<<  -- 2 --  Bill Newman    TOWARDS AND BEYOND THE MIGHTY EIGHTH

Robert Haas became editor of the complete edition from 1932-1949, restoring the symphonies closer to the form that Bruckner envisaged. His successor was Leopold Novak, who stated in the preface to his edition of the Eighth Symphony: 'To follow the paths of Robert Haas, who in the first edition of 1939 traced some passages back to the first version, has proved irrelevant, as this would have caused disturbing consequences. Different sources, according to principles for the working out of critical complete editions, may never be intermingled. A score not consenting to these rules would have no true relation to either of the two versions and could therefore not be said faithfully to represent Bruckner's own directives.'

Kempe chose the Haas edition which contains extra music over and above Novak, who follows Bruckner's abbreviations for the third and fourth movements. For score readers, these take place in the ten bars before Q in the Adagio, and during the Finale (the bars between O and P, four bars between Q and R, the stretch before Oo, the ten bars after Oo, and four bars between Tt and Uu.

Bruckner composed his unfinished Ninth Symphony during the period 1887-1896 when Debussy was introducing impressionism into music. Mahler had completed his first three symphonies, and Mascagni and Leoncavallo were creating new orchestral colours in their verismo operas.

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