Bruckner was working on his ninth symphony the day he died. “It will be my last symphony,” he had told a guest several years before. At the time of his death, three movements were complete, but Bruckner had been struggling with the finale for many months. When he first realized that he might not have the strength to finish it, he recommended the Te Deum, which he had finished in 1884, as a possible finale. But when he began to write the transition necessary to take us from the serenity of E major, with which the third movement of the symphony ends, to the brilliant C major of the Te Deum, he realized the futility of the plan and simply left us three magnificent movements and a pile of sketches.
The Starlight Symphony Orchestra will be performing the 3rd Movement of the 9th on March 9th and 10th at the Hayes Fine Arts Center. The opening chord of the Scherzo, often cited as prophetic of the harmonic advances of the 20th Century, is tonally ambiguous in regard to the principal D minor tonality of the movement. It could be said that folk elements are still in evidence, as in other Bruckner scherzi, but this music is of such savagery that such naïve elements are easier to ignore, even if they were intended by the composer.
This post was a combination of Wikipedia and Program Notes.