A new Coda to the unfinished Finale of Anton Bruckner's 9th Symphony in d Minor

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The revised full score (version; February 2024), updated foreword with footnotes & YouTube video can be accessed through the following link:
https://blackpoolmusicgroup.blogspot.com/p/bruckner-symphony-9-finale-coda-kirsch.html
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A Foreword by the Arranger

A brief history 

Anton Bruckner may have stood shortly before completion of his fourth and final movement to his monumental 9th Symphony before increasing illness made him unable to write down a full manuscript score of the movement. He had, however, sketched most - if not all - of it out at least in short score, but certainly the music existed in its entirety within his head, as he was able to play the work to several of his friends and visitors.

Sadly, we have now to rely on the remaining sketches to get a rough idea of what the composer has been working on in the final months until his death in 1896. A fair number of those sketches have unfortunately been lost or destroyed in the aftermath of the "souvenir hunting" which took place following his passing away in the "Kustodenstöckl" of the Belvedere Palace in Vienna. The remainder is dispersed over various museum collections but has since been issued in facsimile edition and is also available on the internet.

Anton Bruckner, from a Photographic portrait 1890

Completed versions of the Finale

Over the last approximately two decades we have seen a good dozen attempts to complete the 4th movement in its whole, based on the available sketches, most of which have since been recorded onto disc, and reach from Bruckner's surviving fragments as edited by John A. Phillips in 1994 to the rather freely interpreted "Reloaded" version of a Jan Peter Marthé (2006), or Gottfried von Einem's composition "Bruckner Dialog" (1971). 

Of all the completions, the ones that have been most universally accepted and recorded several times, and which have in recent years been regularly included in concert hall performances of the full four-movement work, are:

   ⦁ William Carragan  (1983; revised 2003, 2006, 2010 and 2017)
   ⦁ Samale–Phillips–Cohrs-Mazzuca ("SPCM" - 1992; revised 1996, 2005, 2008 and 2011)
   ⦁ Gerd Schaller (2016; revised 2018).

Furthermore, completions by Nors S. Josephson (1992) and Sébastien Letocart (2008) have also been performed and/or recorded.

The following table indicates a detailed comparison between three of the completed versions of the coda, indicating the various sections, the respective musical sources used, the tonal centres and performing times:

Most of the completions listed above show a remarkable and thorough level of detective work in piecing together the missing pages of the final movement, paired with a good sense of formal coherence as well as a fitting orchestration in the style of the late Bruckner. They certainly provide a satisfactory alternative to the previously established habit of ending a performance with the quiet E major tuba sounds of the Adagio, or even of succeeding - although once suggested by the composer himself - with the Te Deum (in C major!).

The problem of restoring the Coda

Whilst it is relatively straightforward to piece together the formal and thematic/harmonic progress of the movement from its beginning until the end of the recapitulation (not just because of Bruckner's habit to pre-number even bars of empty score paper or his often used technique of sequencing, but chiefly by providing a so called "Satzverlaufsskizze" which outlines a minimum of the melodic lines throughout most of the movement), there is little surviving material for the actual coda of the Finale.

We are basically left with one page of particell sketch and a few pages of rather rudimentary indications of chords and/or harmonies with numerous alterations and crossed out entries. In addition, we can rely on a few statements given by some of Bruckner's contemporaries to whom the composer had talked about his intentions or had played sections of the Finale movement and coda itself on the piano. 

John A. Phillips in his foreword to the edition of the Finale fragments (as part of the Bruckner Gesamtausgabe), lists all the formal components of the planned code as beknown to us these days - or at least until further sketches may appear in the future: 

In addition to the aforementioned particell sketch ÖNB 31943/3 [containing the sequence of a motif which resembles part of the 8th symphony's opening theme, there should be: a simultaneous reappearance of all the main themes of the 9th Symphony's four movements; a great build up to a climax - possibly based on the scraps of harmonies and melodic notes of sketch ÖNB 6085/45 - leading to a broad cadence on the chords of Cb, F, A and D major; and a mysterious reminiscence to the 'Allelujah of the second movement', which has been possibly re-interpreted by one contemporary as the Te Deum, although  the authors of the SPCM version believe this to be the ascending theme from the Trio of the Scherzo (2nd movement) of the 8th symphony.

The 'curated' Coda by the author 

It was initially the author's intention to merely provide a new solution to the often highlighted superimposition of the symphony's main themes, when the idea developed into creating a complete new version of the whole coda. However, the author did not write a new transitional section leading from the end of the recapitulations to the coda - where we are fully missing Bruckner's original sketch -, as he feels that this has been completed satisfactorily by the other completions, especially by SPCM. 

In order to minimise speculation and to avoid composing too much material not verified by the composer himself, the author has compiled a working edition by almost exclusively utilising materials taken from all of the symphony's movements, and by aligning them in a way similar to that outlined in John A. Phillips' foreword. The themes may have been transposed, transformed or shortened in order to fit in with the formal, melodic or harmonic context; and although this procedure may sound overly simplistic, the author managed to achieve a coherent piece of music of almost five minutes duration (and therefore proportionate within the overall 22-25 minutes average performing time of the majority of the Finale completions), which actually provides for a credible ending of a symphony of such importance. 

Furthermore, out of the 143 bars of this coda version only a few have been composed in addition to the material already provided by Bruckner himself. To illustrate the formal concept of this coda we can refer to the following table:

Just like Beethoven did in the finale to his 9th symphony, the author re-introduces the main themes from the three completed movements plus the Finale's, starting with the opening tremolo and (shortened) horn calls together with the double-dotted figures from the first page of the Finale. During the following, however, the author's approach differs from the one used by SPCM (see below) by superimposing the main themes not simultaneously but successively, and by transposing the Adagio theme to D. This way, the energetically 'martial' Scherzo theme can be played in full rather than just been indicated by its triole rhythm in the timpani as was done by SPCM, in a rather static way similar to the reappearance of previous themes during the last few bars of Bruckner's 8th symphony.

Superimposition of themes in the completion by SPCM
(source: Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symphony_No._9_(Bruckner)) 

A re-run of the chorale in the tonic D follows, combining both the triplet violin accompaniment (from the exposition) and the Te Deum motif (from the recapitulation), leads to the sequencing section of the surviving particell sketch ÖNB 31943/3. No later than here, it becomes apparent that the tritone has established itself as the quasi-leitmotivical interval of the Finale. As the sequence of tritone progressions soon leads to a B major horn call, the melodic-harmonic indications of sketch ÖNB 6085/45 mark the beginning of the move towards the already mentioned great climax, elaborated in combination with the Finale's second group theme and the accompanying violin triplets - yet there is certainly no better climax than the one of the Adagio, transposed to a base of F and ending in the famous dissonant forte-fortissimo (dominant thirteenth) chord!

After a general rest, the opening build-up from the Finale itself, oscillating at first between an ostinato bass on Cb and F (Note here the same triton relation as the B / F of the preceding climax.), will soon lead us to the anticipated broad cadence over the dominant A back to the tonic major D, and thereby including most of the rhythmic and melodic material of the beginning of the Finale. 

The author settles to end the movement not with an Allelujah-call (as in the SPCM version), but with the Te Deum motif itself, just as it was suggested by Bruckner's physician, in a plain unison tutti. 

Further considerations

It is at all likely that Anton Bruckner would have written the coda to the Finale of his 9th Symphony in completely different way to any of the completions attempted to date. Unless we may find further evidence in the form of autograph sketches we shall never know. The present completion of the coda, at least, uses as much of Bruckner’s authentic material as practically possible. Inevitably, there are some minor details - particularly in the instrumentation and in the deliberate lack of articulation markings - where a certain degree of deviation from Bruckner's style can be observed - where, in a way, the arranger's personal touch has been applied - but generally speaking, it is still a work in progress and the author is always open to suggestions, be it about improvements, making changes of any nature or to receive constructive criticism with regards to the overall vision of this coda. Should a performance of it be forthcoming, the missing markings plus any alterations would be easily put in place, likely in collaboration with the future conductor. 

A. Kirsch

Blackpool, in November 2019