ABSTRACT

Ludwig Wittgenstein was born in Vienna in 1889, when Bruckner had begun sketching his Ninth Symphony and was in the process of revising his Eighth. Wittgenstein's remark on Bruckner's Ninth Symphony does not necessarily impute any Faustian features to Bruckner. But Ernst Kurth did go so far as to employ the adjective 'faustisch' in the first volume of his study of the composer. Kurth ascribes the various manifestations of Bruckner's eagerness to learn – in the field of music theory but also elsewhere – to a desire to reach the mystical ground of things. At least once in Bruckner's life, the desire carried him to the brink of madness. In 1938 Wittgenstein made two further jottings about Bruckner that have been published in Vermischte Bemerkungen. Bruckner's Ninth was conceived in the same spiritual climate as Nietzsche's Also sprach Zarathustra, a climate of which the Wagner tuba seems the musical incarnation.