Unfinished works of art have a special mystique. Precisely because of their incompleteness, they are sometimes judged to be more artistically pure than conventionally completed products. The interrupted vision of Coleridge’s Kubla Khan is regarded as perfect for a Romantic poem depicting a drug experience; the premature halt and lack of scoring for J. S. Bach’s The Art of the Fugue are deemed appropriate for so “abstract” and “infinite” a work; the incompleteness of Mozart’s Requiem has greatly enhanced its dark mythology as a commission from the Grim Reaper. As for Schubert’s “Unfinished,” it has become one of the most beloved and frequently played of all symphonies.
The most monumental unfinished symphony is Bruckner’s Ninth, a work of towering grandeur, which, like all of Bruckner’s symphonies, took a long time to catch on with the public—and in this case, took years to be presented to the public at all. Despite having only three of four planned movements, the Ninth has all of Bruckner’s signatures, marshalled in an uncompromising reach for the infinite: massive brass sonorities enlarged further by Wagner tubas; burnished pedal points and chorales; sudden climaxes disrupting Olympian calm, only to decay just as unexpectedly; sumptuous chromaticism alternating with open octaves and unisons; gorgeous lyrical melodies set against passages of startling ugliness.
When we experience the massive power and mystical frisson of the Ninth, especially in a live performance, we can only wonder why this composer was ridiculed, then ignored for so long. “With the exception of his idol Wagner,” wrote Lawrence Gilman, Bruckner was “the best hated composer of the 19th century.” Wagner was indeed Bruckner’s idol, but Wagner was loved as well as hated and had a huge following—something Bruckner never enjoyed. Even the Seventh Symphony, one of Bruckner’s few successes, was denounced by Vienna’s influential critic Eduard Hanslick as “sickly” and “unnatural.” Brahms (whom Hanslick championed) called Bruckner’s works “symphonic boa-constrictors.” Class was part of the equation as well: Bruckner had the unique misfortune of being the scourge not only of the Hanslick anti-Wagner crowd but also of class-conscious Viennese concertgoers who regarded him as a country bumpkin, scoffing at his peasant roots and un-chic “boorish” appearance.
In the early 20th century, a few influential conductors managed to keep Bruckner’s music alive: Gustav Mahler championed his “glorious art” when he conducted in New York; Wilhelm Furtwängler conducted what many regard as the greatest Bruckner performances ever, though his broadcast of the Seventh Symphony’s slow movement on German radio following the announcement of Hitler’s death did not help Bruckner’s reputation. After World War II, conductors gradually began to take up Bruckner’s cause, from obvious candidates like Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, Herbert von Karajan, and Carlo Maria Giulini, to less predictable ones like Pierre Boulez, who recorded the Eighth with the Vienna Philharmonic in 2000 in a performance that illuminated the composer’s architectural and harmonic daring. Thanks to these and other prominent conductors, audiences have slowly but steadily warmed to Bruckner, despite his occasional tediousness and structural challenges.
The Ninth has a particularly fascinating history. Leonard Bernstein ignored Bruckner for the most part, but he conducted the Ninth at Carnegie Hall with the Vienna Philharmonic just months before his death. Claudio Abbado, Bernard Haitink, and Günter Wand also programmed the Ninth near the end of their careers. In an interview for Carnegie Hall, Daniel Barenboim said that his decision to become a conductor came largely because Rafael Kubelík took him to a rehearsal of the Ninth when he was touring as a 15-year-old pianist: He was overcome by “the complexity and ferocious nature of the music’s character” and “vowed to conduct Bruckner someday.” In 2017, he presented all of Bruckner’s symphonies at Carnegie Hall in the first such cycle in the US.
Bruckner is believed to have started work on the Ninth in 1887, shortly after completing the Eighth. He was slowed down by poor health, both physical and mental, but had nearly completed the first three movements by the end of 1894. The massive third movement consumed the last two years his life, up to the day of his death in 1896. The symphony alludes elegiacally to the Seventh and Eighth symphonies (and there are other self-quotations as well), as if Bruckner knew he was at the end and was looking back on his career. He told his doctor that he was dedicating “my last work to the majesty of all majesties, the Beloved God, and hope that He will give me much time to complete the same.” This was not to be: He planned a fourth movement but left behind only sketches, though that has not stopped musicologists and conductors from presenting these fragments to audiences (including Nikolaus Harnoncourt conducting the Vienna Philharmonic) as a teasing forecast of what might have been. Realizing that he might never finish the fourth movement, Bruckner even floated the idea of using his Te Deum as a finale.
The Ninth Symphony was not presented until 1903 in a Vienna premiere under Ferdinand Löwe, and it appeared only in his “simplified” version; the original, or something close to it, was not unveiled until a remarkable 1932 Munich concert under Siegmund von Hausegger, where both versions were played (in what was obviously a long concert), and the audience was asked to choose which one they preferred. The original was chosen decisively and presented in Vienna months later under the baton of Clemens Krauss, which would be the version published in the Leopold Nowak edition of 1951.
The symphony opens with a gigantic first movement structured with expansive melodic groups rather than discreet, hummable melodies; these are developed, recapitulated, and further expanded as the music proceeds, a reinvention of sonata form. An imposing brass theme rises from mysterious string tremolos, a typical Bruckner opening (one of many Bruckner allusions to Beethoven’s Ninth), followed by a powerful motif harmonized with stark, open sounds. A lyrical second group follows, which Bruckner called his “song-period.” From there, the movement builds toward one of Bruckner’s most thrilling climaxes, with massive brass, stirring tremolos, and booming timpani erupting and re-erupting from silence.
The Scherzo begins with delicate pizzicato, then swings into a dance of uninhibited ferocity, outpacing the dance movements from Bruckner’s previous symphonies. Contrast is provided with a charming countermelody for winds and an elfin, transparently scored trio.
The Adagio, which Bruckner called “a farewell to life,” breathes an aura of final things, juxtaposing grandiose affirmation with dark enigma. The movement presents several themes, including a long-breathed, hymnlike melody and an ecstatic, repeating brass motif. A series of climaxes culminates in a sustained, ear-splitting discord, a forecast of modernist works such as Berg’s Three Pieces for Orchestra, which concludes this program. Even for Bruckner, who unleashes unprecedented dissonance in his late symphonies, this is a terrifying moment, an apocalyptic nightmare—but it isn’t the last word. At the end, the music lifts itself from the void, swaying toward consonance and release, the brass soaring serenely into the heavens, a final transcendence that many find to be a satisfying ending to a sublimely incomplete work.
The music of Alban Berg is better received today than the music of Schoenberg or Webern. Wozzeck, Lulu, the Lyric Suite, and the Violin Concerto are now an indelible part of the repertory. This is not because Berg’s music is less daunting or complex. The finale of the Three Pieces for Orchestra—the work on this program—is so dense with ideas that Theodor Adorno said it sounded like the finale of Gustav Mahler’s Ninth Symphony and Schoenberg’s Five Pieces played together.
The key to Berg’s accessibility lies in a latent tonality and lyricism. Even his most rigorously 12-tone pieces have what Alex Ross calls “a phantom tonality that never stays fixed,” pushing “ambiguity to the point of explosive crisis.” This powerful tension, which rarely leaves Berg’s music, is his most instantly recognizable signature.
In the Three Pieces, written on the cusp of World War I, it reaches a snapping point, especially in the second piece, Round Dance, where Viennese waltzes are longingly invoked, only to be deconstructed and shattered—an emblem of a society on the verge of collapse and a premonition of the waltz sections in Lulu and the Violin Concerto. The same tension holds for melody. Berg’s music has a poignant lyricism that keeps asserting itself, relieving the sense of trauma that haunts his work.
The sighing, long-lined motifs in the first two pieces, vanishing almost as soon as they appear, are striking examples. They sound like ghostly remnants of Mahler, who died three years before the Three Pieces were composed and whom Berg deeply admired. Mahler is echoed in delicate effects, such as the string tremolos with celesta in the Round Dance, and in devastating moments, such as the massive fanfares and hammer blows in the March.
In the Prelude, Berg’s distinctive sound emerges miraculously from a void, then gradually sinks back into it; in the Round Dance, intimate chamber ensembles invoke a world of longing and disintegration before coalescing in a goose bump–inducing final chord, with the brass providing a hint of tonality; in the overpowering finale, marches and fanfares crushed together build to a series of crises and a shattering climax. This slam-bang ending is a reminder that Berg retained a fundamental loyalty to the late-Romantic ethos, no matter how many times he seemed to betray it.
—Jack Sullivan