Autograph musical quotation signed "A. Bruckner" from the dramatic opening theme of the first movement of the composer's 8th Symphony in C minor. Undated, but ca. 1892

One small oblong leaf (48 x 26 mm; 1.8" x 8.1"). 4 measures (corresponding to measures 24-27 of the first movement). Notated in black ink on a single hand-ruled stave.

Browned; small slightly lighter area to blank lower margin; ink very slightly feathered.

Matted with a fine original head-and-shoulders etching of the composer looking left, signed in pencil by the noted Viennese artist Ferdinand Michl (1877-1951) at lower right margin. 212 x 170 mm. Bruckner composed his Eighth Symphony between 1884 and 1887 and revised it extensively between 1889 and 1890. The revised version had its premiere in Vienna on 18 December 1892 with considerable success.

"The origin of the Eighth Symphony, in C minor, which Bruckner believed to be his finest, presents the picture of a titanic struggle with its recalcitrant material, the skepticism of friends and foes and the increasing physical disabilities of oncoming old age. It is a work conceived on a heroic scale and the reflection of a truly heroic soul, undaunted by failures and disappointments." Redlich: Bruckner and Mahler, p. 99

Autograph music by Bruckner is rare to the market.