August Göllerich relates this anecdote in his chapter about Viennese concert life and Bruckner's work on his own Te Deum in 1884. In the context of a discussion of Bruckner's large sacred compositions, while admitting the futility of trying to read the composer's mind through Göllerich's filter, it is tempting to speculate as to the nature of the deliberations inspired by Berlioz's monumental work. At the very least it is safe to say that ‘and ecclesiastical it isn't!’ states the obvious: the Berlioz performance had not taken place in church. Göllerich's narrative suggests a more critical stance on Bruckner's part. Perhaps the composer was pondering issues of musical style: had Berlioz, whom he admired, provided an appropriate setting for a sacred Latin text – a text that had been very much on Bruckner's mind in recent months? Or by ‘kirchlich’ did he mean ‘liturgical’, thus questioning the appropriateness of the Berlioz work for use as service music? Perhaps venue and content intersected in Bruckner's mind, and the Berlioz performance caused him to deliberate on broader, one might say Wagnerian, issues of where and how sacred and secular overlap. He had already been accused himself of turning the Credo of the F minor Mass in to a religious ‘Wolf ‘s Glen Scene’. Given that he would finish his career with a symphony dedicated to God, and propose his Te Deum as a suitable Finale, it may not be far fetched to speculate that weighty aesthetic questions of meaning and function in sacred as opposed to secular music were on his mind as he climbed to and from the organ gallery that evening in 1884.