Subscription Concerts 2023-2024Program C
No. 2008 Subscription (Program C)

December 30, 1884 was no doubt the best day in the musical life of the Austrian late-Romantic composer Anton Bruckner (1824–1896). On that day, the sixty-year-old man’s Symphony No. 7 was world- premiered in Leipzig by Arthur Nikisch leading the Gewandhaus Orchestra to be an immense success. The work’s ensuing premieres in Munich and Vienna also won rave reviews. No. 7 thus brought the first genuine fame to Bruckner, a late bloomer who had had to long put up with cold treatment of his symphonies until then.
Another red-letter event in his life was his first meeting with Wagner (1813–1883) in May 1865 when the latter was in Munich for the scheduled premiere of his Tristan und Isolde (Tristan and Isolde). For Bruckner who was a devout Christian, his idol Wagner was, so to speak, his second divine being. In 1873, the younger man famously visited the German master and dedicated him his Symphony No. 3.
Although Wagner’s influence is seen here and there in Bruckner’s output, it is particularly hard to describe his No. 7 without repeating Wagner’s name. The second Adagio movement in rondo form is worth specially mentioning on this, as it is a funeral music for Wagner. Bruckner penned this elegiac Adagio knowing that the maestro was critically ill. Cast in A–B–A–B–A form, it announces at the start the solemn A-section’s theme with a small ensemble including four Wagner tubas (in two sizes). Usually performed by horn players, these oval-shaped brass instruments were invented on the initiative of Wagner for his tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung). Bruckner’s radiant B-sections, in major keys, sound as if to honor Wagner for his achievements. And furthermore, according to Bruckner’s recollection, he, crushed with grief by being told about Wagner’s death (February 13, 1883), wrote the coda featuring four Wagner tubas to mourn for the dead.
No. 7 begins with the seemingly endless melody sung mainly by cellos over the strings’ quiet tremolo (tremulous effect), Bruckner’s usual trick to open his symphonies. This long introspective melody, given as the first theme of the opening sonata movement, would change into several important themes of the entire symphony as a unifying element. The outset of the last movement, for example, lets the violins reintroduce the unifying melody as its first sonata theme, in jolly bouncing rhythm this time, but still over the strings’ quiet tremolo. This colossal symphony concludes forcefully recalling the beginning of the whole work as if it came full circle, or more specifically, restating the fragmentary unifying melody three times.
Twelve years after No. 7 was first performed, Bruckner passed away in Vienna at age 72. His funeral attendees heard the symphony’s Adagio movement arranged for four horns. And at the entombment, one of Bruckner’s organ pupils improvised on themes from Wagner’s Parsifal.

[Kumiko Nishi]