AMONG the strange anomalies of Bruckner's development is the fact
that he wrote no large-scale instrumental composition before the age
of thirty-eight. Various explanations have been offered: his 'arrested
development' in general; his lack of opportunity to hear orchestral
music in his provincial backwater; his ecclesiastical surroundings;
the six years of austere study of strict counterpoint under Sechter.
Probably all these circumstances contributed in equal measure to this
strange hesitancy in approaching what later was to become his most
personal means of expression. Bruckner is reported to have tried to
explain the late appearance of his first great orchestral compositions
with a phrase of characteristic humility: 'Ich hab' mich nicht getraut'
('I didn't dare'). He certainly lacked a deeper knowledge of sonata
and symphony (sternly excluded from Sechter's almost medieval
curriculum), both of which he only began to study with the new
opera conductor of Linz, Otto Kitzler, the last of his tutors and fully
ten years younger than his middle-aged pupil. Bruckner worked
under him from the end of 1861 to 1863. As Kitzler's pupil he
insisted especially on the subjects deliberately neglected by Sechter:
form and orchestration. Instinctively he had chosen the right person,
for Kitzler was as progressive as Sechter was ultra-conservative. He
was the first to perform WagnerTannhäuser at Linz, and he thus
acquainted Bruckner for the first time with a Wagner score at the
turn of 1862-3. The essays in composition dating from this time
are, with the sole exception of a string Quartet in C minor, orchestral.
They vary in quality and comprise four pieces for orchestra, two
marches for military hand, an Overture in G minor and a complete
Symphony in F minor.

The Overture is Bruckner's symphonic prentice-work par excellence.
It is in fact a fully fledged symphonic first movement, scored for
an orchestra with double wind and three trombones. It begins with

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