ABSTRACT
Anton Bruckner's expressive genre for the Fourth Symphony offers a dramatic trajectory that begins with the visionary, descends to the more realistic, is threatened by the tragic, and ultimately finds transfiguration in a blaze of affirmation. The Fifth Symphony's subtle twisting of the sequence provides a further shift in perspective, perhaps suggesting a deeper reflection upon, or questioning of, the diatonic assurances of faith. In the Finale of the Fifth Symphony, by way of contrast with the first movement, there are two rather obvious and built-in guarantees of textural continuity. The compositional issues raised by Bruckner's use of motto-like themes are most acute in the first movement. The issue of disjunction is particularly acute and more of a thematic premise in the first movement of the Fifth Symphony than in the first movement of the Fourth. The second movement will end with just such a mirrored-motto summing up of the main theme, within a Picardy-third tonic.
