Symphony No. 7 (Bruckner)

The first movement starts with tremolo strings and the cellos presenting "a complete, divinely given melodic whole:"[3]

Bruckner declared he heard it in a dream, played on a viola, and wrote it down on awakening, but the tune incorporates a quotation from the Credo of his D minor Mass (1864) which he was currently revising.[1] The main theme is restated before the second theme group appears, with the oboes and clarinets carrying the first theme:

The third theme group is based on octaves, as is typical in Bruckner:

The development features many of the themes in inversion. Near the end of the movement, there is a long pedal point on E, sustained by the double basses and timpani.

This movement was composed between January and April 1883. Bruckner began writing it in anticipation of the death of Richard Wagner, who was in poor health. The movement features four Wagner tubas, which was their first appearance in a symphony:

A contrabass tuba is also present.[1] The second part of the movement, beginning in F♯ major, has a tune that Bruckner specialist Georg Tintner described as such: "If I could describe what makes Bruckner Bruckner to me, it is that tune. It is something which transcends ordinary sorts of feelings. You can't even say 'Is it jolly?' 'Is it sad?' 'Is it that?' 'Is it that?'. You can't say that with a late Beethoven tune either. It is above these things:"[4]

Legend has it that Bruckner wrote the cymbal clash at the climax of this movement upon hearing the news that Wagner had died.[5] By way of contrast, Williman Mann states that "at the climax of the slow movement Nikisch persuaded Bruckner to add a cymbal clash supported by a triangle; later this addition to the manuscript was marked 'invalid' – but not in the composer's hand, so who was the purist?"[1]

This movement was played on Nazi German radio on 31 January 1943 following the German defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad[6] and, after music by Richard Wagner, preceding the announcement on 1 May 1945 of Hitler's death the day before.[7][8]

The scherzo is in A minor and opens with a rhythmic string figure and a melody with a leap of an octave played by a solo trumpet:

The Trio is in F major and is in a slower tempo:

Unlike the Fifth and Eighth symphonies, where the Finale sums up the entire symphony, this Finale is not as expansive as the other movements. Georg Tintner compared this Finale to the finale of a Haydn symphony.[9] Like the first movement, the fourth movement opens with tremolo strings:

The second theme group is in the distant key of A♭ major:

The third theme group is a characteristic "octave theme" given by the whole orchestra in A minor:

In the recapitulation, the subject groups are reversed in order – a form called "tragic sonata form"[10] or "arch form".[11]

This was the version performed at the work's premiere. It survives only in one autograph copy which includes later changes by Bruckner and others, so the exact contents of this version are lost and it is unpublished.

Some changes were made after the 1884 premiere but before the first publication by Gutmann in 1885. It is widely accepted that Nikisch, Franz Schalk and Ferdinand Löwe had significant influence over this edition, but there is some debate over the extent to which these changes were authorized by Bruckner. These changes mostly affect tempo and orchestration.

Robert Haas attempted to remove the influence of Nikisch, Schalk and Löwe in order to retrieve Bruckner's original conception of the symphony. Haas used some material from the 1883 autograph but because this autograph also includes later changes much of his work was the product of conjecture. The most prominent feature of Haas's edition is the absence of cymbals, triangle and timpani in the slow movement: Haas asserted that Bruckner decided to omit the percussion, a claim scholar Benjamin Korstvedt deems "implausible".[12]

Leopold Nowak kept most of the changes in the 1885 Gutmann edition, including the percussion. He reprinted the tempo modifications from Gutmann but placed them in brackets. Some performances of this edition omit the cymbal crash at the climax of the slow movement, but it is included in the printed score.

Another edition has been issued by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs for the Anton Bruckner Urtext Gesamtausgabe in 2015.

An arrangement of this symphony for chamber ensemble (consisting of 2 violins, viola, cello, bass, clarinet, horn, piano 4-hands, and harmonium) was prepared in 1921 by students and associates of Arnold Schoenberg, for the Viennese "Society for Private Musical Performances": Hanns Eisler (1st and 3rd movements), Erwin Stein (2nd mvt.), and Karl Rankl (4th mvt.).[13] The Society folded before the arrangement could be performed, and it was not premiered until more than 60 years later.