Types, characteristics, and schemas

In a study of the symphony published in the 1960s, Bruckner was subjected to a unique treatment. In place of the consideration of whole works applied to other composers, Deryck Cooke described a ‘composite’ Bruckner symphony: the Adagio of the Seventh, the Scherzo of the Eighth, and the outer movements of the Third (thereby providing the opportunity to demonstrate the phenomenon of thematic linkage). The strategy was rather clever: by accepting ‘a grain of truth’ in the hoary old idea that Bruckner wrote the same symphony nine times, Cooke demonstrated the variety of ‘characteristics’ that existed within movement ‘types’. Since then, the same strategy has appeared in different contexts, though the question of the ‘schema’ behind Bruckner's symphonies has never entirely been resolved, apart from the firm adherence to four movements. The question affects form far more than other aspect of Bruckner's works, and will be considered in detail in Chapter 12. Nonetheless, attempts to define the ‘essence’ of Bruckner the symphonist have also tended to involve the taxonomy of a fairly narrow collection of characteristics and influences (the contrast between formal schema and characteristics is developed further in Chapter 13 by Margaret Notley).