Symphony no. 9 in D-minor, WAB 109: IV. Finale. (completion by Schaller, 2016)

Schaller's completion (2016)

Gerd Schaller composed his own completion of the Symphony, closely based on Bruckner's notes, taking into account all available draft materials as far back as the earliest sketches, to close the remaining gaps in the score as much as possible, using original manuscript documents of Bruckner’s, and running to 736 bars. Additionally, Schaller was able to supplement archival and manuscript material with missing elements in the score by drawing on his experience as a conductor, and of applying Bruckner’s compositional techniques to the recordings of the complete cycle of all the composer’s eleven symphonies; so that even passages without continuous original material are in a recognisably Brucknerian style. Schaller first performed his version of the finale with the Philharmonie Festiva in the abbey church at Ebrach on July 24, 2016, as part of the Ebrach Summer Music Festival.

The fugue of the final movement is particularly central to Schaller’s completion - the heightened contrapuntal tension concentrated into this fugue is used in the finale as a lead to the climax to the thematic material at the start of the symphony, transposed to the major key, and as a polythematic review of all movements as in the Eighth Symphony. In his completion of the coda of the final movement, Schaller draws on themes and motives from across Bruckner’s works in the form of a compositional retrospective with building-blocks from earlier symphonies, choral symphonic works and thematic references to other movements of the Ninth.