On October 11th, 1896, the Post-Romantic symphonist Josef Anton Bruckner passed away, leaving one of his greatest works, his ninth symphony, unfinished. The first three movements were completed, but the last he had not yet fully orchestrated. Many visiting the composer’s home to pay their respects snatched pages of his final sketches as keepsakes or souvenirs. What of his undiscovered work may remain in old German or Austrian attics is unknown—for all we know, all or a large portion of these manuscript fragments could have been destroyed in the two catastrophic world wars to come after Bruckner’s death.
Many Bruckner fanatics are just fine with hearing the three completed movements and nothing more. The third movement ends softly, in a sort of deathly resignation that some say embodies his final departure from this world. So it has so often been performed by the great Bruckner conductors—Jochum, Celibidache, Abbado—and accepted by audiences without question.
Though considered one of the greatest symphonists in history, many listeners in his time did not understand his work. They would often suggest changes and revisions to his music, and he, tragically underconfident, would often trust their thoughts over his own genius. Though over a century has passed since writing his last notes, listeners today still fail to understand his music. They are content with a desolate end to his work when every one of his ten completed symphonies finished in triumph and jubilation. They are content with a nihilistic conclusion when he showed himself to be one of the most devout Catholic composers to have walked this earth, dedicating his last masterpiece to God himself. They are content with cutting off his voice right before his most critical message: that of insurmountable hope. When Bruckner knew he was too weak to orchestrate the finale of his ninth symphony, he desperately turned to every option imaginable, even being satisfied with replacing the final movement with his Te Deum, an earlier orchestral and choral work he composed.
But some musicologists and composers have borne on the struggle to complete Bruckner’s vision. Over decades, William Carragan, Sébastien Letocart, Gerd Schaller, and Roberto Ferrazza have each rendered their own attempts at piecing together the notes that remain into works turned whole. Probably the most rigorous forensic work and true-to-Bruckner completion was done by a team of four composers and musicologists: Nicola Samale, John A. Phillips, Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs, and Giuseppe Mazzuca. Their 2012 “SPCM” version of Bruckner’s ninth symphony was famously performed by the Berlin Philharmonic under the conductor Simon Rattle twice, to an ambivalent audience. Some thought the premiere a triumphant success, no longer able to bear listening to Bruckner’s ninth without the finale, while others were still disappointed with it, preferring to listen only to the first three movements without the fourth and final.
Mazzuca and Cohrs have since passed away. Phillips, however, has continued working on the fourth movement. From 2021 to 2022, he completed his final revisions for the work based on the relics discovered as of yet, and the completed 2022 SPCM version has subsequently been performed by such world-class orchestras and conductors as the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly. I myself was incredibly excited each time a new recording was released for me to listen to, and each time I was disappointed. Conductors take the final movement either too fast or too slow, and the balance of sound is almost always off in some of the most important sections. Shockingly, I find the computer-generated audio on John A. Phillips’ YouTube channel, in some ways, better than all recordings I could find of the SPCM finale, even those by the best orchestras in the world—namely, the Berlin Philharmonic and the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. This perhaps is a part of the reason why the completed version of Bruckner’s ninth symphony has not been accepted either by many renowned conductors and orchestras nor by the mainstream classical audience. Bruckner’s music is notoriously difficult to perform, and this is not helped by the fact that Bruckner’s finale is virtually a brand-new work without the long lineage of performances that have shaped recordings of his other works, few of the great Bruckner conductors remaining or willing to take their skilled hand to work at a great interpretation of this monumental work.
Yet hope still remains. Over years and over decades it is very possible that listeners of all ages will begin to hear Bruckner’s genius still etched as profoundly as before in this work, as the years and decades passed before his completed collections gained their rightful recognition. Bruckner’s ninth symphony, completed, is his greatest work, his magnum opus, a work of indomitable hope and the deeply sublime virtually unmatched in its sonority, grandeur, and invention.
“Being a listener with almost no knowledge of Bruckner or his music, after listening to the end of the third movement, I did not feel a sense that the music was incomplete (obviously owing to the somewhat self-contained nature of movements in symphonies). However, listening to the rendition of the fourth movement allowed me to see the fervor Bruckner had in resolving the tension and fulfilling his stated goal of creating a piece to “the beloved God.” I don’t think there’s anything wrong with only listening to the first three complete movements, but ignoring the fourth entirely is not only a disservice to Bruckner but to the players and audience who may go about their lives with only a vague notion that there is more, not even daring to experience what could have been,” says senior Wayne Hills High School student Ian Kwon.
With Beethoven’s third, with Brahms’ first, with Mozart’s Jupiter and Mahler’s Resurrection, Bruckner’s ninth symphony, with the untiring support of Samale, Cohrs, Mazzuca, and Phillips, stands on the high pillars of art and music as one of the greatest achievements in human history.*
*Feel free to listen to Bruckner’s ninth on the links below.
The first three movements, Günter Wand and the NDR Elbphilharmonie Orchestra: https://youtu.be/PkiIR1XLgnk?si=O02fbjzWxhMT4Vks
The completed finale (SPCM 2022 version), computer-generated audio: https://youtu.be/WGnoOhHLWUE?si=nos6i2PIyCDAuheW
