Funeral Music for the Master

About the Work

The Seventh Symphony was composed between 1881 and 1883, during a period when Bruckner was increasingly preoccupied with the failing health of Richard Wagner, the composer he revered above all others. Bruckner had visited Wagner in 1873 and dedicated his Third Symphony to “the Master”, though the chaotic premiere of that work had been one of his greatest humiliations.

In January 1883, while composing the slow movement, Bruckner wrote to a friend: “One day I came home and felt very sad. The thought had crossed my mind that before long the Master would die, and then the C-sharp minor theme of the Adagio came to me.” Wagner died on February 13, 1883, in Venice. When Bruckner received the news, he added a devastating coda to the Adagio, which he called “the funeral music for the Master.”

For this movement, Bruckner employed Wagner tubas for the first time in symphonic music. Wagner had invented these instruments for his Ring cycle, to evoke the world of gods and heroes; Bruckner borrowed them to mourn the man who had created that world.

The premiere took place in Leipzig on December 30, 1884, conducted by Arthur Nikisch. It brought Bruckner the greatest success of his life so far, and when Hermann Levi conducted the work in Munich in March 1885 to an enthusiastic reception, its future was assured. Performances in other cities followed, and Bruckner’s international reputation was finally established. He had waited sixty years for this moment.

The symphony is dedicated to King Ludwig II of Bavaria, Wagner’s great patron.

The Music

First Movement: Allegro moderato

The symphony begins in mystery. Tremolo strings shimmer quietly, a sound that seems to emerge from silence, from nothingness. Over this foundation, cellos and horn intone the first theme: a long, noble melody that Bruckner said he heard in a dream, played on a viola, and wrote down on waking.

This opening is characteristic of Bruckner’s mature style. Where Beethoven’s symphonies announce themselves with dramatic gestures, Bruckner’s seem to grow organically from silence, like cathedrals rising from the earth. The music is in E major, the symphony’s home key, but Bruckner wanders far from it, and the first movement is, in a sense, a long journey toward home.

Two more themes follow: a chorale-like second subject and a more urgent third theme. Bruckner develops these ideas at vast length, building gradually toward climaxes of overwhelming power. In the coda, a hushed timpani pedal on E provides the foundation for a final, solemn conversation built from fragments of the opening theme. The intensity mounts until, at last, E major blazes forth in triumph.

Listen for: The opening horn and cello theme emerging from the string tremolo; the way Bruckner builds his immense paragraphs from small motivic cells; the long timpani pedal on E that prepares the coda.

Second Movement: Adagio (Sehr feierlich und sehr langsam)

This is the heart of the symphony, and one of the most profound slow movements in all music. It is a threnody, a song of mourning, composed in anticipation of Wagner’s death and completed in its shadow.

The movement opens in C-sharp minor with a solemn theme intoned by Wagner tubas and lower strings, the first time these instruments had appeared in a symphony. Their dark, smoky sound creates a unique atmosphere, forming an acoustic bridge between horns and trombones. A second theme, in the major mode, offers temporary consolation, but the music returns again and again to the mournful opening.

The movement builds toward an enormous climax in C major. At the moment of greatest intensity, a cymbal clash with triangle crowns the climax, added early in 1885 on the advice of Bruckner’s circle and with the particular support of Arthur Nikisch. Whether Bruckner truly approved it remains controversial: the addition was later marked “invalid” in the autograph, and nobody can say for certain whose hand wrote it. After this shattering moment, the music subsides into the coda that Bruckner wrote upon learning of Wagner’s death: the funeral music for the Master. The Wagner tubas intone a chorale of heartbreaking solemnity; the movement ends in peace, but a peace born of grief.

Listen for: The Wagner tubas’ opening theme and their return in the coda; the enormous C-major climax (with or without the cymbal); the hushed, grief-stricken ending.

Third Movement: Scherzo (Sehr schnell)

The scherzo provides dramatic contrast: vigorous, rustic, almost aggressive after the Adagio’s intensity. A trumpet announces a theme said to have been inspired by a cock’s crow, over an insistent string ostinato. This energetic music alternates with a contrasting trio section marked gesangvoll (songful), one of Bruckner’s great melodic inspirations.

The movement is relatively brief for Bruckner, about ten minutes, but it serves an essential structural function, releasing the tension accumulated in the Adagio and preparing for the finale’s resolution.

Listen for: The trumpet’s “cock-crow” theme; the pastoral, lyrical trio section; the return of the scherzo’s driving energy.

Fourth Movement: Finale (Bewegt, doch nicht schnell)

The finale opens, like the first movement, with tremolo strings. The main theme contains echoes of the symphony’s opening melody, but now transformed into jubilant dotted rhythms. A serene chorale provides contrast, propelled by a walking bass in the low strings.

Bruckner structures the recapitulation in what analysts call “tragic sonata form” or “arch form,” reversing the order of the themes. This creates a sense of return and resolution rather than forward drive. Near the end, a truncated version of the first movement’s opening theme returns, a cyclical gesture that binds the symphony together.

The conclusion is triumphant but not bombastic. Bruckner brings back his opening themes, now fully transformed, and ends in a blaze of E major, the home key that the symphony has been seeking since its mysterious opening bars.

Listen for: The kinship between the finale’s opening theme and the first movement’s; the serene chorale second theme; the return of the first movement’s material near the end; the final, hard-won arrival in E major.

Herbert Blomstedt and Bruckner

Tonight’s conductor, Herbert Blomstedt, is one of the great Bruckner interpreters of our time. Born in 1927 in Springfield, Massachusetts, the Swedish-American conductor has led the world’s finest orchestras over an exceptionally long career, and he has called Bruckner the greatest symphonist since Beethoven. His Bruckner performances are celebrated for their architectural clarity, spiritual depth, and unhurried grandeur, qualities that come from a lifetime of devotion to this music.

Blomstedt’s relationship with the Berliner Philharmoniker spans five decades. Now in his late nineties, he continues to conduct with remarkable vitality, bringing to each performance the accumulated wisdom of a long life in music.