Composers had the early advantage of producing durable manuscripts, while performers prior to the age of recording were unable to leave more than impressions in the minds of those who heard them. "This thesis is based on the conviction that the greatest musical performers of history can and should be granted the same level of academic scrutiny and study as is so often received by the greatest composers. The listener might hope through the music to know Bruckner, Bruckner himself, Bruckner the great composer in this perhaps his greatest completed work, but we have to accept that his presence in the 1890 version over the period of its composition and its subsequent history, although massively predominant, is in the company of others, each of whom had some input into the genesis of the symphony that is, nevertheless, Bruckner's 8th. Both Haas and Nowak sought, in very different ways, to present as far as possible what the composer really intended, and it would be gratifying indeed to feel sure that the text of this symphony, one of the greatest ever written, was truly Bruckner's own symphony, and his alone but assembling an edition from the manuscript sources is by no means straightforward, so that the editors, Haas, Nowak and now Hawkshaw, must also, alongside Levi and the young Schalk brothers, become party to the creation of a performable version of this work. In stating their preference for one edition or another, many commentators seek to suggest, as with the example above of the 7th symphony cymbal clash, that they have the composer's advocacy on their side, either through special intuition or some evaluation of documentary or circumstantial evidence.
Come the 1890 version, we know its very existence was due to Hermann Levi's rejection of the first version, that to some extent Bruckner involved Josef and Franz Schalk in its extensive revision and re-composition, and that the published edition that gave it its overwhelming success in 1892 had been subject to further interventions without Bruckner's consent. If one is after 'pure' Bruckner in this symphony, this is the only place to find it. In the case of the 8th symphony, we are sure that Bruckner alone wrote the first version of 1887. On the basis of the inconclusive evidence we have, there is no probability: we just do not know. Who wrote Bruckner's 8th symphony…? A RECENT comment on a concert review web-site was anxious to assert that the cymbal clash in the 7th symphony "probably" did not originate with Bruckner and was not approved of by him.
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