Schubert’s C-Minor Symphony had a tough time establishing its “tragic” credentials. Despite its subtitle, invented by Schubert himself, commentators found it hard to believe that a 19-year-old could publish a genuinely tragic work. Sir George Grove could find no justification for the description, guessing that perhaps Schubert’s poverty was the inspiration; others guessed it was pent up anger and frustration at being turned down for a teaching position and having to write for a small amateur orchestra (an outgrowth of the Schubert family string quartet). Still others denounced the label as inaccurate and even pompous. True, the critics admitted, the symphony opened with an Adagio introduction and ensuing Allegro that breathe a spirit of resignation and sadness, but the rest of the symphony comprises a delicate Andante, a Beethoven-esque Menuetto, and a sonata finale that ends with a long C-major coda. Where, these writers asked, was the tragedy?
Certainly the history of the work could be considered tragic. Composed in 1816, it was not premiered until November 19, 1849, in Leipzig—more than 20 years after Schubert’s death. Though this might seem extreme, the neglect of the early Schubert symphonies was not unusual. Dvořák, who was profoundly influenced by Schubert, complained in the late 19th century about the lack of performances, often programming them himself and trying to get his colleagues to do so as well.
One of the earliest defenders of the symphony in America was H. L. Mencken, whose eloquent 1928 article in The American Mercury perceived—at least in the slow movement—the work’s “tragic” qualities: “Of Schubert’s symphonies, the orchestras play the ‘Unfinished’ incessantly—but never too often!—and the huge C Major now and then, but the ‘Tragic’ only once in a blue moon. Yet the ‘Tragic’ remains one of Schubert’s masterworks, and in its slow movement, at least, it rides to the full height of the ‘Unfinished.’ There are not six such slow movements in the whole range of music. It has an eloquence that has never been surpassed, not even by Beethoven, but there is no rhetoric in it, no heroics, no exhibitionism. It begins quietly and simply, and it passes out in a whisper, but its beauty remains overwhelming.”
Along with the Fourth, the Seventh is the ideal Bruckner symphony for those who don’t care for Bruckner—and has been from the beginning. It has the soaring melodies, organ-like sonorities, Gothic spires of sound, and hypnotic modulations that thrill audiences, and fewer of the potentially off-putting false climaxes, meandering bridge passages, and jarring juxtapositions. Yet it is just as long as the composer’s other late symphonies and just as uncompromising in its reach for the sublime.
The Seventh Symphony exudes a sense of confidence and control that is reflected in its composition history. Many of Bruckner’s other symphonies (even the Eighth, which he regarded as his crowning achievement) underwent frequent, defensive, sometimes torturous revisions, often at the insistence of micromanaging “supporters”—but he stuck to his original concept in the Seventh, making only minor tempo and orchestration shifts. The sole point of controversy was a cymbal crash with triangle in the stunning climax of the slow movement, an addition on which conductor Arthur Nikisch insisted. (Robert Haas, in the 1944 edition, preserved the original score, while Leopold Nowak later incorporated Nikisch’s alterations.)
Nikisch conducted the Leipzig premiere in 1884, declaring, “From this moment, I regard it as my duty to work for Bruckner’s recognition.” The reception was enthusiastic, but the second performance (in Munich in 1885 under Hermann Levi) was a sensation, giving Bruckner the acclaim for which he had always longed. Before the end of the decade, the symphony enjoyed successful performances in Vienna, Chicago, New York, London, Amsterdam, and Berlin, and became the first of Bruckner’s symphonies to be recorded.
This reception was, to put it mildly, an anomaly. Bruckner’s symphonies were usually either ignored or ridiculed, as was the man himself. He was “the best-hated composer of the 19th century,” as Lawrence Gilman put it, and endured peculiarly personal and vicious attacks. Eduard Hanslick denounced even the Seventh as “insane,” “perverted,” “sickly,” and “unnatural.” (Bruckner tried to put off the Vienna premiere as long as he could because he predicted—accurately—that Hanslick would be there to condemn him.) Hanslick’s colleague Gustav Dompke piled on the criticism as well: “We recoil with horror,” he said of the Seventh, “before this rotting odor which rushes into our nostrils.” Bruckner had the singular misfortune of being the scourge not only of Hanslick’s Wagner-hating crowd, but also class-obsessed Viennese concertgoers, who scoffed at his peasant roots and “boorish” appearance. That he forged on in the face of relentless, crushing criticism is a testament to his remarkable resilience.
One unfortunate exception to this hostility was Bruckner’s fervid embrace by the Third Reich. Here, too, the Seventh was the symphony of choice: It was a favorite with Hitler, so much so that its slow movement was played on German radio when his death was announced in 1945. The Nazis, who fetishized all things Wagnerian, appropriated Bruckner’s works as the symphonic embodiment of white nationalist “purity” and “spirituality,” creating an elaborate mythology around the composer in which his neglect was blamed on Jews who supposedly controlled the press and corrupted his scores.
Not surprisingly, Bruckner fell into a new period of neglect in the post–World War II era. Maestros from Walter and Kubelík to Skrowaczewski and Haitink struggled valiantly to promote his cause, but recognition came slowly and fitfully (unlike the Mahler revival, which surged ahead in the early 1960s and has never stopped). In 1996—the Bruckner centennial—The New York Times speculated that “decades from now, we may look back to this centennial year as a major turning point toward a proper understanding and just appreciation of a composer who has for too long borne an ideological burden not of his own choosing.”
In our century, conductors such as Daniel Barenboim, Jaap van Zweden, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and Valery Gergiev have recorded complete Bruckner cycles (not to mention the Vienna Philharmonic’s recent box set as well), and events such as Carnegie Hall’s 2017 Bruckner celebration with the Staatskapelle Berlin have pushed his symphonies further into the mainstream. Even modernists and early music specialists like Boulez and Harnoncourt joined the effort and provided fresh perspectives. Ironically, we are able to embrace Bruckner, in part, because we have become habituated to Mahler, who championed what he called Bruckner’s “glorious art” when he conducted the symphonies in America with the New York Philharmonic, even as his own were being reviled as overblown and overlong—the same epithets that were applied to Bruckner’s works.
According to Bruckner, the horn theme that opens the symphony in mystery and ends it in glory came to him in a dream—a happy one that foretold the symphony’s success. This enigmatic theme unfolds in a loose sonata form along with two other ideas: one bumptious, the other pastoral. Organ-like chorales and brief tutti outbursts contrast with delicate wind ensembles. Bruckner’s usual massed brass effects are used judiciously, making the coda, which rises with multiple fanfares, all the more thrilling.
The elegiac Adagio is Bruckner’s most popular slow movement, and for good reason. Its sonority has remarkable depth and roundness, projected immediately in a chorale played by a quartet of Wagner tubas. This melody is an advance memorial to Wagner, Bruckner’s idol. “One day I came home and felt very sad,” Bruckner wrote in 1883. “The thought had crossed my mind that before long the Master would die, and just then the C-sharp–minor theme of the Adagio came to me.” A month later, Wagner passed away; the movement was also played at Bruckner’s own funeral. Besides the novel chorale theme, the Adagio offers a striving motif and soulful string melody that sounds a bit like Mahler, all building inexorably toward a huge climax—one of the most stirring in Bruckner’s symphonies. The movement ends as it began, with deep brass ruminations.
Bruckner’s scherzos—the work of a “peasant genius,” as the cliché has it—convey an irresistibly rustic feeling; this one is no exception. Powerful, jaunty, and relentless, it is a workout for the brass and a release from the solemnity of the opening movements. In the middle, the furious energy suddenly halts, making way for a serene Trio.
The Finale, in addition to presenting new material, recapitulates some of the symphony’s previous ideas in fragmented forms, especially the opening theme. These disparate fragments and interludes build toward a spectacular conclusion that seems to ascend out of nowhere even as it sums up the entire symphony. In this culminating blaze of sound, we realize what formidable Bruckner interpreter Wilhelm Furtwängler meant when he said that Bruckner’s music soars “broadly and freely in a state of bliss, released from earthly cares—fulfillment without sentimentality, without calculation.”
—Jack Sullivan