The Te Deum and the Ninth Symphony

Bruckner died on 11 October, 1896, when he was still engaged on the composition of the last movement of his Ninth Symphony. In fact, he did some work on it that very day. The earliest sketches had been made as many as nine years earlier, just after the completion of the Eighth. But revision of the Eighth, First, and Third Symphonies interrupted work on the Ninth, and it was not until 1891 that he returned to it.The first two movement were finished by February 1894 and the Adagio was completed by the end of November. From then until the end of his life Bruckner worked on the finale, the sketchs of which are extensive and which end, significantly, with a quotation of the ostinato motif from the Te Deum, with the words “Te Deum” actually written on the manuscript.

This allusion led the Bruckner disciple, Heinrich Loewe, to believe that Bruckner intended to introduce the Te Deum into the finale of the Ninth Symphony. When he conducted the first performance of the work - in Vienna in 1903 - he added the Te Deum to the three complete movements as a substitute finale. Modern scholarship, righting the many wrongs done to Bruckner by his friends - like Loewe’s quite unwarranted rescoring of the Ninth Symphony - goes too far, however, in abusing Loewe for adding the Te Deum to the first three movements.

“There is no shred of truth in the assertion that Bruckner ever wanted the Te Deum (a work of very different stylistic bent) to be used to round off the incomplete Ninth Symphony,” says one authority. But Bruckner is quoted as saying, in a lecture which he gave to his students in November 1894, that this is precisely what he did want: “Three movements of my Ninth Symphony are finished, the first two completely. I just have to retouch the third movement somewhat. I have taken on a heavy task with this symphony. I should not have done it at my age and in my state of health. The symphony will not be easy to play. The Adagio should be the most beautiful I have ever written. It always grips me when I play it. Should I die before the symphony is complete, my Te Deum is to be played instead of the last movement. I have already settled that.”

Unless the report (in E. Schwaranza’s collection of Bruckner’s lectures) is a piece of fabricated history worthy more of 1984 than of 1894, there is at least a shred of evidence to support the validity of what Loewe did. It is true that it is difficult to believe that Bruckner considered the two works compatible and that he could have thought of putting them together in that way. Never having heard the Ninth Symphony with a finale, we find it a complete and rewarding experience as it stands; the composer, on the other hand, had a vision of it in four movements and, as far as he was concerned, it was not only unfinished in three movements but also unpresentable. Rather a Symphony in D minor with the Te Deum as a finale, he must have thought, than no Symphony in D minor.

Of course, it will not do to tack on the Te Deum as the fourth movement: the key is wrong and the style is wrong. On the other hand, the spirit is right. Bruckner once declared that, having dedicated one symphony to a king and another to an emperor, “I am now dedicating my last work to the King of Kings, our Lord, and hope that he will grant me enought time to accomplish it.” Of the Te Deum he said in similar terms: “When God calls me to Himself on day and asks what I have done with the talent he gave me I shall show him the score of my Te Deum and He is bound to judge me mercifully.” Performed after or even before a decent interval, the Te Deum makes a fitting complement to the three movements of the incomplete Ninth Symphony.