ABSTRACT
The first version of the Eighth was finished on 10 August 1887; the first sketches for the Ninth are dated 12 August. Once again Bruckner had permitted himself exactly one day of relaxation between completing one symphony and starting work on the next. In the meantime the Schalk brothers were busy preparing the most notorious of all their interventions: the publication and first orchestral performance of the Fifth Symphony. The narrative of Bruckner's final years, his heroic struggles to complete his life's work in the face of illness, is therefore undercut by the pattern of increasing intervention in publications and performances of his work by his former pupils. Franz undoubtedly made a positive contribution to the first of the three great controversies that dominated Bruckner reception in the twentieth century, the continuing struggle over the artistic worth of Bruckner's music. The Ninth Symphony is Bruckner's last homage to Beethoven.
