IMSLP Forums

The orchestral parts for the Bruckner Seventh Symphony offered by IMSLP are said to have originated with the first publisher, Gutmann, then being reprinted by Kalmus. Reprinted by Kalmus they are, but they did not come from Gutmann. They are instead parts near to the published edition of Leopold Nowak, but without the ritardandos in the finale and perhaps other features as well. Heaven knows how they got out of the rental bins. These parts, while undoubtedly useful, have contributed in an unconstructive way to the present highly-ambiguous textual status of this symphony. Use with caution; check with Nowak and Gutmann; check with the critical report written by Rüdiger Bornhöft.

William Carragan
Contributing Editor, Bruckner Collected Edition

Thanks very much for that info, William.

On the weekend I had my Karajan recording of the Seventh randomly come up on iTunes, so I turned to the Gutmann full score (IMSLP #26842) and discovered it’s a fairly poor Google scan: apart from the notorious grey-scaling which is superfluous in a black and white print, a couple of pages are missing all of the instrument clefs down the left-hand margin, so if anyone has the the 1885 publication to hand they could do a service by scanning a few pages here and there to replace the equivalents in #26842.

Regards, Philip