Symphony no. 4 "Romantic" in E-flat major, WAB 104

Bruckner finished the Fourth in 1874 and then kept working on it for another fourteen years. He rewrote the scherzo completely, replacing the original with the hunting music everyone now knows; he produced a new finale, then revised that too. The version published in 1888 is the last of a long series, and scholars have argued ever since about which of them is the real one. The nickname is his own, or near enough — he used the word Romantic himself, and supplied a programme about a medieval city at dawn, a horn call, a knight riding out. He later grew vague about it. The horn call is the first thing you hear and the thing the whole symphony keeps circling back to. Of the nine, this is the one that made its way into the repertoire first, and it remains the easiest door into Bruckner. The revisions were not indecision. He was, by his own account, still learning how to end it.