ABSTRACT
In Bruckner's Seventh Symphony, tension between thematic and tonal arrivals is even more highly dramatized since the discrepancy is reserved for the recapitulation. With the support of Schoenberg's guidelines, the author demonstrates in this essay how the first movement of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony illustrates an appropriation of Sechter's precepts, extending the strict contrapuntal explanations of their origins to embrace free applications of their harmonic essence. The effects of this synthesis are evident in the initial presentation of the first subject in the first movement of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony. The first movement of Beethoven's Eighth Symphony provides an excellent example of discrepancies that can occur between thematic and tonal arrivals within an exposition. One of the basic premises of Sechterian theory is that the large-scale tonal motions in a given composition are derived from and directly related to foreground harmonic motions, particularly those occurring in the work's expository phase.
