11. Narrative and intertextuality.

All Bruckner's numbered symphonies may be considered ‘persona symphonies’, in that a symphonic narrative can be posited in which a hero experiences a ‘pilgrim's progress’ from the mystical-tragic to the triumphant. That this narrative model is central to the symphonies should not be surprising, since Bruckner's most important symphonic models were also heroic ‘persona’ works. Beethoven's ‘Eroica’ Symphony, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique and La damnation de Faust and Liszt's Faust-Symphonie. In Bruckner's symphonies, in spite of the seemingly insurmountable obstacles encountered along the way, the narrative is sustained by faith and the deity always redeems the hero. Important elements of this discourse can be the sudden shifts and unusual combinations of stylistic registers, that is, of high (heroic) and low (pastoral) styles. For example, a pastorale may follow a heroic outburst, as in the first movement of the Fourth Symphony at the conclusion of the first group and beginning of the second (1878–80 version, bars 63ff); or a chorale may be combined with a polka, as in the finale of the Third Symphony (1887–9 version, second group, bars 65ff).

While Hanslick and others had attacked Bruckner, claiming that he merely transferred the style of Wagner's music drama to the symphony, many of Bruckner's supporters from the 1920s onwards countered by defending the symphonies as ‘absolute music’. Robert Haas, August Halm and Ernst Kurth, in different ways and from different perspectives, all described Bruckner as an ‘absolute musician’. In his monumental study Anton Bruckner (E1925), Kurth devoted an entire chapter to celebrating Bruckner's symphonies as absolute music, and in various writings Halm praised Bruckner's symphonies as ‘the summit of absolute music’. Later scholarship, however, has challenged the Haas-Kurth-Halm position, calling attention to hitherto ignored biographical and internal evidence that Bruckner intended to incorporate the semantic aspects of his references to other music – especially Wagner's music dramas – into his own symphonic narratives. An especially fascinating aspect of intertextuality in Bruckner's symphonies are the allusions to his own music; subtle links forged between the symphonies suggest that he may have considered each symphony to be a component of a single ‘meta-symphony’ encompassing all nine symphonies, each symphonic statement building directly upon its predecessor. For example, the Adagio of the Sixth Symphony (bars 40ff) incorporates the sequentially falling 7th motif of the Fifth Symphony's Adagio (bars 23ff). Similarly, the quotation of the Eighth Symphony's Adagio in the coda to the Adagio of the Ninth points to a network of motivic and semantic connections between the last two symphonies.

Pfitzner and others have accused Bruckner of ‘recomposing the same symphony nine times’. A more considered appraisal reveals each symphony to possess its own unique general character, which often derives in part from its particular blend of intertextual references. The First Symphony, with oblique allusions to Tannhäuser (in the first movement) and the Tristan prelude (in the second), and neo-Baroque festive counterpoint in the finale, is for the most part a secular, celebratory work. The Second, by contrast, is shot through with allusions to Bruckner's own F minor Mass and wears a sacred mantle. While the Third is a ‘Wagner’ symphony, especially in its 1874 version (including many Wagner quotations), like the ‘Nullte’ it also emphasizes the redemptive narrative as in Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The ‘romantisch’ Fourth Symphony evokes the world of Beethoven's ‘Eroica’, Weber's Der Freischütz and Wagner's Tannhäuser. The Fifth and Sixth both celebrate the technical aspects of musical composition: the Fifth through its intense focus on counterpoint, chorale and cyclic features, the Sixth through its complex interaction of harmony and sonata form. The Seventh is a ‘Wagner’ symphony in a way quite different from the Third: it is a musical commentary on the death of the ‘Meister aller Meister’. While secular, nationalist allusions colour the scherzo and finale of the Eighth Symphony, the Ninth, dedicated to God and with unequivocal allusions to the Te Deum, is clearly orientated to the sacred, if not to the sublime.

Bruckner, Anton