"[3] There is a similar passage in a letter from the composer to Paul Heyse of 22 December 1890: "In the first movement of the 'Romantic' Fourth Symphony the intention is to depict the horn that proclaims the day from the town hall!

[3] In addition to these clues that come directly from Bruckner, the musicologist Theodor Helm communicated a more detailed account reported via the composer's associate Bernhard Deubler: "Mediaeval city—Daybreak—Morning calls sound from the city towers—the gates open—On proud horses the knights burst out into the open, the magic of nature envelops them—forest murmurs—bird song—and so the Romantic picture develops further..."[3] This movement, in C minor, begins with a melody on the cellos: The accompaniment is significantly different in the original 1874 version.

The second version of the movement, whose nickname, meaning 'people's festival', comes from Bruckner's autograph,[3] is generally not played as part of the symphony as a whole.

For these reasons, the Fourth Symphony, as the most extreme case of the "Bruckner problem," offers a uniquely advantageous platform from which to see key matters more critically and clearly than they have been previously.

The edition by Leopold Nowak in 1975, based on manuscript Mus.Hs.6082, includes some revisions from 1875 that Bruckner made in the autograph score.

The first complete performance was given in Linz more than a century after its composition on 20 September 1975 by the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Kurt Wöss.

The first commercial recording was made in September 1982 by the Frankfurt Radio Symphony conducted by Eliahu Inbal (CD 2564 61371-2).

[10] The 1876 variant, that has been premiered in November 2020 by Jakub Hrůša with the Bamberger Symphoniker, has been issued by Benjamin Korstvedt [fr] in 2021.

In a letter to the music critic Wilhelm Tappert (October 1878), Bruckner said that the new Scherzo "represents the hunt, whereas the Trio is a dance melody which is played to the hunters during their repast".

[16] The 1880 version is available in an edition by Robert Haas, which was published in 1936, based on Bruckner's manuscript in the Austrian National Library.

[18]Another edition has been issued by Benjamin-Gunnar Cohrs for the Anton Bruckner Urtext Gesamtausgabe in 2021 – with the abbreviated finale as it was performed by Felix Mottl on 10 December 1881 in Karlsruhe.

This version was published in an edition by Nowak in 1953, based on the original copyist's score, which was rediscovered in 1952 and is now in the collection of Columbia University.

With the assistance of Ferdinand Löwe and probably also Franz and Joseph Schalk, Bruckner thoroughly revised the symphony in 1887–88 with a view to having it published.

The only surviving manuscript which records the compositional process of this version is the Stichvorlage, or engraver's copy of the score, which was prepared for the symphony's publisher Albert J. Gutmann of Vienna.

Some tempi and expression marks were added in a fourth hand; these may have been inserted by Hans Richter during rehearsals, or even by Bruckner, who is known to have taken an interest in such matters.

The Stichvorlage is now in an inaccessible private collection in Vienna; there is, however, a set of black-and-white photographs of the entire manuscript in the Wiener Stadtbibliothek (A-Wst M.H.

[19] In February 1888, Bruckner made extensive revisions to all four movements after having heard the premiere of the 1887 version the previous month.

British musicologist Donald Tovey's analysis of the symphony mentioned no other version, nor does the Swiss theorist Ernst Kurth.

In 1936, Robert Haas, editor of the Gesamtausgabe (the critical edition of all of Bruckner's works), dismissed the version printed in 1889 as being without authenticity, saying that "the circumstances that accompanied its publication can no longer be verified"[17] and calling it "a murky source for the specialist".

With the Anschluss of Austria to Hitler's Germany in 1938, the Musikwissenschaftlicher Verlag Wien (MWV) and the Internationale Bruckner-Gesellschaft (IBG) in Vienna had been dissolved, and all efforts had been transferred to Leipzig.

In 1951 Leopold Nowak presented the first volume of the Neue Bruckner-Gesamtausgabe with a corrected reprint of Alfred Orel's edition of the Ninth Symphony.

He also repeated, and revised, arguments Haas had invoked to cast doubt on Bruckner's involvement in the preparation of the 1887 version.

Throughout the second half of the twentieth century most commentators accepted Haas's and Nowak's arguments without taking the trouble to investigate the matter any further.

Critical appreciation of the symphony took an interesting turn in 1954, when Eulenburg issued a new edition of the 1888 version by the German-born British musicologist Hans F. Redlich.

This emerges clearly from the Facsimile of its first page [published as Plate IV in R. Haas, Anton Bruckner (Potsdam, 1934), p. 128], which bears the date of its commencement: Vienna January 18, 1890.

[25]Redlich buttressed this argument by questioning the authenticity of a number of emendations to the score which he considered alien to Bruckner's native style.

[27] Cooke, who referred to the 1888 version as the "completely spurious… Löwe/Schalk score", concluded that the existence of the alleged manuscript of 1890 to which Redlich had first drawn attention effectively annulled all revisions made after 1881.

[28][29] Korstvedt has also refuted Haas's oft-repeated argument that Bruckner was a diffident composer who lacked faith in his own ability and was willing to make concessions that contravened his own artistic judgement.

Furthermore, there is no real evidence that Bruckner was forced to accept revisions in order to get the work published, as Haas claimed.

The following table summarizes the Fourth Symphony's complicated history of composition (or Wirkungsgeschichte, to use the critical term preferred by Bruckner scholars).