Rudolf Innig – Fantasy on an improvisation sketch (1890) by Anton Bruckner
(19 pages, 10 €)
In March 1890, Anton Bruckner began reworking his first symphony in C minor for the second time in Vienna, which he had composed in 1865/66 in Linz during his time as organist at the cathedral. During the first revision in 1877, he had limited the changes to individual voice leadings in the autograph and a rearrangement of the metric numbers, with the help of which he believed he had found a scientific basis for the musical architecture in his symphonies...
He now decided to rewrite the entire score of over 200 pages and began again - as he had probably done 25 years earlier in Linz - with the last movement of the symphony. When the 'court organist' Anton Bruckner had almost finished working on the finale, in mid-June he received a 'request from above' to play the organ at the wedding of the youngest emperor's daughter on July 31st in Bad Ischl...
Bruckner's improvisation sketch from 1890, with its more than 70 bars - although often only hinted at - is today an important document that provides interesting insights into his improvisation and composition technique. However, the present fantasy is not about supplementing Bruckner's sketches or continuing his improvisation according to his notes. Rather, it combines the organ version of the two themes of the finale (bars 1-62), which he initially notated relatively precisely, with a transcription of the end of the movement of his Symphony in C minor No. 1 (bars 95-183). Only Handel's Hallelujah theme (bars 63-77) is expanded into a short fugato episode, but without the repetition of the Hallelujah section intended by Bruckner (as previously with the main theme).
However, some compositional details are no less remarkable, such as the inversion of the main theme in bar 9 or the long pedal point on the dominant (bars 19-28), over which the rhythmically shortened theme descends melodically in sequences over two octaves.
Bruckner uses the same means later in the coda, there also in connection with multiple repetitions of individual groups of bars (sometimes without a thematic connection) and a narrowing of the main theme in bars 154/155. At the climax of the constantly new sections, the main theme in bar 164 appears in triple fortissimo like a solemn chorale in the pedal. Here begins a development that is the opposite of the beginning: while the theme rises in sequences over two octaves, the upper voice holds on to long-held top notes like an organ point.
(Dr. Rudolf Innig)