Josef asked Bruckner if he could honor him in any way, he asked if the Emperor would not stop Hanslick abusing him in print.
He was never mean or hostile toward Brahms, as some would have had him. He once said that Brahms was not an enemy of Wagner, as the Brahmsites insisted; that down in his heart he had a warm admiration for Wagner, as was shown by the praise he had bestowed on Die Meistersinger.
Just before his death Bruckner’s thoughts were on his Ninth symphony: “I undertook a stiff task,” he said. “I should not have done it at my age and in my weak condition. If I never finish it, then my ‘Te Deum’ may be used as a finale. I have nearly finished three movements. This work belongs to my Lord God.”
Although he had the religion of a child, he had read the famous book of David Strauss, and he could talk about it reasonably. Someone asked him about the future life and prayer. “I’ll tell you,” he replied. “If the story is true, so much the better for me. If it is not true, praying cannot hurt me.”