{ program notes
composers . His early life was devoted to teaching and service as organist in a series of local churches , including the great Baroque abbey of St . Florian . With great reluctance , he left for Vienna in 1868 , at the mature age of 44 . There he wrote his last eight symphonies while building a legend at the Vienna Conservatory as an eccentric but beloved teacher of music theory . Naive and socially insecure , he never lost his rural style , dressing in unfashionably baggy suits and speaking with a rustic Upper Austrian accent .
Conductor Walter Damrosch well expressed the dichotomy between the modesty of the man and the grandeur of his music : “ To me it has always seemed one of the inscrutable mysteries that Bruckner , while retaining all his life the simplicity of peasant life , speech and customs , should have had within him a musical genius so extraordinary as to enable him to write music of such indescribable warmth , nobility and eloquence .”
To enter fully into the world of a Bruckner symphony , listeners must readjust their 21 st -century internal clocks . Inspired by Wagner ’ s tremendous expansion of the operatic form in his music dramas , Bruckner conceived his symphonic movements on a broad scale . Even when his tempos are not actually slow , his music still seems leisurely . Bruckner themes are very long , built cumulatively from many elements . If Beethoven ’ s themes can be likened to pithy sentence fragments , Bruckner ’ s are fully developed paragraphs . But he had the habit of taking pauses before beginning new themes or sections of his movements —“ But look , if I have something important to say , I must first take a deep breath ,” he explained — and these pauses are godsends to listeners trying to find their way . Actually , Bruckner ’ s model was less Wagner than Beethoven ’ s Ninth Symphony , whose movements also were expanded into dramas of epic scope .
Bruckner himself gave the Fourth Symphony the subtitle “ Romantic ,” but exactly what he meant by this is unclear . Sometime after the music was written he came up with a little scenario for the first movement : “ Medieval city — dawn — morning calls sound from the towers — the gates open — on proud steeds knights ride into the open — woodland magic embraces them — forest murmurs — bird song — and thus the romantic picture unfolds .” But this music is far more than descriptive and clearly deals with greater and more abstract matters .
Bruckner sought in his finales to create a summation of what has gone before and an ultimate revelation of God .
First movement : The beginning of the Symphony seems almost like the beginning of life itself . Out of an almost inaudible flutter of strings , a single horn intones a haunting primordial motive : a simple horn call that defines the home key of E-flat Major . High woodwinds echo the call . Soon this soft , expectant music dramatically escalates into a grandly powerful theme built from Bruckner ’ s signature rhythm : one-two , one-two-three . A Bruckner pause , and then the second group of themes opens gently in strings and woodwinds and in the surprising key of D-flat Major . This nature music is made up of two strands : a sweet , birdlike melody for violins and a warm , flowing theme for violas and cellos . Abruptly , the grand rhythmic theme returns , blazing even more strongly in unison . After a mighty climax , it ebbs away .
Another Bruckner pause ushers in the development section . The opening horn calls and the rhythmic theme carry the music into regions of harmonic outer space . Eventually , the horn calls generate an extraordinarily beautiful chorale , with a sublime countermelody in the violas . After the opening music is recapitulated , Bruckner concludes with a magnificent coda full of wonder and awe : the brass pealing with joy and all the horns crying in unison .
Bruckner scholar Robert Simpson calls movement two a “ veiled funeral march .” However , this is not the anguished struggle we hear in Mahler ’ s famous funeral movements . Rather there is gentle sorrow and tenderness , for the devout Bruckner saw death not as the end , but the beginning of full union with God . The music is built from three melodic ideas . First a sober , yet uplifting dirge melody in the cellos over softly treading strings . Next , a muted but rich string chorale which gradually ascends . And loveliest of all , a poignant song for violas against a fragile plucked accompaniment .
The joys of movement three are purely earthly . Bruckner called this a “ hunting scherzo ,” and it is the most infectiously appealing music he ever wrote . The playful splendor of the brass predominates . In the middle comes a contrasting trio section : a charming ländler dance that conjures up rural Upper Austria .
Rather than providing a conventional triumphant ending , Bruckner sought in his finales to create a summation of what has gone before and an ultimate revelation of God . The final movement returns us to the world of the first movement with its E-flat Major tonality . Horns and clarinets reiterate a three-note descending motive that sounds like a reversal of the Symphony ’ s opening horn call . In a slow crescendo , the scherzo ’ s horn fanfares build to fortissimo and the orchestra ’ s declamation of a stentorian theme in mighty Bruckner unison incorporating the two-plus-three rhythm . Then we hear the second group of themes : contrasting string music in lovely counterpoint and easy rural gait . The exposition ’ s third section erupts with violent suddenness in torrents of brass fanfares .
After an elaborate development of these themes , the stentorian theme returns with crushing force amid spectacular brass jubilation . Bruckner closes his “ Romantic ” Symphony with one of his most sublime codas , which includes a magnificent passage for the horns . As strings and winds rise higher and higher in a great crescendo , Bruckner ’ s vision of Heaven — only glimpsed in movement two — appears gloriously before our ears and eyes .
Instrumentation : Two flutes , two oboes , two clarinets , two bassoons , four horns , three trumpets , three trombones , tuba , timpani , strings .
Notes by Janet E . Bedell , Copyright © 2017
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