Bruckner, Anton

probably a draft for the full composing score, a passage of 4 bars, written in brown ink on a single system of 24 staves, laid out for woodwind, horns, Wagner tubas, Bass tuba, trombones, trumpets, timpani, trombones and strings, the passage scored just for strings, the staves for the other parts left blank, the bars numbered by Bruckner 1-6, paginated or foliated “5”,

1 page, large folio (34 x 26cm), 24-stave paper ("B & H. Nr.14 A."), framed and glazed, overall size 50.5 x 40cm, [1883], some paper-loss in upper-left-hand corner, affecting a few instrument names (flutes, oboes and clarinets)

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AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPTS BY BRUCKNER FOR HIS SYMPHONIES ARE OF THE GREATEST RARITY AT AUCTION.  The Seventh is Bruckner's best-known symphony and arguably his greatest. 

This manuscript contains an early version of bars 35 to 38 of the last movement.  The phrase appears, varied and extended, four times, always with the cellos (and basses) playing pizzicato, although that is not indicated here.  (The phrase returns at bar 213, with flutes, clarinets and horns).  Only the first three notes of the melody survive in Bruckner's final score.  He apparently rejected this draft almost immediately; it is not continued and the verso of the leaf is blank.  The layout of the manuscript indicates Wagner tubas, which Bruckner used in his last three symphonies, beginning with his tribute to Wagner in the slow movement to the Seventh, and again here in the finale. 

Sergiu Celibidache (1912-1996) was a Romanian conductor particularly famed for his interpretations of Bruckner's nine symphonies.  "He conducted without a score, his beat was expressive and supple and he could bring a lofty spiritual grandeur to the symphonies of Bruckner and a brilliant intensity and precision of detail to music such as Ravel, Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Shostakovich”  (The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2001, v, 337).