In beginning work on his Third Symphony, Bruckner brought in some new ideas from Beethoven’s Ninth, among them being the first-movement A1-A2 double structure of a build-up leading to a unison each time. But in the slow movement of his Third, Bruckner took the formal structures he had already established in the Second and developed them into a somewhat more narrative sequence.

Following the A1 and A2 themes, there is a Marienkadenz ( ► Example 1 ) and a concluding lyrical A3 melody in both parts 1 and 3.

And in each of parts 2 and 4, the two B themes are in a different time-signature, with B2 being a mini-chorale. But in part 5, following an extensive lengthening and enrichment of the A1 itself like that in the Second, and after the Marienkadenz, there is a new, anxious melody leading to another ecstatic climax and then to his version of the sleep motive from Wagner’s Die Walküre. Perhaps that kind of gesture involving extraneous material was prompted by the trumpet entrance in the slow movement of Beethoven’s Ninth, or by the Dona nobis pacem in Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis. The subsequent revision of this movement, which ultimately destroyed the lovely symmetry of the five-part form of the first concept, will be handled later in this paper.

The Fifth Symphony served as Bruckner’s virtual dissertation, though he did not receive his official doctorate until many years after its composition, and that was for his renowned teaching, not his compositional achievements. The Fifth was the culmination of his own tetralogy to match his operatic idol’s, The Ring of the Nibelung. Completed only two years after the premiere of Wagner’s work, it arose from Bruckner’s continuous, immense, and inseparable effort of the composition of four symphonies in the grand manner. Each movement of the Fifth embodies an intellectual achievement which builds on the corresponding movements of the other symphonies without minimizing them. That progress is seen in the best perspective when the movements of the first three components of the tetralogy are considered in their earliest and most fully-conceived incarnations. At the end of his work on the Fifth, he said that he would never do anything like that again for any amount of money. That is not to say that he would not go on to accomplish more advanced work, but merely that he would not try to do it all at once on such a huge scale. We will see that he went back on that idea.

But in the adagio of the Fifth, he seems to have built on his previous work by creating a specific, narrative contrast in mood between parts 1, 3, and 5 on the one hand, and 2 and 4 on the other, to a much greater degree than he had before.

The details of that concept are described in extenso in my paper on the Fifth presented at the seventh Bruckner Journal Readers’ Conference at Oxford in 2011, along with copious notes on specific performances, and here I will only suggest the overview, that the odd-numbered parts are a portrayal of anxiety, disorientation, and despair, while the even-numbered parts are an offer of consolation, hope, and renewal. Part 1 begins with the famous oboe solo with an accompaniment of triplet quarter notes for pizzicato strings, and the melody line continues with a series of alternating sixths and sevenths and a murmuring continuation with no specified tempo variations. The time signature, unique among Bruckner’s adagios, is 2/2 rather than the 4/4 he uses everywhere else, doubtlessly to accommodate the triplet quarter notes.  After 18 measures we hear in the strings a kind of anxious pleading, requiring for its proper expression a good sense of how to play chains of four eighth notes against the three triplet quarters of the basses. This is in the position of the “Gebet” in the andante of the Fourth, but it is not built into a separate vignette; after only four measures the triplet rhythm prevails and there is a sense of growing menace. But part 2 begins in C major with an earnest melody in the violins, conceived in even periods, with at first a rich chordal accompaniment for the other strings. But after the first period the accompaniment changes from chords to repeated notes, which seem to make the melody take wings. It is here that in his personal conducting score Robert Heger wrote “Die schöne Stelle” at measure 43 in part 2, and again in part 4 where the same melody returns after a tension-producing delay at measure 123, “Die göttliche Stelle”. In part 2 the melody rises to an ecstatic climax in A flat at measure 63, then moves to C major (6-4), then quietly to A major in preparation for the timely return to D minor at measure 71, the beginning of part 3. It is quite curious that in its first appearance, at measure 31, the “earnest” melody takes a turn which is different from the corresponding place in every one of its 22 other occurrences, both upright and inverted. That is because if the first one were the same as the others, the violins would have to be able to play F sharp below the G string, and Bruckner, as a violinist, knew not to ask for that. It is amazing that nobody seems to notice anything odd about this.

Unlike part 1, part 3 contains a substantial crescendo, but again, no specific tempo changes. However, one must remember that in the past, long crescendos were usually automatically accompanied by appreciable accelerandos. Today such a practice if always carried out could seem both vulgar and boring, but perhaps this is a place where we should take the older tradition seriously. And indeed many of the old performances make a substantial dynamic arc in part 3, none more than in an almost unknown but truly astonishing performance from 1959 in which the Boston Symphony plays the Schalk version led by their veteran concertmaster Richard Burgin. At measure 71, part 3 begins solemnly like part 1, but in 75 the melody is transferred to the bass and is enhanced by an extra obbligato decoration for the first violins playing eighth notes in octaves. As in his usual method, already seen in the adagio of the Second, Bruckner continues the development of the beginning of the A theme before turning his attention to its later components, and in that development there is a sudden outburst in F minor at measure 85. From this point Burgin makes his accelerando until measure 95 with the percussion accents added by Schalk contributing to the excitement, and goes still faster until the music breaks off abruptly in measure 100. This extravagant and thrilling effect is not prescribed in the Schalk score, which suggests only a gradual acceleration in measure 98 which is far too late. It was due to Burgin’s genius, perhaps prompted by an overall sense of a certain kind of romantic musical style which was still heard from place to place as late as the time of his performance. I can only say that once one hears it that way, one definitely wants to hear it that way again. After the catastrophe of part 3 and its hushed, fearful echoes, part 4 enters with the warm, renewing melody in the tonic D major. As in part 2, the music rises to a climax, much more muted than earlier, and settles on the dominant of D minor where the flute plays a long, slow arabesque of over 100 notes as the rest of the orchestra waits in expectation of what might follow. This striking, mesmeric dominant preparation is also a vignette of its own, and will have its counterpart in later adagios.

Part 5 begins in measure 163 with the unusually specific recommendation “Beinahe Melodie im gleichen Rhythmus wie in Allabreve-Takte, jedoch langsamer” which means “The melody at nearly the same pace as in the alla breve measures, although slower.” It is now in 4/4, which as always with Bruckner simply means that the conductor should beat in four instead of beating in two (alla breve) as in the rest of the movement. Once again the texture of part 5 is very complex, although the passage-work never becomes fast. Against the sextole sixteenths of the violins playing an octave apart, the lower strings render alternating groups of three eighth notes. Across each group of three there is a slur, which here and there requires some cleverness in bowing to make clear. But nothing sounds more heavy and lifeless than not to observe those slurs. Moving through many keys there are three climaxes, each longer than the last, which give the impression that an apotheosis will occur. But it does not; a fourth climax, located on the fringes of D minor and starting in the middle of a measure, collapses with a swift diminuendo, and a very brief coda brings the movement to a close.  This movement is a dialogue between despair and hope, and despair prevails at the end. But the symphony is not over.

The enormous adagio of the Eighth Symphony, though much more complex than the Seventh, is also of crystal clarity. But each part of the vast structure has much detail.

As in the Seventh, the A group begins with a double theme, where the first component is a gentle murmur over a rich and syncopated string texture in D flat major, and the second component is a passionate melody which leads to a major climax. After that, there is a brass chorale phrase followed by arabesques for the harp or harps concluding in F major. This is the only symphony in which Bruckner uses the harp, and in this first version, it is only in the slow movement. Then, extraordinarily, Bruckner begins the whole process again, but proceeds immediately to climactic material with the harp eventually concluding in G major. With that simple device Bruckner announces the cosmic scope which this movement is to encompass. The B theme begins in E major with the same warm eloquence as is present in the Fifth Symphony at this point, and also with more than a hint of ecstasy. After a decorated repetition, there is a new solemn theme for the tuben in C major. There is a climax, and then a most interesting thing happens: the time signature changes to 3/4, and in a vignette a short ostinato leads to a plaintive theme in the high winds and an urgent response in the strings. If a narrative subtext can be attached to any part of this movement, it is hard not to think of this passage as a lament by a feminine voice and a reassurance by a masculine voice.

In the 1887 version, part 3 begins with the same double theme and a new more impassioned climax, followed by the chorale and the harp filigrees which lead through B flat major with flatted seventh to the beginning of part 4 in E flat, a semitone lower than its appearance in part 2. Here the theme is ornately and canonically developed, and there is a vignette to balance the one at the end of part 2 in which the ecstatic climax is prolonged in a passage of quiet hysteria on the dominant of B flat and a drum roll on F before the beginning of the highly-decorated and boldly dramatic and eventful extended fifth part of the song-form.

In my analytical tables of the adagio of the Eighth Symphony, it can be seen clearly that Part 5 is in nearly every performance twice as long as any of the other parts. In that extensive crowning section of this massive movement there are many events and at least four separate buildups to substantial climaxes. Part 5 begins as expected with the murmuring A theme in D flat with a violin filigree and gently moving parts in the lower strings. Then in the first climax there are two quotations of Wagner’s Siegfried leitmotiv, followed by two more crescendos, each seemingly greater than the one before it.  Eventually the last of the four crescendos arrives at C major with three cymbal clashes with triangle, which are three more than Haas would allow in the Seventh, and then four measures later three more cymbal/triangle events over the orchestra’s A flat major. Suddenly everything is still, the brass chorale phrase and the harps are heard two more times, the first time cadencing in C flat major, and the second in A flat in preparation for the coda. But there is one more vignette: a recollection of the B theme in a gentle D flat major, which leads fluently to the blessedly long and gentle coda devoted to the melodic ingredients of the A theme and the mellow sound of the horns and the quiet dignity of the tuben. This B-theme passage sounds perfectly at home, but Bruckner had never done anything like that before. Indeed, he seems very reluctant to put an end to the beauty he has evoked in this movement.

The adagio of the Ninth Symphony sounds much more regular than it is. Without fail, the ear hears the five parts of the song form, which has come to be a familiar aspect of the Bruckner brand.

But when one starts to look, one finds that in parts 4 and 5, the locations of the themes do not agree with the dynamic and textural contour. The movement begins with a simple leap of a minor ninth with no accompaniment, which as A1 moves through difficult progressions to D major, and then further to resolution in the tonic E major, all in one sweeping, continuous, inseparable gesture. One may contrast this with the Eighth, where a very restricted melody beginning with only a minor second has a rich and detailed accompaniment: the exact opposite. In the Ninth, as an “answer”, A2 begins with a rising figure with the rhythm of the Marienkadenz, together with further musings on the minor ninth. Then we arrive at a great outburst in which the trombones play a major ninth while the trumpets glitter with the “Cross” motive A3, the first four notes of the Passion hymn Vexilla Regis prodeunt which any Catholic churchgoer at the time would have recognized. It is not clear, however, that Bruckner meant it that way; he was not given to quoting church music in his symphonies. What is known to us, though, is that the music which follows a ghostly echo of that climax was thought of by Bruckner as the “Farewell to Life”. ( ► Example 2: Abschied vom Leben )

This music consists of four short chorale phrases of four notes each for the four tuben, with the upper pair of horns doubling the first tenor tuba in the first and third phrases, while the strings continue the accompanimental texture used with the Cross motive. Short four-note phrases of this character are found at many other places in Bruckner’s music: even as early as in the first theme of the Second, just before the recapitulation in the first movement of the Third, and then near the end of the first movement of the Ninth. But here they are built into a theme of a special significance, as asserted by Bruckner himself, which gives complete assurance to the mind of the listener that this symphony is about “last things”. Thus here again there is a vignette like the “Gebet” at the end of part 1 of the andante of the Fourth, which stands to some extent outside the form as a special feature, though it does have a fragmentary recurrence near the end of the movement, in the hush after the great dissonant climax. Again it is a prayer, and this time the pilgrim is near the end of his journey.

After twelve bars, the rising figure of A2 recurs, and leads to part 2, where the new B1 theme in A flat major is warm, gracious, and comforting, even though it begins with the rhythm of the Farewell to Life. Listeners will also recognize in its first four notes an inversion of the codetta theme of the first movement of the Third Symphony, in turn quoting the “Miserere” of the Gloria of the Mass in D minor (measures 100–103). Then, as in the Second and Third Symphonies, part 2 offers a second theme or B2, a lush and ornate episode in G flat major, densely accompanied and rising to an ecstatic climax with no help needed from the brasses. The writing is so complex that it is difficult to imagine that this section spans only eight measures. B1 returns briefly and the horns take up the theme, but the music drops away to a French sixth chord for the tuben and a despairing flute solo. As we have seen him do before, in part 3 Bruckner develops the first part of the A theme far beyond its treatment in part 1, here continuing with a restatement of A1 by the strings a whole tone higher with the flute playing the theme inverted and entangled with the violins, leading to a striding fortissimo with the opening notes of A1 proclaimed in canon, both upright and inverted, by the brasses. Then quietly an augmented allusion to B2 is made in place of A2, and through a crescendo with repeated iterations of the beginning of A1 the Cross motive climax is reattained, a semitone higher than in part 1. But there is no repetition of it, nor any mention of the Farewell to Life. Instead, part 4 begins immediately with B2, now in A flat, a whole tone higher than before. This time it is extended to ten measures, but then it breaks off and the anomalies begin. In fact they have already begun because part 4 should have started with B1. Instead of that, Part 4 continues with a treatment of fragments of A1. There is a recollection of the descending chorale from the finale of the Eighth, and then against a steady ostinato of eighth notes from the oboes and then the clarinets, the beginning of A1 and its inversion are played again and again as the tension rises to an almost unbearable level. In parts 1 and 3, that sort of treatment of A1 led to a cross-motive climax, but now it breaks off abruptly, leaving the ostinato by itself, and the following material turns out to be B1 in the home key of E major. However, this is not the reprise of B1 after B2 that we heard in part 2; it is instead clearly the beginning of a grand crescendo, where right at the outset the theme is given the complex decoration which we have learned to expect at the beginning of part 5 in six previous song-form adagios. For that reason I have placed the Part 5 designation at this point in my analysis, irrespective of the thematic incongruity; the beginning of Part 5 is what the ear hears. And the crescendo makes one grand sweep, the wind parts becoming ever richer and more complex and insistent, until only 26 measures into part 5, A1 enters in C sharp minor in canon in the brasses. Near the end of this terrifying outburst, the canon breaks off as A1 completes its curve, on a chord which contains all seven notes of the C-sharp harmonic minor scale, complete with its intrinsic augmented second. Then after a fermata which must necessarily be quite long, the rest of the elements of the A group begin to reassert themselves.
( ► Example 3: Symphony 9 )

But instead of moving to a fourth statement of the Cross motive, the “Miserere” theme from the D-minor Mass and Third Symphony heads the movement toward quiet resignation in E major and the perilous high B for the four horns in unison.

Thus we see all the formal elements of the five-part song form still present in the adagio of the Ninth, but in the latter parts the ingredients are somewhat out of order and set at odds with each other. It might be possible to regard the A1 section in part 4 as a vignette that occupies two thirds of the part in which it is present, but then there is the fact that part 4 starts with the wrong theme. Nonetheless that is what the ear hears, and that is the only way in which Bruckner can convey the emotional message he has for the sympathetic auditor. This movement, with its alternating moods of agony, divine appeal, revelation, premonition of death, earnest comfort, and prayerful ecstasy, all bound together thematically, reminds me of Strauss’s tone poem Death and Transfiguration of 1889. In the Strauss, which after all is coeval with the completion of only the earliest parts of Bruckner’s Ninth, there are the agonies of approaching death, fond recollections of childhood and happier times, and continuing engagement with the still-incomplete efforts of maturity which can only be fully resolved through the transfiguration attending the protagonist’s death. But in Bruckner these humane thoughts are also accompanied by the constant assurance of divine intervention no matter what the state of his life might be at the end.

In the volume Bruckner Studies (Cambridge, 1997), there is an erudite and sympathetic article by Edward Laufer on prolongation methods in the Scherzo and Adagio of the Ninth, with 22 ornate Schenkerian analyses and re-analyses of many passages from those two movements, some of them spreading over two pages. He also presents an overall analysis of the adagio as a sonata form, with the exposition being parts 1 and 2 of the song-form, the development being part 3, and the recapitulation being part 4 and part 5. I have entered Laufer’s analysis on my own analytical table. His sectional account is much less detailed than mine, but the locations of the section divisions are unambiguously stated by him, and the validity of his diagrams does not depend on the structure he proposes. If one accepts parts 1 and 2 as an exposition, and the rest of the movement as a Brucknerian counter-statement or developed recapitulation, one arrives at the structure A B1B2 | A B2A B1A, in which Laufer would say that the recapitulation begins at the recurrence of B2. In no way does such a concept clarify the effect of this movement on the listener, nor are the goals of sonata form such as the “effective expositional closure” of Hepokoski and Darcy achieved here. Indeed, the sonata-form paradigm, with its arrow of sonata process, fits this movement about as well as Balzac’s working-cloak would fit the Venus de Milo. This is not to say anything negative about the Schenkerian analyses which are very penetrating and revealing. Indeed Laufer concludes with some force that his Schenkerian analyses refute Schenker’s own deplorable offhand and pejorative remarks about the compositional methods of his teacher and friend Anton Bruckner.

Now are discussed Bruckner’s adagios which do not follow the five-part structure, but some other plan. These are those of the Quintet, of the Second Symphony as briefly conceived during the process of composition, of the Sixth Symphony, and of his early Study and First Symphonies.

The Quintet adagio, which has also become popular as an independent movement for string orchestra, has four parts, ABAB, much along the lines of the first four parts of the adagios described above. But following part 4, there is simply a coda in the tonic key of G flat major in which the A theme is recalled, but not stated or developed. Thus it resembles the adagio of Beethoven’s Hammerklavier piano sonata, Op. 106, except that the second B theme is not in the home key as it is in the Beethoven.

For that reason, I would hesitate to ascribe either five-part form or regular sonata form to the Quintet adagio.

The Quintet adagio has a little-known and probably-never-to-be-played forebear which belongs to the early phase of composition of the Second Symphony. In July, 1872, while in Vienna, Bruckner completed the adagio in the form ABAB coda. The status of the movement at that time can be approximated simply by the omission of measures 150–187 of my edition of the 1872 version.

Just as in the Quintet, the form of the movement closely mimics the adagio of the Hammerklavier. But later in the summer he added Part 5, simply placing it between the cadence at the end of Part 4, which seems to refer to measures 22–24 of the Benedictus of the F-minor Mass, and the beginning of the coda, which is a reminiscence of the A theme. This process presented him with a problem: how at the end of part 5 could he produce a passage which would lead to the coda even more effectively than the passage at the end of the existing part 4 which was  already designed to do that. He did that by making the new second cadence a much closer quotation of the Benedictus, adding a measure for emphasis. Later in the decade Bruckner had second thoughts about this trick, leaving behind a tangle of revisions and conflicting metrical numbers discussed in an interesting and influential early paper by Timothy Jackson ² . A relic of this peculiar history might be the unusually long coda of the Second, compared to the codas of the next three symphonies. Bruckner would naturally have been reluctant to change something as lovely as what he had already written, especially since Beethoven’s Ninth says that it is all right to have a coda that long. Also, the Quintet of seven years later has a long coda, perhaps to make up for the missing fifth part, although the coda does not have anything like a full statement of the A theme.

The Sixth Symphony is in many ways a special case. Here the sonata paradigm suggests itself strongly; there is a well-defined exposition of two themes, a development, a recapitulation of the two themes, and a coda.

It is certainly possible for the sonata paradigm to be used in a slow movement, where the exposition and recapitulation do not need to conclude with the gathering excitement that is a hallmark of the use of the form in allegro movements; so much is demonstrated in Mozart’s 40^th symphony, and in a myriad of other compositions, even including the sonata-form slow movement in Bruckner’s own D-minor symphony of 1869.

But this is not Bruckner’s usual sonata form. Particularly there is no rhythmic, unisonal third theme to balance the first theme, the two surrounding a lyrical, episodic song-theme period. Instead, in the exposition there is a quiet vignette following the two sections of the B-theme group which has the character of a funeral march, and in fact is so striking that the ear does hear it as a third theme. But in the recapitulation, instead of following the two-section B theme, the C theme is sandwiched between them. A seen here and elsewhere, this is not the only structural innovation present in the Sixth Symphony, where Bruckner was seeking ways to continue writing symphonies without the obligation each time to surpass in scope his just-previous effort.

But here this thematic relocation in the Sixth, the placement of melodic elements out of traditional order, has as a counterpart the more extensive relocation of thematic elements in the Ninth, where part 4 is devoted to B2 and A rather than to just B, and part 5 is devoted to B1 and A rather than to just A. Thus the division into parts in this movement is not predicated solely on thematic recurrence, but instead also on the evolution of texture; in the Ninth, the beginning of part 5 sounds like the beginning of part 5 in the other song-form adagios, never mind that it is the “wrong” theme. And it is surely significant that at the time he was writing the adagio of the Ninth, he had completed the preparation of the Second for publication and was working on preparing the Sixth.  Melodic phrases from the Second and Sixth are the most prominent borrowings in the Ninth, and it is very satisfying to see Bruckner’s will to innovate very much alive in his last days, borrowing from two symphonies which were themselves notably innovative at their inceptions, and taking from them the idea of structural innovation as well as certain melodic contours. In the Sixth, the thematic relocation makes for a smooth transition into the extended coda in which the descending octave scale of the A theme is reversed. In the adagio of the Ninth, the thematic relocation sets in opposition all the elements of the emotional arch of the first three parts of the movement, and makes possible the last entrance of the A theme to be made fortissimo, to terrifying effect. Bruckner never had done that before, and this is the means by which he did it, with all good will totally deceiving the listener into thinking that the movement would end in triumph or at least reconciliation, and then bringing forth all the agony and striving of the A theme at the top of the crescendo, leaving only the quiet later parts of the theme to come to rest as well as they can, deferring the full resolution to the finale which he tried so hard to make complete.

The adagios of the Study Symphony and First Symphony are in three-part song form, and they are included on the series of bar-graphs visually displaying the structure of Bruckner’s slow movements and their prototypes and metatypes.

It is worth noting that although the structure of these two movements is relatively simple, upon hearing they sound quite mysterious. This is partly because in both movements the first theme begins in the bass, but there are other complications absent in his next works, the adagios of the D minor and Second Symphonies which are formally transparent. For this reason and for many others, no conductor’s series of recorded Bruckner symphonies should be considered complete unless it includes both un-numbered symphonies. They would be considered masterpieces in the œuvre of any other composer.

Adagios in Five-Part Song Form