Bruckner: String Quintet, WAB 112

Introduction

Anton Bruckner's String Quintet in F major, WAB 112 was composed in 1878/79 in Vienna.

History

Bruckner's superior Joseph Hellmesberger, Sr. requested Bruckner for a string quartet. Instead of a string quartet, Bruckner composed a viola quintet, starting the composition in December 1878 and ended it on 12 July 1879. Bruckner dedicated the Quintet to Duke Max Emanuel of Bavaria.

Further information: Intermezzo in D minor (Bruckner)

The first three movements were premiered by Winkler Quartet with Josef Schalk joining on second viola

Music

The String Quintet, which is scored for two violins, two violas and a cello, is in four movements:

1. Gemäßigt, F major, 3/4
2. Scherzo: Schnell, D minor, Trio: Langsamer, E-flat major, both 3/4
3. Adagio, G-flat major, common time
4. Finale: Lebhaft bewegt, F minor to F major, common time

Duration: about 43 minutes. At first the Scherzo was third rather than second, as in most of Bruckner's symphonies.

Bruckner's only large chamber music work is symphonic as well as with clearly distinct instrumental part writing.
A wealth of musical ideas is unfolded: Polyphony and motive-thematic work play a significant role, and a colourful pattern lords the work over by the deployment of the tessituras and the voices of all the instruments, with audacious modulations, theme inversions and half-tone key changes (e.g., the Adagio in G-flat major).
Differently from in Bruckner's symphonies, the form is more compact and the score starts with a clear melodic profile in 3/4 on a pedal point of the cello. On the other hand, the finale starts as in the symphonies with a tremolo. The combination of all musical ideas at the end of the first movement, and the three-thematic setting of the finale are also similar to that of Bruckner's symphonies.

Bruckner biographer Derek Watson finds the work "by no means a 'symphony for five strings' and it never stretches the quintet medium beyond its capabilities, save perhaps for the last seventeen bars of the finale, where [Bruckner] is thinking too much in orchestral terms."

Versions and editions

• Gutmann (1884): The first edition of 1884 by Albert Gutmann included metronome markings that did not come from Bruckner, namely: Gemäßigt = 72; Schnell = 138; Adagio = 56; Lebhaft bewegt = 144.
• Woess Universal Edition (1922), re-edition including Bruckner's adjustments
• Nowak (1963): critical edition based on Bruckner's manuscript
• Gerold W. Gruber, critical new edition (2007), adding in the first two movements a few optional passages, which were removed in the Nowak edition (bars 245-264 in the coda of the first movement, and bars 63-82 in the scherzo).

In Bruckner's original manuscript, the slow movement, an "Andante quasi Allegretto", was put as second movement, and it was also played like that by Helmesberger. In Gutmann's first issue, it was put as "Adagio" in third position after the scherzo, and several changes and additions from Bruckner's hand were not taken into account. After the first issue Bruckner brought more changes to the score, mainly a different coda to the finale.