Bruckner, Anton.

the complete working manuscript of the part-song, scored for four-part male-voice choir (TTBB), solo tenor and piano, with autograph tempo marking and title ("etwas langsam u. feierlich; nicht schleppend. Mitternacht..."), notated in brown ink on two six-stave systems per page, numerous erasures, including apparently to the date, some autograph corrections in ink, some later pencil entries, 8 pages, oblong 4to (25.8 x 33cm), 12-stave paper, with a later wrapper consisting of a bifolium of manuscript paper, inscribed in pencil by Weinwurm, Vienna, 11 December 1869, outer bifolium of autograph splitting along hinge, vertical crease, browning to final side

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This splendid setting of a poem by the Hamburg writer Joseph Mendelssohn (1817-1856) was written, as Bruckner's correspondence reveals, for the Linz Liedertafel Frohsinn. It was performed by this singing group (with which Bruckner had had a long and fruitful association) for the first time on 15 May 1870. In it the composer captures marvellously Mendelssohn's blending of devotional ecstasy with nature at its most atmospheric (the sound of cathedral bells, organ music and solemn song combining magically in the poem with the atmospheric spectacle of flowers blossoming under the midnight moon). Particularly effective - and quintessentially Brucknerian - is the impressive fortissimo climax on the phrase 'Orgelton und Feiersang', followed by the rapt pianissimo conclusion, in which the listener's emotions dissolve in the magic of the midnight scene.

Until its recent emergence, this autograph was unknown to Bruckner scholarship: the critical complete edition, Sämtliche Werke, 23/2 (Vienna, 2001), evidently unaware of the present manuscript, gives the date of the work as 'November 1869' (p.95), a date also found in TNG. Intriguingly, the date '1869' on the autograph has been altered, apparently by Bruckner himself, to 1860.

The work was first published by Doblinger in 1903. The present autograph manuscript has remained in the possession of the same family since 1905, following its presentation by the composer's long-time friend Rudolf Weinwurm.