# Anton Bruckner: Symphony No. 4 in E-flat major "Romantic" Premiered 20 February 1881, Vienna, conducted by Hans Richter. "Medieval 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…" This is how Anton Bruckner described the opening of his Fourth Symphony, subtitled 'Romantic.' This image is a clue to the meaning of that layered word: it is not the same word 'Romantic' that we use to describe the fiery 19th century spirit of Beethoven, Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, or Delacroix. Nor is it the romance of Valentine's Day. Bruckner wants to bring us further back, to the original 'romances' of 13th century literature — think King Arthur, Tristan and Iseult, and Parzival's search for the Grail. Yet Bruckner's is not 'adventure' music; his pacing and scale are so vast that human-sized characters and conflicts seem to disappear in it. Listeners who expect Beethoven's forward drive can feel lost in Bruckner, whose music develops in a different way. Instead of compact themes fragmenting and evolving, Bruckner lays expansive ideas out flat, like stained glass windows. We aren't invited to ride towards a destination so much as live inside a world. Despite his reputation as one of Europe's finest organists, Bruckner spent years struggling to win recognition as a composer in Vienna. The premiere of his Third Symphony in 1877 was an outright disaster: the audience walked out in waves, leaving him on stage before a nearly empty hall. The Fourth Symphony, which premiered in Vienna in 1881, changed everything. The audience responded with genuine enthusiasm, and for the first time Bruckner, then 57 years old, had a genuine public success. The symphony opens at dawn with strings trembling softly on a single note, out of which a solo horn rises. The "knights burst into the open" in a descending fanfare that recurs as one of the main themes of the work. They are enveloped in Bruckner's alluded "magic of nature" in the second movement, in which a solemn melody over a trotting bass depicts a ride through the forest. Episodes of woodwind birdsong are echoed by the horn: man and nature in harmony. The third movement is devoted to hunting. It is Bruckner at his most playful, with nature music punctuated by regal fanfares and stamping, chasing rhythms. Then, in a lovely contrasting trio, the hunters take a picnic. The vast Finale journeys far and wide before a transcendent coda. The trembling string tremolos from the opening, now nearly an hour behind us, return. A solemn brass chorale seems to begin in the dark, and then gradually brighten, like the sun crossing behind a stained glass window.