In the last movement of Bruckner’s Symphony 5 (full movement here), an unexpected brass chorale appears at about 6:45 and continues until 8:00. Listen to just the chorale here. What is intriguing about this chorale is the manner in which it manipulates the listener’s tonal memory. Ordinarily a chorale has a series of phrases, and after generally an even number of these phrases — whatever the chordal progression — the chorale ends in the same key that it began with. (I suppose so you can go back and do another stanza, if there were lyrics.)
However, this chorale does not end where it started. But it sure sounds like it does! Total memory seems to say after the last phrase, “Ok, we wandered around for a while, but now we’re back home”. But we’re not.
Take a look at the chart. The key signature is almost meaningless, just more or less saving the charter from annotating all accidentals (i.e., sharps and flats). I’m going to boldly state that the first two chords (starting in 175) are dominant to tonic, which puts us in the key of Cb or B, take your pick. So the first three half-notes are dominant-tonic-dominant, and then the following quarter-note chords do a lovely transposition to Bb in beat one of 178. We’ve gone down a half-step.
The following notes starting with beat 3 of 178 are in strings and woodwinds, mimicking the transposition sequence of chords, also ending with the Bb chord.
The second brass phrase then chooses a new starting point (Db in 181), but with a similar transposition to the first phrase: dominant-tonic-dominant as half-notes, with my suggestion that the tonic is now the Gb chord. Thus we get another half-step transposition, ending with an F major chord in 184.
The strings and woodwinds – starting with beat 3 of 184 – again repeat the brass second phrase, transposing from Gb to F. But – and this might be the cause of the deception – Bruckner adds two more transpositions (see beat 3 of 186 to beat 1 of 189) taking us to A major.
The third brass phrase is less declarative, and takes us from A major to G minor. This time the strings barely respond: 2 pizzicato D’s and then an octave on Eb.
Finally, the fourth brass phrase “sharps” the Eb provided by the strings and gives us a C major chord (beat 3 of 193) to start things off. Assuming this to be the dominant, then the remaining chords go as far as a diminished B, ending with a C7 chord which leads us “home” to F major, the implied tonic. I mean, it IS the end of the chorale. Aren’t we home? No. “Home” is B (or Cb) major, right? That’s where we started. Bruckner has head-faked us big-time. He’s transposed to a new key, and we don’t know it. I’ll admit that F is only a half-step down from the starting point of Gb, yet I think my original assignment of that Gb as a dominant and not tonic is correct.
Once the original statement of the chorale is completed, then fragments of it are used in what follows, often as a device to transpose. (Remember, before Bruckner ever gained popularity with his 7th symphony, he was known as perhaps Europe’s greatest improvisational organist, touring for performances far and wide. These kinds of transpositional devices must have been part of his arsenal.) After a lot of development and intertwining several of the themes developed in this movement, there is a great deal of tension built up, leading to a restatement of the chorale, now doubled – whole notes rather than halves, and halves rather than quarters — partly because he’s got several devices working simultaneously. Here is a chart of this restatement.
Note that the chords in the first three brass phrases are essentially identical to the original statement: phrase 1: 583-588, phrase 2: 591-596, phrase 3: 599-604. However this time Bruckner is setting up the ending, so he’s going to extend phrase 4 starting with the diminished chord on 607 and another diminished chord in 609, he’s reached his goal: a giant F suspension resolved to an F after 14 beats, and then to the true home – Bb.
A cute little side note. Once he’s truly home at 614, he decides to show off a little and walks chromatically down via half notes an entire octave in some of the middle parts, with each succeeding chord sounding “right”, making sense, and adding to the tension. Of course, in this entire chorale restatement, the strings and woodwinds are going nuts with their usual Bruckner-istic end-game flourishes.
When the walk down reaches the lower Bb at 622, the final final rhythmic figure originally stated in the first movement of the symphony hammers us to the conclusion. Listen to these final moments of the symphony (the clip begins about one minute before the chorale restatement).
In the above, what is amazing to me is that even though I know that the original statement of the chorale does NOT come home, it sure seems like is does, and I have to replay back to the beginning to realize we’ve wandered away from where we started.
Link summary:
Original chorale statement – mp3 and chart
Chorale restatement – mp3 and chart (the chorale starts at 1:04 of this mp3)
Entire 4th movement – mp3 and full score